HOUSTON (AP) _ New Houston Mayor Annise Parker says her election to lead the state’s largest city marks a milestone for gay Americans.
But Parker says it’s just “one step toward a tomorrow of greater justice.”
U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore administered the oath of office to Parker on Monday in a public repeat of a private swearing-in ceremony over the weekend. Parker’s partner, Kathy
Hubbard, held a Bible for the swearing-in that belonged to Parker’s grandparents.
Parker took almost 54 percent of the vote in a runoff last month, defeating former city attorney Gene Locke in a race to succeed Bill White, who had reached his term limit. Her election made Houston the largest U.S. city to elect an openly gay mayor.
Addressing more than 1,000 people in Houston’s Wortham Theater, Parker said that while the nation’s fourth-largest city shocked the world by electing her, it didn’t surprise its own people. In her words, “We have a tradition of electing mayors not for who they are but for what they believe we can do as a city.”