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You may not remember Joel Burns. You may not have noticed the handful of stories noting that Burns, a 45-year-old Fort Worth, Texas councilman announced his resignation from civic service earlier this week, noting that he was planning on enrolling in Harvard’s Masters of Public Administration program. You may have wondered why there was any coverage about a Texas pol not named Wendy Davis or Rick Perry, and whether, in light of the recent coverage of Davis’s (conditional) backing of a 20-week ban on abortions, there was much force remaining in Texas progressivism.
Indeed, if there is, it may lie, and return, in Burns. Because while Burns turned down the opportunity to replace Davis on the Texas Senate, his belief in at least one progressive cause is known throughout the state. And it’s likely why his name rings familiar.
Four years ago, Burns sat in a Fort Worth City Council meeting. Donning a pink polo, he adjusted his microphone, and looked out at his colleagues. Flipping on the projector, he began.
“Tonight, I ask my colleagues’ indulgence in allowing my announcement time to talk briefly about another issue that pulls at my heart.”
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A photo of a young boy — Asher Brown, 13 years old — lit the screen. A Houston-area teen, Asher experienced more bullying and intimidation that most kids will know. Bullied for the way he acted. Bullied for the way he was perceived. His parents called and cajoled school officials to help quell the harassment. Nothing. There was nothing done, and nothing put in the way of the bullies and Asher. Years, this continued, without end.
In late 2010, as Burns told his audience, Asher went home. He found his father’s gun, and he killed himself.
Another photo splashed on the screen, and then another, and more teens, and more suicides, piling on top of one another, impacting in their number and threads of similarities. Burns detailed these deaths. These kids. And then he paused. “Teen bullying and suicide has reached an epidemic in our country – especially among gay and lesbian youth, those perceived to be gay, or kids who are just different,” Burns said. Addressing the adults in the room, and those listening at home or online, he added: “There’s a conversation for the adults in this room, and those watching to have, and we will have it – that this bullying and harassment in our schools must stop, and that our schools must be a safe place to learn and to grow.”
But he wasn’t there to talk to the adults. He wasn’t there for the parents, or the administrators, or those shaping the laws and the state. He wanted to address the teens — the teens like Asher, and the others, whose stories he had just shared. “Tonight, I would like to talk to the 12-, 13-, 14-, 15-, 16-, and 17-year-olds in … any school in Fort Worth, or anywhere across the country,” Burns continued. “I know that life can seem unbearable, or that the people in your household may not understand you, and that they may even physically harm you. But I want you to know that it gets better.”
It gets better. This, too, shall pass, Burns said. And then he turned inward, and began to share his story. Or tried to. “I’m going to have too hard a time with the next few sentences. I don’t want my mother and father to have to bear the pain of having to hear me say them. …Â The numerous suicides in recent days have upset me so much, and have just torn at my heart. And even though there may be some political repercussions … this story is for the young people who might be holding that gun tonight, or the rope, or the pill bottle.”
Growing as an LGBT Texas teen can be difficult enough in this second decade of the 21st century. Decades prior, it was that much worse. But you’ll get out, Burns said. Beyond that world of forced normalcy and unmitigated bullying. Of backward mores. To those teens listening, Burns said, “There is so, so, so much more.”
Twelve minutes after he’d begun, Burns had created one of the largest — and most surprising — civic bursts of support for LGBT teens this decade has seen. Not only was Burns a councilmember from the most conservative of Texas’s major urban areas, but he was commenting at time when LGBT rights were far from assumed. 2010 can, and does, seem a world away. DOMA remained stuck on the books; only an isolated handful of states had passed same-sex marriage; Pres. Obama’s views on gay marriage were still evolving, and not yet finalized. Four years ago, there was anticipation, but no certainty, that dominoes were set to soon fall. The notions and realities of momentum hadn’t yet solidified.
But to Burns, the status of that momentum didn’t matter. And while his statement didn’t carry any political fallout — he’s remained on the council, now in his sixth year representing the city – there was tremendous risk in his stance. Nor is that risk necessarily lessened now, in Texas. After all, the likeliest candidates for Texas’s lieutenant governor, one of the most powerful offices in the state, have further ensconced themselves into the state’s Christianist wing.
One of the front-runners, Tea Party-backed Dan Patrick, demonized Houston mayor Annise Parker’s recent same-sex marriage, noting, “I am not shocked that Mayor Parker decided to elope to California for a marriage that is unconstitutional in Texas. This is obviously part of a larger strategy of hers to turn Texas into California.”
Texas, though, has been warming to same-sex marriage. And while it remains far further than, say, Oregon or Nevada, hope remains. And it’s a hope that stems from people like Burns. It’s a hope that Burns needed as a teen, and which he hoped to share with those teens in his state, and in Oklahoma, and in Alabama, and anywhere adults and administrators and bullies seek to convince children that there’s only one way, and only one normalcy. Because, as Burns said, things change. Things get better. For them. And for the country.
“To those who are feeling very alone tonight, please know that I understand how you feel,” Burns finished. “That things will get easier. Please stick around to make those happy memories for yourself. It may not seem like it, tonight. And the attitudes of society will change. Please, live long enough to be there to see it.”
