EDITOR’S NOTE: In the summer of 2021, I suggested to Washington-DC-based writer Brock Thompson that Mike Anglin would make a valuable subject for an article. Just like The Dallas Way, almost every Dallas LGBTQ+ and AIDS organization has a legion of unsung, faceless volunteers who long ago committed to ensuring each agency met its commitments to the community. Such is Mike. He has served without pay and contributed his time and expertise to many projects as a lawyer, mediator, father, and civil rights activist. Mike was a close counselor and advisor to various LGBT and AIDS-activist leaders, and to neighborhoods and other civic boards and commissions, for more than 45 years. He has been on the front lines of virtually every attempt to bring about greater justice and fairness to marginalized communities across Texas. Always working behind the scenes, Mike avoided publicity and recognition or any credit he was due. A wide assortment of deceased leaders and activists knew him as a friend and confidant in troubled times: Bill Nelson, Terry Tebedo, Ray Kuchling, Don Baker, Howie Daire, Don McCleary, Mike Richards, Robert Schwab, Tom Stoddard, John Thomas are all gone now, but the testimony they would give about Mike’s role is evident in his work. No doubt, walking among those footprints required a lot of balance.

– William Waybourn, former Dallas resident and long-time activist for equal justice

By Brock Thompson

It is said that Mike Anglin is one of the original architects of a number of the major LGBT non-profit organizations in Dallas. And that is certainly no exaggeration. Anglin possesses a modesty somewhat uncommon in the legal profession. Certainly for a Texan. When I first approached him about an interview there were the artful dodges, an almost bashfulness, shielding a thoughtful, considerate, and indeed compassionate individual.

Born in 1946 in Boston, Massachusetts, to a naval family, bouncing around from posting to posting, the Anglin family eventually made its way to Texas, where Anglin spent the majority of his youth. After first serving in Viet Nam as a naval officer, Anglin settled in Dallas in 1976 following his graduation from law school at the University of Texas. It was the beginning of the Dallas heyday and the famed Texas oil boom that was popularized in the nighttime soap sharing the same name as the city. The sense of success and freedom was also seen widely in the gay community, as the 70s saw a vibrant gay scene emerging in what was known as the Crossroads in Dallas — that fabled corner of Cedar Springs Rd. and Throckmorton St., hosting venues such as the Old Plantation, JR’s, the Village Station and the Round Up. Anglin described the neighborhood as an area fostering community and identity, a sort of safe space that urban centers could foster.

The Social Justice Committee

But not all was completely safe for those who sought sanctuary there, certainly not safe from police harassment. It was not uncommon for Dallas police to conduct raids on gay establishments and intimidate gay patrons by taking down license plate numbers of cars parked in the Cedar Springs neighborhood. In one such popular disco venue, the Village Station, men would sometimes dance shirtless on warm summer nights. Police would sometimes enter and arrest those men for violating the somewhat vague Texas “public lewdness” statute. Those arrested would be encouraged by authorities not to fight any charges and avoid a public trial by simply pleading no-contest and paying a fine, otherwise their names and addresses would often appear in the local newspaper. Any such public “outing” would mean instant loss of jobs, dignity, and social status for many of the gay professionals who were targeted.

After continued denials from the police that such harassment was taking place, the Dallas Gay Alliance formed the Social Justice Committee (a name inspired by a line in the song Easy to be Hard, by Three Dog Night) with Anglin as its first chair. The SJC got the bartenders and staff to began discretely documenting instances of targeted police harassment in gay bars and dance venues — meticulously taking down names, badge numbers, dates and times, witness contact information, anything that could be later presented to the police department to refute their traditional claims that no such raids were happening. Anglin also assembled a group of local attorneys, meeting directly with the Chief of Police under the imprimatur of a delegation from the Dallas Bar Association (the so-called “QC-13 Committee”). With evidence in hand clearly proving police harassment and unequal enforcement of law, Anglin and his colleagues were successful in significantly curtailing police intimidation. This one action dramatically shifted the future course of relations between the Dallas Police Department and the LGBT community for the better.

Baker vs. Wade Litigation

In 1974, in a move similar to legal trends across the country, the Texas legislature adopted a revised penal (criminal) code, tossing out old, outdated statutes and modernizing others. Despite attempts at modernization, Texas specifically included a section “21.06” providing a criminal penalty for participating in intimate relations between persons of the same gender. Later in 1979, the Houston Human Rights Foundation, led by Mort Schwab, a Houston-based attorney, sought to explore ways and means to overturn the law, knowing that gays and lesbians being codified as presumptive criminals by the state was often the basis for discrimination in numerous other ways. Such statutes also made fighting the growing AIDS epidemic difficult. Many in the medical profession saw that gay men would be less likely to confide in their doctors, as doing so would be tantamount to admitting to illegal behavior.

Not long after its founding, the Houston-based organization decided to expand its reach by becoming the first statewide “gay rights organization.” Folding in recognized leaders from San Antonio, Dallas, and Austin, it was rebranded as the Texas Human Rights Foundation. Dallas attorneys Dick Peeples and Lee Taft, along with Anglin, were brought in as members of the founding THRF board. Peeples was elected treasurer and Anglin, vice-president, with Schwab retaining his leadership position as president. Through much deliberation and planning, it was decided that the best chance of overturning 21.06 would be to bring an action in federal court in the hope of having that court declare the law unconstitutional as a violation of federally protected rights of equal protection and personal privacy. It was also decided by the THRF board that Dallas was the best location for commencing such litigation.

The decision to bring the case in the federal courts of Dallas was based largely, as Anglin noted, on the general perception that the Dallas LGBT community was somewhat more organized and, given their success in curtailing police harassment, effective. For a case to successfully challenge the law, the group needed the right plaintiff. The three Dallas-based directors, Anglin, Peeples and Taft, were able to produce Don Baker, a well-known gay activist and local school teacher who had been fired after coming out in the media. Baker, Anglin noted, was simply “brave enough” to let his name be attached to the complaint while THRF would operate in the background generating the funds and publicity needed to garner support for the litigation. In August of 1982, the United States District Judge hearing the Baker vs. Wade case, the Hon. Jerry Buchmeyer, ruled in favor of Baker on Constitutional grounds, finding that the law violated Baker's right to privacy and equal protection under the Supreme Law of the Land.

An initial appeal by the state to the United States Fifth Circuit was also successfully thwarted, but that victory was soon reversed in an en banc ruling of a slim majority of the 15 justices on that court, ruling that states did have the right to discriminate against same-sex relations if they wished to do so in their criminal statutes. Thereafter, Baker vs. Wade became moot with the notorious Bowers v. Hardwick decision in 1986. It was not until another Texas case reached the U. S. Supreme Court, Lawrence v. Texas in 2001, that all such laws were at last officially stuck down nationwide. Despite the Fifth Circuit rejection, as well as the Bowers decision, Anglin and his allies were able to have gay rights successfully framed constitutionally in terms of equality and privacy. Judge Buchmeyer, who presided over the lengthy trial of the case in federal district court, later called the case the “most important of his career.” In 2003 the U. S. Supreme Court essentially agreed with Judge Buchmeyer’s original Dallas ruling in Baker vs. Wade … that such laws do not pass “Constitutional scrutiny.”

The Dallas Black Tie Dinner

Anglin with close comrade, John Thomas, Executive Director of AIDS Resource Center

In the spring of 1982, Anglin and two friends (John Thomas and Ray Kuchling) agreed to meet with a former San Francisco political activist, Jim Foster, on behalf of a new organization in Washington DC, called the Human Rights Campaign Fund. Foster had had some success with political fundraising in California, using the model of a ticket-based black tie gala. He was convinced that the same success could be reproduced for HRCF in Dallas if he could enlist some strong volunteers. Thomas, Kuchling and Anglin were somewhat skeptical at first, balking at the proposed $150 ticket price, a significant sum at the time, but ultimately decided to take on the project. The following morning William Waybourn was added to the group, which would need his organizational and marketing skills, and political savvy, if the venture were to succeed. To help ensure people would indeed buy the tickets and attend, Anglin called a close friend and prominent Dallas gay socialite, Dick Weaver, who threw his support behind the dinner and joined as a co-founder. The first in what would become known as the Dallas Black Tie Dinner produced a $6,000 donation to the Human Rights Campaign Fund (today known as the Human Rights Campaign). In the following years, in what was a rather ingenious move to sell tickets, the group began splitting the net proceeds with local charities, giving them ownership and a strong financial incentive to sell their own tickets to the event. The tactic worked brilliantly. In 1983, the Black Tie Dinner raised $12,500, then 1984, $33,000. And by 1990, when Anglin rotated off the board, the Black Tie Dinner raised close to half a million dollars for both HRC and local LGBT charities. As of 2022, the organization Anglin and the others founded in 1982 has raised over $27,000,000 for the LGBT community.

Described above are but three endeavors taken on by Mike Anglin on behalf of the greater LGBT community. Anglin was also a principal founder of The Dallas Way in 2011, an LGBT history-gathering and preserving initiative. He was also a legal advisor to the Turtle Creek Chorale in 1980, helping the popular men’s choral group to incorporate and raise funds. He incorporated and helped organize yet another major fundraising initiative known as Razzle Dazzle Dallas in1981. Two years later he lent his legal talents to help organize and incorporate the AIDS charity Foundation for Human Understanding (now known as Resource Center). He later served on the national Board of Governors of the Human Rights Campaign (“HRC”).

In describing the fight that Anglin and his comrades seemed to wage on practically every front in the 1980s, Anglin used the word ’war’ … calling it ’a bizarre world’ of police harassment, employment discrimination, open ostracism at all levels, and seemingly endless AIDS deaths … a reality of those difficult years that would seem almost a tale of fantasy to modern ears. Thanks to men like Mike Anglin, that world is now almost entirely gone. For so many organizations, ones that proved integral to the well being of LGBT Texans, when you look toward their beginnings you’ll find the determination of committed activists like Mike Anglin. At the 2014 Black Tie Dinner, Anglin received the Kuchling Humanitarian Award, a highly coveted award given to those who have made “extraordinary gifts” of their time and talents on behalf of the LGBTQ community. In presenting the award William Waybourn, founder of the Victory Fund, called Anglin a “wise leader, a careful counselor, and guide.” Kay Wilkinson, a long-time Dallas LGBT activist leader, noted that, although gay youth today may never realize it, they have more attention, more rights, and a better safety net today because of Mike Anglin ... “and that’s the gospel truth.”

Anglin is now retired from practicing law, a frequent traveler to Italy, and living in central Dallas.