page_title: Ray Hill (activist)
section_title: LGBT activism
hierarchical_section_title: Ray Hill (activist) / Activism / LGBT activism
caption_attribution_description: English: Promotional material used by Queer Nation Houston.
context_page_description: Ray Hill was an American activist for LGBT rights and for police, law enforcement and prisoner issues. An ex-convict, he was also the subject of multiple documentary films.
context_section_description: Hill co-organized the first gay rights organization in Houston in 1967, with Rita Wanstrom and David Patterson, the Promethean Society.
  In 1975 Hill just out of prison began working for a Houston radio station KPFT-FM which he co-founded in 1968, where he hosted a show about gay issues. Sometimes the show would get calls from homophobic listeners who threatened to murder Hill, and Hill would flippantly give the threatening callers directions to the radio station studio.
  Hill and others organized Houston's first gay pride parade in June 1976, which attracted around 120 supporters.
  Anita Bryant's 1977 visit to Houston was the catalyst to starting a fervent gay rights movement in Houston. Twelve thousand gay and allied Houstonians came to a protest organized by Hill and the Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus at Bryant's concert of June 14 for the Texas Bar Association in downtown Houston.
  In 1978 Hill organized what is called Town Hall Meeting I, a large meeting of  around 4,000 LGBT people held in the Astro Arena. This meeting served as the precursor to many Houston area LGBT organizations, including the Montrose Center and the Gay and Lesbian Switchboard of Houston.
  In 1991 Paul Broussard, a 27-year-old gay Houstonian, was murdered by a group of men on the street. Hill insisted that the murder was a hate crime or "gay bashing" and urged the media to pay attention. He also helped organize Queer Nation, a queer activist group, to protest the murder and the police's apathy. Hill was active in keeping the case in the public eye and called for the strong punishment of the perpetrators.
  Hill was also involved with the Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas which is known for striking down sodomy laws in the United States. Hill helped the men involved with the case through getting their trial to the Supreme Court.
  Hill was also an activist for those living with HIV and AIDS, and served on the Board of Directors for the FAIR Foundation. In 1979 Hill began helping the first people he knew with HIV/AIDS, although at the time the physicians did not know that they were living with HIV/AIDS, but believed that they had Kaposi's Sarcoma. It is now known that Kaposi's Sarcoma can be developed when one has HIV, although it was several years before AIDS was named, initially having been called GRID, standing for gay-related immune deficiency, which Hill and others fought against. Hill is credited as authoring the first safe-sex pamphlet in the United States to help stop the spread of HIV and AIDS, which was circulated by the group Citizens for Human Equality in 1982.
caption: Queer Nation Houston flyers.
exif: {}