J.D. Angle and Joel Burns have been a male couple for nine years. They fell in love when they were working in Bill Clinton's presidential campaign in 1992. Burns is 33, a tall, blue-eyed blond. Angle, 34, is four inches shorter than Burns and has snapping brown eyes and a beard trimmed so closely that it is almost stubble. They live in a house in Meadowbrook that was built in the 1920s, which they are carefully restoring and adapting to their daily lives. The door is answered by four mongrel dogs: Indie (for Indiana), Pokey (who is slow), Jem, and Scout:

Bark-bark-bark, bark-bark-bark, bark, bark, bark and re-bark.

On a Saturday afternoon in February, Angle and Burns sat down at their dining room table and talked about how they met, courted, and made their commitment to each other.

J.D. was working full-time in the Clinton campaign when Joel came in to volunteer.

"I took one look at Joel, turned bright red, ran back to my office, caught my breath, and then went back to meet Joel, as if nothing had happened," J.D. said.

"We worked together 16 hours a day," Joel said.

"Joel saw me at my best and at my worst, when I was as angry as I've ever been, when I was as happy as I've ever been, when I was exhausted," J.D. said.

"When we were both exhausted," Joel added.

"After the campaign, we started dating," J.D. said. "It was liberating and intimidating, because, for gay men who meet and fall in love, there aren't the courting rituals that straight people use."

"I saw where we were going, and I bought gold rings for us," Joel said.

"We went for a weekend at a friend's ranch in West Texas," J.D. said. "We spent our first full day going all over the ranch. By late afternoon I was tired and I smelled like manure and I wanted to take a bath."

"I insisted that we climb to the top of a hill to watch the sunset," Joel said. "It was a brilliant West Texas sunset. We stood on the hilltop, bathed in its glow. I took the rings out of my pocket and asked J.D. to spend the rest of his life with me."

"We cried a little," J.D. said. "We embraced. We kissed. It was not really a very special West Texas sunset, but it was our sunset, for our moment."

J.D. and Joel looked at each other and smiled radiantly.

Last night, like most other citizens of Fort Worth, gay men and lesbians who live here spent a quiet evening at home. Like the submerged nine-tenths of the proverbial iceberg, they were invisible to the naked eye.

But they are becoming more visible all the time. The gay community in Fort Worth is growing -- and growing up. Twenty-five years ago, the only outward signs of their existence were three gay bars and one gay church. Now a curious newcomer can easily find the outposts of gay Fort Worth. There are five gay bars on the Short South Side, four gay churches, a gay emporium on South Jennings called Woody's Warehouse, the AIDS Outreach Center, the Health Education Learning Project, P-FLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), a gay bowling league, the Imperial Court de Fort Worth/Arlington (which bestows royal rank on drag queens), and on March 29-31, the gay Cowtown Rodeo at the Watt Arena in the Will Rogers Memorial Center. A new weekly newspaper called The Fort Worth Ally reports "News for Our Community" and claims a weekly readership of 15,000 throughout Tarrant County. A gay coffee house and art gallery is scheduled to open in late March. The Gay Pride Parade marches by in June.

Like other groups of settlers in Fort Worth, gay men and lesbians live in every part of town, part of the city's Baskin Robbins parfait of colors, kinds, and classes. According to data from the 2000 U.S. Census, there were 42,912 same-sex partners living together in Texas -- 2,908 in Tarrant County and 1,245 within the city limits of Fort Worth. Although U.S. Census tracts do not correspond exactly with city neighborhoods, data from the 2000 census suggest that there were at least 20 same-sex couples living in Meadowbrook and about the same number in Fairmount -- called "Fairymount" by happy householders and homophobes alike.

In Dallas and Houston, gay men and lesbians began to band together 30 years ago to fight for their rights against powerful opponents and as a result now are organized and powerful constituencies in local politics. In Fort Worth, where confrontations are avoided, the gay and lesbian community is still fragmented. Gay leaders like David Reed, president of the Tarrant County Lesbian and Gay Alliance, say bluntly that their community here is immature.

But gay men and lesbians in Fort Worth are becoming more and more visible to their heterosexual neighbors and more and more accepted as just another group of settlers in the city, as much a part of Cowtown as the Woman's Club, the old Seventh Street Gang, or Moslah Shriners riding on tiny cars in the Christmas parade.

They buried Ray Busbee on a snowy afternoon in February. He was 51. Cause of death: opportunistic infections following full-blown AIDS. The service was at the Blessing Colonial Funeral Home in Mansfield. Busbee was a member of Cowtown Leathermen, a gay group to whom tanned hide is a sign of manhood and a sexual turn-on. Among the flowers flanking his open coffin was a wreath with the Leathermen's longhorn logo. In the front row of the chapel sat the pallbearers, six Leathermen wearing dark suits and leather ties. Busbee's family sat together on one side of the chapel; his gay and lesbian friends sat together in the opposite pews.

The Rev. Carol West, pastor of Celebration Community Church, a predominantly gay church on Pennsylvania Avenue in Fort Worth, went to the pulpit and delivered an informal eulogy. NEXT »

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