By Barrett White
On my dresser sits a small, gold and purple felt hat. I have no idea how old it is. It was a prized possession of my partner’s grandfather. Pinned to it are various accolades from the Lions Club of Barcelona, Venezuela—where my partner and his family are from. A perfect attendance pin from 1962, another from 1964, and so on.
“Together we serve,” says the Lions Club International homepage. Lions, as members are referred, are proud of the time they spend giving back to their communities. These efforts run the gamut from sheltering the houseless to, famously, taking care of the vision impaired—an effort launched by Hellen Keller herself, who urged the Lions Club to be “knights for the blind” during a 1925 speech. Within the walls of a Lions Club, conversations are without barbs and focused solely on servicing the community around them—the discussion of politics and religion is forbidden.
You’ve likely seen the Lions Club logo with its familiar “LIONS” across the top and “L” front and center on the crest. Since its founding in 1917, the ethos of the Lions Club remains remarkably untouched. For over a century, the service organization has been operating in cities across the globe to better the communities in which they are located, with groups in metros big and small—from Chicago, where it was founded, to Houston, to the Anzoáteguin capital city of Barcelona on Venezuela’s northern coast, and everywhere in between.
Lucy Gonzales, a sugar-sweet woman with a servant’s heart and a kind smile, is state chair for New Voices with Lions Club. Gonzales’ job is to seek out where there is a need, and then plant some Lions there to address it. An ally with family members who identify as LGBTQ, she is sensitive to the unique needs of the community in Houston. “When I spoke to the director of the Montrose Center and heard about kids—twelve years old, eight years old—sleeping on park benches, I just wanted to walk right out of there and round them all up and bring them home,” she says. “I can’t imagine why someone would throw out their own blood.”
The formation of a Lions Club benefitting the LGBTQ community of Houston quickly became a matter of when, not if.
It didn’t take much convincing for Gonzales to bring young, fresh-faced Lion Gabriel Cardenas on board as president of the new chapter, chartered on Houston Pride Day, June 28, 2020. Called the Houston Montrose Lions Club, the new branch runs out of the gayborhood and has a healthy 20 initial members. Though Houston Montrose Lions Club does not yet have a physical space out of which to operate, Cardenas isn’t worried. As we all work to prevent the spread of COVID-19, Cardenas is just fine running meetings on Zoom for the time being.
Mark Roth, state membership chair for Lions Club, works alongside Gonzales to recruit new and retrain current members. “If you look at a traditional Lions Club, it’s usually old white men,” says Roth. “We’re trying to change that.”
The average age in a typical Lions Club is over 60, he adds, while the average member in the Houston Montrose chapter is in their mid-30s. “It really is a young club,” Roth says.
Roth, an AIDS Foundation Houston volunteer for over 30 years, knows that there are needs not being addressed in Houston’s queer scene. Building a specialty Lions Club in the center of gay culture in the city is the way to coalesce with existing organizations and activists to address such needs. The Houston Montrose chapter also signifies the first LGBTQ Lions Club in Texas—and one of the first in the nation. “There may be one [LGBTQ+ Lions Club] in Alabama; perhaps one in New Mexico,” says Roth. “We know, of course, that there are LGBTQ members of Lions Clubs, some of whom have reached high positions in Lions around the world, but this is a new opportunity for us here in Texas to open this door to meet specific needs.”
This is not the singular goalpost, however. The next phase, Gonzales hopes, is to use Houston Montrose as an example to foster additional growth in “every other city” in Texas—and beyond—with more LGBTQ-centric Lions Clubs working to address inequality in their own communities.
Here in Houston, there is plenty to do. Though a new chapter with fledgling members not yet ready to take on major tasks, Cardenas, Gonzales, and Roth are looking at what can be done with limited resources. Fundraising to provide financial assistance to service industry workers who are currently out of a job or on reduced hours due to the pandemic is one task, while working to help restock food pantries like Stone Soup is another. A long-term goal like ending LGBTQ youth homelessness in Houston seems far off, but the idea isn’t exactly on the backburner, either. “Maybe other organizations around the state will see what we’re doing here in Houston and create other opportunities in Austin or Dallas,” Roth says.
“It’s not going to be me or Lucy telling the club members to do what we want them to do,” Roth adds. “We just want to be there so that, if the members need help addressing the issues important to them, that they have the resources and support that they need to do it.”
“We are facilitators,” says Cardenas. “There’s no limit to what we can do. We will make it happen.”
Though chartered on June 28, there is a 90-day charter period before a Lions Club has their official chartering event (Houston Montrose is planning theirs for September, likely online). Members who join during the 90-day charter period have the distinction of being called Charter Members, officiated with a special Lions Club pin.
Where there’s a need, there’s a Lion, they say. And no matter how you identify or who you love, there is a spot for you at the Houston Montrose Lions Club.
For more information on becoming a member of the Houston Montrose Lions Club, please reach out to them via their official Facebook page.
