Mica Stands Up - and Pays the Price Part: 3 of 4
This clipping is part of the collection entitled: Mica England Collection (The Dallas Way) and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the UNT Libraries Special Collections.
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interview.
But three months later, when England walked into the police building, the recruiter was
waiting for her with a copy of the departmental hiring policy:
Sorry, no gays or lesbians need apply.
Enraged, frightened, humiliated, she went through the phone book and eventually got
connected to the Dallas Gay Alliance.
Mica England got a lawyer, packed her stuff into a U-Haul and moved to Dallas.
Kay England always wondered if she let her daughter be too much of a tomboy. She tried to
coax her down from her tree forts. She enrolled Mica and younger daughter Denita in
ballet, tap and baton classes.
"Mother had us in all those girlie things," Mica says, "but I never stuck with them. I liked
playing Army."
She liked playing sports, too-soccer, basketball and softball for the Oologah Mustangs. She
had lots of friends, even a steady boyfriend for a while.
"But we'd go to dances," she recalls, "and all my friends would be looking at boys. I'd be
looking at the girls." Those feelings blossomed fully during her junior year in high school.
"People think you must have done something wrong to your kids-that you beat them or
raised them wrong or something. But I don't think so," said Mica's mother.
The distance between Mica England and her family is far greater than the 400 miles from
Dallas to Oologah. She has not been home in a year and a half, nor have her parents visited
her in Dallas in more than two years. The tension, the silences, the confusion continue.
"She probably does need our support," Kay England says quietly.
"Everybody needs their family when they go through something hard. But I don't want to
help her in this. She has been real insensitive to the family, getting us in the public eye."
Kay England is not so sure about all the lawyers and advisers who have surrounded her
daughter. Nor is she sure about all the hoopla, the talk shows, the upcoming segment on
"60 Minutes."
"I kind of think they're all exploiting her, especially this Gay Alliance," she says. "She's lost
her car. She could be going to school or making money. This is mostly for their benefit."
Everyone agrees, especially John Thomas, Waybourn's successor at the Dallas Gay and
Lesbian Alliance.3/4
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Mica Stands Up - and Pays the Price, clipping, May 4, 1992; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1634451/m1/3/?q=%22%22~1: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.