Anisse Parker was elected the first openly gay mayor of Houston, texas on Saturday, December 12th. Her victory comes in a state still mired in a divisive gay rights chasm, which came to bear an overwhelming vote to outlaw gay marriage some four years ago. Still, the victory has ushered in a milestone moment on the path toward national gay rights.

“The fact that an openly gay candidate wins for mayor in the nation’s fourth-largest city, in the South, in Texas, shows that when Americans get to know gay people as people, not as stereotypes, their resistance to treating gay people equally reduces,” said Evan Wolfson, director of Freedom to Marry, which advocates for legalizing gay marriage.

“It’s going to cause a lot of people around the country to take another look,” he said.

Parker won with about 53% of the vote.

“Clearly that has a lot of symbolic importance,” Parker said Sunday. “I didn’t run to be a symbolic mayor, I ran to be mayor of Houston, and my sexual orientation is part of who I am and part of how I presented myself to the voters.”