LA City Council debates historic monument designation for home of gay rights advocate

A nondescript house in the Westlake neighborhood, lying in the shadow of downtown, is at the center of a heated debate in the Los Angeles City Council about whether or not it should be protected as a historic landmark.

It belonged to Morris Kight, a man many may not have heard of but someone who helped change the course of history for the LGBTQ rights movement.

Adrian Fine is the Senior Director of Advocacy for the Los Angeles Conservancy and is pushing to make the Kight House a protected historic cultural monument.

"While it's a really simple, modest-looking house, it's the place in which people came together," said Fine. "He convened, he organized and a lot of things were born out of this period of time when he was living here from the late 60s to the early, mid-1970s — so things like the Gay Liberation Front. The L.A. Chapter was formed out of this house."

Kight helped launch the Pride parades we see across the country and the world. He was instrumental in creating the world's first Pride parade, which took place in L.A. in 1970, with Christopher Street West, an organization born out of the Stonewall Riots a seminal moment in the gay rights movement. 

Another major achievement for Kight is the creation of what is now known as the Los Angeles LGBT Center, which provides critical resources for the LGBTQ community. 

But Kight's former home is now the subject, of a tense discussion at City Hall. The L.A. Conservancy and AIDS Healthcare Foundation want the council to approve the protected historic designation as a reminder of Kight's legacy. However, Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, a fierce advocate for LGBTQ rights and whose district the house is located in, is questioning whether the home should remain, partially because of the city's housing crisis. The City Council debated this issue in June. 

"My office remains concerned about designating the home on this property, given that it is an unmaintained single-family home in the middle of one of the most densely populated neighborhoods in the city ... where we desperately need housing," said Hernandez. 

One compromise suggested was to preserve the home but allow additional housing to be built on the property. Councilmembers did not reach a resolution during this meeting, instead voting to push the issue to a possible vote in early August. 

For now, the fate of this piece of history remains unresolved.