Zackary Drucker Instagram – Rest in Power goddess heroine @americannikki ✨Nikki Araguz Loyd✨Your visibility as a trans woman was decades ahead of time. You called out transphobic discrimination with fearless ferocity and your zeal for life is unmatchable. Honoring and loving you today and forever ♾🙏🏼♾ Photos from a boozy night at Club Shine @ Oxwood Inn, Van Nuys CA, January 12, 2016 ♥️ “Araguz Loyd, who was born in California but spent much of her life in Texas, first became prominent in the 1990s, appearing on TV talk shows to discuss being transgender and the fact that she contracted HIV when she was raped as a youth. Her profile became higher in the next century.
After the breakup of her first marriage, to Emilio Delgado, she met Thomas Araguz III, a trucker and volunteer firefighter in the small town of Wharton, Texas. They fell in love quickly and married in 2008, and he soon gave up his trucking job to be a full-time firefighter. Nikki started a magazine in Wharton and ran unsuccessfully for mayor. In 2010, she was widowed when Thomas died fighting a blaze at an egg production plant.
When she tried to claim a portion of his death benefits, his family fought her, claiming she wasn’t really his widow — that their marriage wasn’t valid because she had been assigned male at birth and hadn’t had gender-confirmation surgery by the time of their marriage, although she did shortly afterward. And Texas didn’t recognize same-sex marriages at the time. A Texas judge initially declared the marriage invalid, but after several years of court battles, an appeals court in 2015 ordered the first judge to reverse his ruling.” | Posted on 13/Nov/2019 23:13:28
