Dallas News. He was 74.Maison, who was also the longest-serving former president and CEO of AIDS Services of Dallas, was a civil rights lawyer in the 1970s and ’80s who represented LGBTQ+ Texans fighting for fair treatment.Originally from Michigan, Maison moved to Dallas after dropping out of a seminary school in Illinois.
After realizing civil rights and social justice was his true calling, Maison obtained his law degree at St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio and moved back to Dallas in the mid-1970s.Once in Dallas, he joined the growing LGBTQ+ rights movement and represented those, much like himself, who were targeted by police because of their sexuality.
In 1980, Maison was the top legal defender of gay men arrested for "public lewdness" in a police sting the previous year at Village Station.
While at the helm of AIDS Services of Dallas, Maison took a rundown property and transformed it into viable housing for hundreds of men, women, and children living with HIV.