HOUSTON: Anti-Gay Pastors Sue Mayor

Via Houston's CBS affiliate:

A group of pastors fighting Houston's equal rights ordinance has filed a lawsuit against Mayor Annise Parker, claiming she tried to deny voters' rights and intimidate clergymen opposing her. The legal action comes at the beginning of what's likely to be a passionate campaign leading up to a referendum on the ordinance in November. "She violated and trampled the voting rights of over a million people in the fourth largest city in the United States of America," said Andy Taylor, the attorney representing the clergymen, at a news conference with his clients. "Are you with me? Can you believe it? Is that what happened?" The clergymen who filed the suit have fought the ordinance from the beginning, focusing on its protections for gay and transgendered people. They're among the leaders of a petition drive that called for a referendum to repeal the ordinance.

Last month the Texas Supreme Court ruled that Houston must either repeal its LGBT rights ordinance or place it to a public vote. Parker has vowed to win at the polls.

RELATED: Next month the above-pictured pastors will take part in an anti-gay forum titled The Texas Response.

Houston Mayor Annise Parker: We'll Take This To The Voters And We'll Win

"Obviously, I am disappointed and believe the court is in error with this eleventh hour ruling in a case that had already been decided by a judge and jury of citizens. Nonetheless, we will proceed with the steps necessary for City Council to consider the issue. At the same time, we are consulting with our outside counsel on any possible available legal actions. Houston’s Equal Rights Ordinance is similar to measures passed by every other major city in the country and by most local corporations. No matter the color of your skin, your age, gender, physical limitations, or sexual orientation, every Houstonian deserves the right to be treated equally. To do otherwise, hurts Houston’s well-known image as a city that is tolerant, accepting, inclusive and embracing of its diversity. Our citizens fully support and understand this and I have never been afraid to take it to the voters. We will win!" - Houston Mayor Annise Parker, via press release.

HOUSTON: LGBT Rights Bill Will Stand

Via the Houston Chronicle:

Opponents of Houston's non-discrimination ordinance failed to gather enough valid signatures to force a repeal referendum, a state district judge ruled Friday, validating city officials' decision to toss out the petition foes submitted last summer. After separate rulings from both a jury and state District Judge Robert Schaffer, attorneys for both sides entered dueling counts of the valid signatures, adding and subtracting voters as Schaffer responded to motions. By early this week, the counts were closer together than ever before, fewer than 1,000 signatures apart. Ultimately, Schaffer on Friday ruled the final count of valid signatures was 16,684, leaving opponents short of the threshold required in the city charter of 17,249 signatures, or 10 percent of the ballots cast in the last mayoral election.

"The jury's verdict and the judge's ruling are a powerful smack-down against the forces of discrimination and intolerance," said Geoffrey Harrison, lead attorney for the city, in a statement. "And maybe, just maybe, they'll reconsider their misguided ways." The law, on hold during trial, is now in effect, according to a city spokeswoman. Mayor Annise Parker released a statement celebrating the verdict. "I would hope that the plaintiffs would not appeal, they lost during a jury trial and today they also lost with the judge's ruling," Parker said. "Now all Houstonians have access to the same protections." But opponents, largely conservative activists and pastors whose objections center on the protections the law extends to gay and transgender residents, say they will appeal the decision. Andy Taylor, attorney for the plaintiffs, said he remains confident they will ultimately take the law to voters.

Stand by for some epic sadz! Read the ruling.

HOUSTON: Jury Rules That LGBT Rights Repeal Petition Signatures Were Forged, But Case Is Far From Over

Via the Houston Chronicle:

The city claimed victory Friday when the jury in the trial surrounding Houston's equal rights ordinance found that the law's opponents submitted a repeal referendum petition that contained forgery and other flaws. However, it issued a series of decisions that were far from a clean sweep for either side. The ruling is not final, and a judge will now consider the jury's findings about the work of more than 100 circulators of the petition that the city rejected last summer, citing overwhelming notary and signature-gatherer errors. District Judge Robert Schaffer was not present for Friday's ruling after nearly six days of jury deliberation. Attorneys on both sides said he will now begin counting which signatures are valid to see if opponents have reached the needed 17,269-signature threshold.

The anti-gay groups supporting the repeal have not yet reacted on Twitter.  Whatever the final outcome, the losing side is expected to appeal.

HOUSTON: Court Case On LGBT Rights Repeal Campaign Begins Today

Two weeks ago Houston Mayor Annise Parker was denied her motion that the trial be decided by a judge. Jury selection begins today:

A jury will be tasked with parsing thousands of pages of signatures during a trial that may last as long as two months. The case boils down to this: Did former City Attorney David Feldman rightly disqualify thousands of petition pages that conservative opponents submitted in an attempt to force a repeal referendum? It's not a trial over the merits of the ordinance, which City Council passed last May, banning discrimination. The law applies to businesses that serve the public, private employers, housing, city employment and city contracting. Religious institutions are exempt. Critics largely take issue with the protections the law extends to gay and transgender residents. In August, they sued the city after their petition to send the ordinance to voters failed. The case will touch on other questions, too, including the city's allegations that those gathering signatures knowingly committed fraud and forgery.

The case has become Cause #1 for anti-gay religious and hate groups, who have won several recent battle to repeal local LGBT rights ordinances. LGBT anti-discrimination protections already exist in multiple major Texas cities including Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, El Paso, and San Antonio.

HOUSTON: Ted Cruz Declares Victory

Via Breitbart:

Cruz was a swift and effective leader in the backlash against the subpoenas, which should earn him quite a bit of goodwill from social conservatives in the 2016 presidential primaries, where he's likely to be a contestant. This is especially true given that some of his likely competitors are nervous about getting drawn into the gay marriage debate, or any of its peripheral controversies. And yet, the big-picture significance of Subpoena-geddon seems completely lost on the Beltway crowd, which treated the whole story as a tiny background hiss in the cacophony of 2014 midterm election coverage.

Cruz sent the below clip to be played at Sunday's hate rally.  According to the Washington Post, the clip is a "victory lap" in celebration of his "big win" over Mayor Annise Parker.

Tony Perkins: Our Houston Hate Rally Was "High-Water Mark For FRC"

"If the Mayor thought pulling the subpoenas would take some of the heat off, she quickly discovered that it only exposed the real controversy -- which was invalidating the referendum to begin with. In the fierce back and forth over the measure, Parker said the bill was 'personal.' What she didn’t realize was how personally Houston would take it. And Sunday night, in a crowd that crossed every possible gender, racial, and ethnic line, they showed it. From across Texas and around the nation, people showed how hungry they are for a cultural and spiritual revival in America. Pastors traveled from around the nation to show their support for the 'Houston 5' whose rights were trampled under the foot of the government charged with protecting them. As far as I’m concerned, I Stand Sunday was a high-water mark for FRC, an unprecedented moment as Christians came together to stand for religious freedom in America. I pray that God will take what was done and use it to ignite the hearts of His people to transform the nation." - Hate group leader Tony Perkins, via press release.

Perkins: Houston's Hate Rally Gives Hope To Anti-Gays Causes Around The World

HOUSTON: Hate Rally Claims 6000 Attended, 700 Churches Simulcast Event

Via the Moonie Times:

Thousands showed their support Sunday the five Houston pastors who drew national attention for challenging the city’s now-withdrawn effort to subpoena their sermons. I Stand Sunday, a combination church service and religious-freedom rally, drew an estimated 6,000 congregants to hear a high-profile line-up of speakers at Grace Community Church in Houston. The two-hour event was simulcast to nearly 700 churches and 3,000 home groups. While the pastors were the focus, speakers warned that the Houston subpoenas represent only the latest example of a growing threat to religious liberty in the United States. “This was never really about subpoenas, it was not about sermons or speeches. This was about political intimidation,” said Family Research Council president Tony Perkins. “It was about trying to silence the voices of the churches and the pastors.”

Seen At The Houston Hate Rally

(Tipped by JMG reader Str8 Grandmother)

LIVE VIDEO: Houston Hate Rally

The Family Research Council's "I Stand Sunday" hate rally against Houston's LGBT rights law and Mayor Annise Parker begins at 7PM Eastern time at the Grace Community megachurch, whose largest hall seats 10,000. As you can see by the list above, the evening will provide a cavalcade of crackpottery. LGBT activists are encourage to take part in the already underway hijacking of the event's live Twitter hashtag at #IStandSunday. Feel free to use any of the above images by Memeographs. The first clip below is their press conference, which is live at this writing. The second clip should go live just before the event begins.

Memo To Liberty Counsel's Matt Barber: This Is What Extremism Looks Like

Barber: Lesbian Extremist Mayor Must Go

"Should we make an example of her? Absolutely. I was born in Waco, Texas, and lived in Houston, so I’ve got a dog in this hunt. Really, we all do. Houston Mayor Annise Parker has disqualified herself from the privilege of serving the people of south Texas. She must either resign, effective immediately, or Houstonians should begin, without delay, the process of recalling her from office. Strike while the iron’s hot, I say, and right now it’s glowing cultural Marxist red. Parker has been caught, cold, with her hand in the totalitarian cookie jar. She has, on multiple counts, betrayed her oath of office. She’s put her own radical self-interests above the best interests of her constituents and has all but spit on the very U.S. Constitution she’s sworn to uphold. This woman (I’m loath to lend her credibility by calling her 'Madam Mayor') has revealed herself to be a single-issue-driven sexual extremist with zero regard for the rule of law." - Hate group leader Matt Barber, who recently ran a column from an extremist who calls for executing all homosexuals.

GetEQUAL To Protest Houston Hate Rally

Via press release:

Tonight, outside a gathering of right-wing radicals seeking to overturn Houston's Equal Rights Ordinance, local activists and organizers with GetEQUAL Texas will extend a message of love, welcome, and inclusion for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) individuals. In response to the hateful and mean-spirited "I Stand Sunday" event taking place Sunday night, local LGBTQ and allied individuals will stand outside the event with lighted panels reading "Stand For Love" -- an effort to counter the message of exclusion from the Family Research Council and other groups. Houston's Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) has come under fire from conservatives, despite having broad local support and broad national support for efforts to extend non-discrimination protections to LGBTQ residents.

Facebook event page.

Don't Mess With Texas By Crying Over Subpoenas After Filing Anti-Gay Lawsuits

Fox News crackpot Todd Starnes is in Houston for tonight's big anti-gay hate rally. The event will be live-streamed and I'll post the video just before 7PM eastern.

Perkins: Annise Parker Is A Totalitarian

"It may be Halloween, but even Mayor Annise Parker can’t mask her real agenda. The Houston leader couldn’t have been clearer yesterday that while she may have withdrawn the churches’ subpoenas, she has no intention of withdrawing from the battle over fundamental democracy. Remember, this whole saga began when the Mayor pushed a bad special rights ordinance, which morphed into a voting rights violation when she discarded over 30,000 signed citizen petitions. From there, it mushroomed into an attack on the First Amendment, and pastors started to challenge her totalitarian rule. While we’d like to think yesterday’s move was the result of the Mayor’s changed heart, it’s more likely the result of overwhelming public pressure. No doubt the Mayor would like the national scrutiny to go away, but as long as she continues to use her power to intimidate voters, the spotlight will remain." - Hate group leader Tony Perkins, via press release.

Pat Robertson: God Might Destroy Houston Because Of Mayor Annise Parker

Brian Tashman writes at Right Wing Watch:

Last week, Pat Robertson reacted to a case in Houston in which a group of pastors were subpoenaed as part of the discovery process in a lawsuit over the city’s nondiscrimination ordinance by calling gay rights advocates “terrorists.” The subpoenas have since been withdrawn, but that has done nothing to rein in Robertson, who warned today on “The 700 Club” that Houston could be punished just like the biblical city of Gibeah was when it defended what he calls a group of “militant homosexuals”…who raped a woman. Robertson suggested that Houston might face fate similar to that of the Benjaminites of Gibeah: “Benjamin had been annihilated. They had killed all the women, they had killed a good portion of the fighting men, they burned a number of their cities, it was a complete mess. Why? Because they had defended these rapist homosexuals. Is that a message for Houston? For someplace else in America?”

FRC: Houston's Mayor Only Rescinded Subpoenas To Hurt Hate Rally Attendance

HOUSTON: Mayor Annise Parker Says She'll Withdraw Subpoenas Of Pastors

Via the Houston Chronicle:

The City of Houston will withdraw its controversial subpoenas of five pastors tied to a lawsuit over the city's equal rights ordinance, Mayor Annise Parker announced at a news conference Wednesday. The announcement came amid a national firestorm about the subpoenas, which have prompted outrage among Christian conservatives. Parker said two meetings yesterday, one with local pastors and another with national clergy, persuaded her to pull the subpoenas altogether. "The goal of the subpoenas is to defend against the lawsuit and not to provoke a public debate," Parker said. She is ordering the subpoenas removed for the sake of Houston, not because the request were in any way illegal or intended to intrude on religious liberties, Parker said. "I didn't do this to satisfy them," Parker said of critics. "I did it because it was not serving Houston."

Hate groups are already celebrating. From Tony Perkins:

Standing together across the nation, Christians have sent a strong message to Mayor Parker. While we are encouraged by this evidence that the Mayor is responding to pressure and withdrawing her unconstitutional subpoenas, this is about far more than subpoenas. As we have stated since the beginning of this intrusion into the private affairs of Houston churches; this is not about subpoenas, this is not about sermons, it is not even about biblical teaching on sexual immorality, it is about political intimidation and the bullying by Mayor Parker that continues.

“Despite the fact that the citizens of Houston gathered over 50,000 signed petitions in 30 days, which is 30,000 more than required by the city charter, the Mayor has refused to allow the people of Houston to vote on her unfair special rights ordinance that discriminates against religious freedom within the city and endangers citizens by declaring that public bathrooms can no longer be limited on the basis of a person’s actual biological sex.“The citizens of Houston have a right to vote, and Mayor Parker has denied them that right. America must see the totalitarianism that accompanies the redefinition of marriage and human sexuality, which results in citizens being denied their most fundamental rights.

Christian groups claim to have deluged Parker's office with hundreds of mailed bibles in the last ten days at the request of Mike Huckabee.

Bryan Fischer Is Mixing Up His Lies

"The openly lesbian mayor of Houston, Annise Parker, has issued subpoenas for 17 different forms of communication, both public and private, from pastors who oppose her 'bathroom bill,' the ordinance that guarantees the right of men to walk in on your daughter while she’s in the shower at the local Y. In the process, she has violated every single right enshrined in the First Amendment. She has violated the right of these pastors to the free exercise of religion, because they are motivated by their sincerely held beliefs about gender differences that come from the Creator God who made us male and female. She has violated their rights to free speech, since she wants to shut them up. She wants to penalize them for speech they have already uttered. In fact, she wants to throw them in jail, because that’s what happens to people who defy subpoenas." - Bryan Fischer, writing for the American Family Association.

OOPSIE: Fischer has apparently forgotten his regular claim that the First Amendment only applies to Congress. From his September 17th column for OneNewsNow:

First, the amendment applies only to Congress. "Congress shall make no law..." No other entity is restrained by the First Amendment. Since the amendment applies only to Congress, it is legally, historically and constitutionally impossible for a state, a county commission, a city council, a school board, a school principal, a school teacher or a student to violate the First Amendment. This is for one simple reason: none of them is Congress. Violating the First Amendment is something only Congress can do.

OOPSIE II: Fischer has also claimed that the First Amendment only applies to Christians. Congress, obviously, includes many non-Christians.

I have contended for years that the First Amendment, as given by the Founders, provides religious liberty protections for Christianity only. Most attorney types, befuddled by years of untethered Supreme Court activism, think it covers any and all religions you can name. The results of this expansive but badly misguided understanding of the First Amendment have not been too costly to this point.