Houston Mayor Annise Parker Backs Off Her Attack on Religious Freedom

Attorneys for several Houston pastors are challenging the city’s attempts to subpoena their sermons as part of a lawsuit against the recently passed transgender-rights law, also known as the “bathroom bill,” demanding “all speeches, presentations, or sermons related to HERO, the Petition, Mayor Annise Parker (Houston's first openly lesbian mayor), homosexuality, or gender identity prepared by, delivered by, revised by, or approved by you or in your possession.” The controversial Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, or HERO, approved by the city council in June, was opposed by a citizen petition effort. Following the ordinance’s passage in May, faith leaders decided to collect signatures to get the provision on a November ballot in an effort to strike it down. They ended up with the signatures of 50,000 Houstonians, far more than the 17,269 required. But after the city examined the documentation to see if signatories were Houston residents and had signed relevant pages - requirements for petitioning - they subsequently rejected a substantial number. ~~~~~ After the petitions were rejected, opponents of the ordinance, which forbids businesses open to the public from stopping individuals from using opposite-sex bathrooms if their gender identity doesn’t match their biological sex, filed a lawsuit in August challenging the city attorney’s ruling. The Alliance Defending Freedom senior legal counsel Erik Stanley said the pastors subject to the city’s subpoenas are "not party to the lawsuit.“ Attorney Christiana Holcomb, also of ADF, the law firm representing five of the pastors, told Fox News : "The city's subpoena of sermons and other pastoral communications is both needless and unprecedented. The city council and its attorneys are engaging in an inquisition designed to stifle any critique of its actions." The motion filed in court was an attempt to try to stop the subpoenas, claiming they are "overbroad, unduly burdensome, harassing, and vexatious," and in violation of freedom of speech. Mayor Parker's office has refused to explain why it was requesting the sermons, but an ADF attorney suggested that the city was trying to smear the pastors by searching for evidence that they are bigoted against homosexuals. According to Fox News, ADF attorney Erik Stanley said : "City council members are supposed to be public servants, not 'Big Brother overlords who will tolerate no dissent or challenge. This is designed to intimidate pastors." ~~~~~ Reaction to the subpoenas was swift and severe. Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said in a statement he is "simply stunned by the sheer audacity" of the subpoenas," adding that a government "has no business using subpoena power to intimidate or bully the preaching and instruction of any church, any synagogue, any mosque or any other place of worship. The pastors of Houston should tell the government that they will not trample over consciences, over the First Amendment and over God-given natural rights. The separation of church and state means that we will render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and we will. But the preaching of the church of God does not belong to Caesar, and we will not hand it over to him. Not now. Not ever." The Reverend Dave Welch, executive director of the Texas Pastor Council, told Fox News that he believed the city was breaking the law : "We are not going to yield our First Amendment rights. This is absolutely a complete abuse of authority." Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, called on pastors across the country to rally behind the Houston ministers : "The state is breaching the wall of separation between church and state. Pastors need to step forward and challenge this across the country. I'd like to see literally thousands of pastors after they read this story begin to challenge government authorities - to dare them to come into their churches and demand their sermons." The pastors told Fox News that they do not intend to comply with the subpoena, although failure to comply could result in a "fine or confinement, or both." Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz blasted the subpoenas, calling the move "shocking and shameful. For far too long, the federal government has led an assault against religious liberty, and now, sadly, my hometown of Houston is joining the fight. This is wrong. It's unbefitting of Texans, and it's un-American. The government has no business asking pastors to turn over their sermons." ~~~~~ And the reaction of Mayor Parker and her office to the criticism has been to backpeddle, news that was first revealed by Dave Welch, executive director of the Houston area US Pastor Council and one of the five pastors who received a subpoena. In what appears to be an effort to escape the anger building up in Houston and across America, Parker and the city are now blaming the subpoenas on the law firm they hired, but Welch told The Christian Post : "This was really initiated by Mayor Annise Parker, who is obviously a noted, kind of poster child for the national gay and lesbian movement, proposing this ordinance back in April that was really a massive overreach to begin with, to basically add sexual orientation and gender identity and expression to the city's discrimination ordinance and impose those discrimination protections over the private sector in an unprecedented way," he said. Parker went as far as to call the subpoena “overly broad” during a press conference Wednesday. “But I also think there was some deliberate misinterpretation on the other side,” she added. Parker and Feldman also said that the subpoena wording came from pro bono attorneys handling the case and not directly from the mayor’s office, as some have claimed. Both contend that they found out about the subpoenas this week, though the city attorney had been quoted Tuesday defending the court document. Parker said during a press conference : “Let me just say that one word in a very long legal document which I know nothing about and would never have read and I’m vilified coast to coast. It’s a normal day at the office for me.” ~~~~~ TheBlaze reported that Feldman told Houston TV earlier this week that he believed that the gathering of signatures at local churches against the equal rights ordinances makes examining sermons an appropriate response. “If they choose to do this inside the church, choose to do this from the pulpit, then they open the door to the questions being asked,” he said. Feldman also said on a separate occasion, “If someone is speaking from the pulpit and it’s political speech, then it’s not going to be protected.” But on Wednesday, Feldman said that the word “sermons” was a distraction and that he would not have worded the subpoena in the same way if he had composed it, according to the Houston Chronicle. “It’s unfortunate that it has been construed as some effort to infringe upon religious liberty,” he said. Bur hours before the press conference, Parker used her Twitter account to defend the inclusion of sermons in the subpoena, writing, “If the 5 pastors used pulpits for politics, their sermons are fair game. Were instructions given on filling out anti-HERO petition?” ~~~~~ Dear readers, the First Amendment says : "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." The rights granted by the First Amendment are among those most sacred to the Founders and most protected by the US Supreme Court. To try to restrict the right of Americans' freedom to believe and practice religion as they choose, and to try to suppress that religious freedom by attacking the other great First Amendment right - freedom of speech - is an affront to every American and a challenge to their most revered rights. That the Houston mayor would use the current "hot button" rights of the gay, lesbian and transgender community in such an attack is an indication of her insensitivity to the opinion of the majority of Americans, who are already uneasy and angered by what they see as a degradation of a fundamental Judeo-Christian moral principle in the rush to grant a constitutional right to gay marriage. This bundle of constitutional-religious-social issues is far too important, and too divisive, to be used to push through one municipality's ordinance granting the unfettered use of public toilets. The issues deserve serious, thoughtful debate. They do not deserve being reduced to who uses which restrooms. And, if Mayor Parker wants to know what the pastors sermons contain, perhaps she should go to church -- visit each one on a Sunday morning. It might be a valuable experience for her.