Top lawman in Texas ready to lasso lesbian mayor?
Pastor who had sermons subpoenaed takes fight to city hall
Pastors in a coalition fighting a Houston ordinance granting transgender “rights” are asking city residents to rally at city hall Wednesday to urge the mayor to put the issue up for a vote.
And they are calling for an investigation of city hall’s actions in the dispute, which included negating an apparently valid petition effort against the ordinance and subpoenaing the sermons of five area pastors in a subsequent lawsuit against the city.
“There is a growing call for the attorney general of Texas to investigate this,” said Steve Riggle senior pastor of Grace Community Church and one of the five ministers who received a subpoena.
He told WND, “That [call] is going to get louder and louder.”
“No one in America should be able to steal an election,” he said.
Riggle said the city interfered with the process, which should have included an election, resulting in the loss of the peoples’ right to seek justice from their government.
The Houston Area Pastor Council has announced a “Let the people vote!” rally at city hall Wednesday at 11 a.m.
“The ‘Houston 5′ as well as other pastoral leaders of the No UNequal Rights Coalition invite elected officials and all concerned citizens to gather and call on Mayor Annise Parker to abide by the law,” said the statement.
WND broke the story several weeks ago of the city’s subpoenas to the “Houston 5″ pastors for copies of their sermons and other communications with their congregations regarding homosexual rights or the mayor. Amid a nationwide backlash, city officials later withdrew the subpoenas.
Parker, a lesbian, has described the fight over the ordinance as “personal,” according to a report.
The dispute arose earlier this year when the city adopted a “nondiscrimination” ordinance recognizing transgender rights in the city over the opposition of multiple groups. Critics then organized and collected some 55,000 signatures to force either a repeal or a vote.
The city secretary stopped counting at about 19,000, affirming that the threshold of some 17,000 signatures had been met. But the city attorney stepped in and imposed several requirements, which opponents said were not in the city charter, and threw out most of the signatures. In response, opponents filed suit. The city then issued the subpoenas as part of the discovery process leading up to a January trial.
Riggle told WND the goal of the coming rally is to send a message to Parker.
“The message is let the people vote,” he said. “The petition signatures are valid. The city attorney has come up with a suggested set of qualifiers that are not in the Houston city charter, and so by all rights, this issue should have been on the ballot (Tuesday).”
He said several court proceedings are advancing, but the issue should have been on the ballot for Houston residents to decide.
The new rally comes just days after the I Stand Sunday rally for supporters at Riggle’s church.
A report on the meeting said: “The Alamo may be the site of Texans’ most famous stand – but it wasn’t the site of their last. … The proud state is fighting another invasion – this time, of religious intolerance. … Thousands of people pack[ed] the pews of Grace Community Church from all 50 states.”
The report said the message from Houston churches was, “Don’t mess with the pulpits of America.”
WND reported supporters of the subpoenaed pastors told Parker her decision to withdraw the subpeonas wasn’t enough.
“The fact that two straight weeks of a national firestorm ignited by these subpoenas finally drove Mayor Parker to grudgingly claim she is withdrawing them is little comfort to those of us who have had our First Amendment rights assaulted by her legal team,” said a statement issued by the pastors a week ago.
“If and when she withdraws these subpoenas does nothing to mitigate their willingness to trash the Constitution for her own agenda and covering up her crime of stealing our right to vote,” the statement said.
The pastors said the subpoenas were a distraction from the main issue, which is that City Attorney David Feldman “simply fabricated a non-existent standard to intentionally invalidate 2,750 petitions, over half of the total, and torpedo the referendum.”
“We were not intimidated by the subpoenas, we were not distracted by them from the main point and we will not be deterred until the voting rights of Houston citizens are restored either by the Texas courts or the mayor deciding to just obey the law.”
WND reported Parker’s statement of intent to withdraw the subpoenas.
She explained at a news conference that she was “directing the city legal department to withdraw the subpoenas issued to the five Houston pastors who delivered the petitions, the anti-HERO petitions, to the city of Houston an who indicated that they were responsible for the overall petition effort.”
The Alliance Defending Freedom, which has represented the pastors, affirmed the withdrawal of the subpoenas.
Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley said: “The mayor really had no choice but to withdraw these subpoenas, which should never have been served in the first place. The entire nation – voices from every point of the spectrum left to right – recognize the city’s action as a gross abuse of power. We are gratified that the First Amendment rights of the pastors have triumphed over government overreach and intimidation. The First Amendment protects the right of pastors to be free from government intimidation and coercion of this sort.”
He continued: “But the subpoenas were only one element of this disgraceful episode. The scandal began with another abuse of power when the city of Houston arbitrarily threw out the valid signatures of thousands of voters. The city did this all because it is bent on pushing through its deeply unpopular ordinance at any cost.
“The subpoena threat has been withdrawn but the mayor and the city should now do the right thing and allow the people of the Houston to decide whether to repeal the ordinance.”
WND reported the city’s attorneys were insisting the plaintiffs had no claim because their petition was never “validated.”
The argument, however, contradicts the sworn testimony of the city secretary, who has the authority to validate the signatures and determined the petition drive met the minimum requirement.
The city’s brief to the state Supreme Court containing the argument was filed by attorney Lynne Liberato.
After the city adopted the ordinance in May, the signatures were gathered, and the city secretary affirmed the minimum number had been obtained. But the city attorney then stepped in and invalidated most of the signatures.
The opponents filed suit, and a trial was set for January. In the discovery process, the mayor issued subpoenas for any statements, emails or “sermons” on the issue from five local pastors who were members of a coalition opposing the ordinance but not part of the lawsuit. In the uproar that followed, the city changed the word “sermons” to “speeches,” but attorneys for the ministers said it really made no difference.
The coalition asked the state Supreme Court to step in and order the city to follow its charter, which specifies that ordinances opposed by a certain number of residents shall be halted.
But in arguing now that the state Supreme Court should keep out of the case, the city said that “because the city secretary did not validate the referendum petition, the second step of the referendum processes – the city council’s ‘immediate’ reconsideration of the ordinance or popular vote – was never triggered.”
The city’s lawyers argued the city charter “does not require respondents to act, immediately or otherwise, on an unsuccessful referendum petition.”
However, the city secretary, Anna Russell, who has served Houston for more than four decades, was asked by plaintiffs’ attorney Andy Taylor in a deposition about validation of the signatures.
Russell had explained it was her understanding “that the [city] charter provides that the city secretary determine the number of qualified voters who sign the petition.”
Taylor then asked: “And based on that understanding, you did that; and the result of your work was that 17,846 signatures had been validated. And that was more than the minimum number necessary, correct?”
“That’s correct,” she replied
WND also reported a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights wrote to Parker, urging her to back down from her demand for copies of pastors “speeches.”
“I write to express my concern regarding subpoenas requesting extensive information from pastors who are involved in the Equal Rights Ordinance Referendum,” wrote Commissioner Peter Kirsanow. “These discovery requests threaten to have a chilling effect on religious and political speech that is protected by the First Amendment.”
WND reported Rush Limbaugh, America’s top-rated radio host, described Parker’s actions as “vile.”
“I think what that mayor in Houston has done may be one of the most vile, filthy, blatant violations of the Constitution that I have seen,” Limbaugh said Wednesday on his national broadcast.
“And I, for the life of me, cannot figure out why law authorities are not pursuing this. I cannot understand it.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/11/top-lawman-in-texas-ready-to-lasso-lesbian-mayor/#UvzE0ItOytvfV4q7.99