Mayor Annise Parker
With local pastors standing with her, Mayor Annise Parker has told the City Legal Department to withdraw the subpoenas filed against five local pastors who have identified themselves as the leaders of the petition drive to repeal the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO).
“This is an issue that has weighed heavily on my mind for the last two weeks,” said Mayor Parker. “Protecting the HERO from being repealed is important to Houston, but I also understand the concerns of the religious community regarding the subpoenas. After two meetings yesterday, I decided that withdrawing the subpoenas is the right thing to do. It addresses the concerns of ministers across the country who viewed the move as overreaching. It is also the right move for our city.
In a breakfast meeting yesterday, Mayor Parker met with local Pastors Rudy Rasmus, Jim Herrington and Chris Seay. She had a second meeting later in the day with National Clergy Council President Rob Schenck, Reverend Pat Mahoney of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Pastor Myle Crowder from Utah, Pastor David Anderson from Florida, Pastor Sean Sloan from Arkansas and two others.
“These pastors came to me for civil discussions about the issues,” said Parker. They came without political agendas, without hate in their hearts and without any desire to debate the merits of the HERO. They simply wanted to express their passionate and very sincere concerns about the subpoenas. The second meeting group wasn’t from Houston, but they took the Houston approach of civil discourse in presenting their case. We gained an understanding of each other’s positions.”
Thousands of the signatures submitted with the HERO petition failed to meet one or more of the requirements mandated by the City Charter and had to be disregarded. As a result, the petition was not placed on the ballot for voter consideration. HERO opponents have filed suit against the city in an effort to reverse this decision and force the issue to a vote.
Mayor Parker reiterated that this has always been about proving that the petition process used by the five pastors who identified themselves as the organizers of the effort did not meet the requirements of the City Charter. “That got lost in the national debate over the subpoenas,” said Parker. “Today’s move refocuses the discussion and allows us to move forward.”
The lawsuit is scheduled for trial in January.
There was a story in the paper on Tuesday about the meeting Mayor Parker had with these visiting preachers. I didn’t see any evidence of good faith on their part, but I suppose the Mayor did. When I saw this press release my first reaction was that it would not buy any goodwill from the HERO haters. I was right.
The move is in the best interest of Houston, she said, and is not an admission that the requests were in any way illegal or intruded on religious liberties. “I didn’t do this to satisfy them,” Parker said of critics. “I did it because it was not serving Houston.”
Regardless, the mayor’s critics were not quieted. Grace Community Church pastor Steve Riggle, who was among the subpoenaed pastors, said, “If the mayor thought the subpoenas were wrong, she would have pulled them immediately, not waited until she was forced to by national outrage.”
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The plaintiffs’ attorney, Andy Taylor, called Parker’s announcement a “head fake,” and challenged her to not only pull down the subpoenas, but to drop the city’s defense of the lawsuit and put the ordinance to a vote.
“The truth is, she’s using this litigation to try to squelch the voting rights of over a million well-intentioned voters here in the city of Houston,” Taylor said. “It’s very simple why we filed a lawsuit: Because they won’t do what the city constitutional charter requires them to do.”
Plaintiff and conservative activist Jared Woodfill said he was glad the subpoenas were dropped, but he and others said a planned protest rally Sunday at Riggle’s church will proceed.
Quelle surprise. I personally would have said that if you want the subpoenas dropped, there’s an easy way to make that happen: Drop the lawsuit to force a referendum to repeal the Equal Rights Ordinance. No lawsuit, no need for subpoenas of any kind. Instead, I’ll make a prediction that not only will this unilateral action fail to satisfy the bigots, it won’t stop them from claiming that Mayor Parker is continuing to oppress them even though they got exactly what they were demanding. What will you bet that at least one speaker at that rally says something like that? Or that nobody bothers to tell those people sending all those bibles that they can stop now? Why let an inconvenient fact ruin a good victimization tale, especially one with such good fundraising potential? Yeah, I’m not thrilled with this decision – I’d at least have told the preachers to read David Gushee’s new book first – but it is what it is. For everyone else, let me recommend LGBT Positive Impact Day as an appropriate way to respond. Lone Star Q and Hair Balls have more.
