"" The city of Houston has issued subpoenas
demanding a group of pastors turn over any
sermons dealing with homosexuality, gender
identity or Annise Parker, the city’s first
openly lesbian mayor. And those ministers
who fail to comply could be held in contempt
of court.
“The city’s subpoena of sermons and other
pastoral communications is both needless and
unprecedented,” Alliance Defending Freedom
attorney Christina Holcomb said in a
statement. “The city council and its attorneys
are engaging in an inquisition designed to
stifle any critique of its actions.”
ADF, a nationally-known law firm specializing
in religious liberty cases, is representing five
Houston pastors. They filed a motion in Harris
County court to stop the subpoenas arguing
they are “overbroad, unduly burdensome,
harassing, and vexatious.”
“Political and social commentary is not a
crime,” Holcomb said. “It is protected by the
First Amendment.”
The subpoenas are just the latest twist in an
ongoing saga over the Houston’s new non-
discrimination ordinance. The law, among
other things, would allow men to use the
ladies room and vice versa. The city council
approved the law in June.
The Houston Chronicle reported opponents of
the ordinance launched a petition drive that
generated more than 50,000 signatures – far
more than the 17,269 needed to put a
referendum on the ballot.
However, the city threw out the petition in
August over alleged irregularities.
After opponents of the bathroom bill filed a
lawsuit the city’s attorneys responded by
issuing the subpoenas against the pastors.
The pastors were not part of the lawsuit.
However, they were part of a coalition of some
400 Houston-area churches that opposed the
ordinance. The churches represent a number of
faith groups – from Southern Baptist to non-
denominational.
“City council members are supposed to be
public servants, not ‘Big Brother’ overlords
who will tolerate no dissent or challenge,” said
ADF attorney Erik Stanley. “This is designed
to intimidate pastors.”
Mayor Parker will not explain why she wants
to inspect the sermons. I contacted City Hall
for a comment and received a terse reply from
the mayor’s director of communications.
“We don’t comment on litigation,” said Janice
Evans.
However, ADF attorney Stanley suspects the
mayor wants to publicly shame the ministers.
He said he anticipates they will hold up their
sermons for public scrutiny. In other words –
the city is rummaging for evidence to “out” the
pastors as anti-gay bigots.
Among those slapped with a subpoena is
Steve Riggle, the senior pastor of Grace
Community Church. He was ordered to
produce all speeches and sermons related to
Mayor Annise Parker, homosexuality and
gender identity.
The mega-church pastor was also ordered to
hand over “all communications with members
of your congregation” regarding the non-
discrimination law.
“This is an attempt to chill pastors from
speaking to the cultural issues of the day,”
Riggle told me. “The mayor would like to
silence our voice. She’s a bully.”
Rev. Dave Welch, executive director of the
Texas Pastor Council, also received a
subpoena. He said he will not be intimidated
by the mayor.
“We’re not afraid of this bully,” he said. “We’re
not intimidated at all.”
He accused the city of violating the law with
the subpoenas and vowed to stand firm in the
faith.
“We are not going to yield our First
Amendment rights,” Welch told me. ‘This is
absolutely a complete abuse of authority.”
Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research
Council, said pastors around the nation
should rally around the Houston ministers.
“The state is breaching the wall of separation
between church and state,” Perkins told me.
‘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.”
Perkins called the actions by Houston’s mayor
“obscene” and said they “should not be
tolerated.”
“This is a shot across the bow of the church,”
he said.
This is the moment I wrote about in my book,
“God Less America .” I predicted that the
government would one day try to silence
American pastors. I warned that under the
guise of “tolerance and diversity” elected
officials would attempt to deconstruct
religious liberty.
Sadly, that day arrived sooner than even I
expected.
Tony Perkins is absolutely right. Now is the
time for pastors and people of faith to take a
stand. We must rise up and reject this
despicable strong-arm attack on religious
liberty. We cannot allow ministers to be
intimidated by government thugs.
The pastors I spoke to tell me they will not
comply with the subpoena – putting them at
risk for a “fine or confinement, or both.”
Heaven forbid that should happen. But if it
does, Christians across America should be
willing to descend en masse upon Houston
and join these brave men of God behind bars.
Pastor Welch compared the culture war
skirmish to the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto,
fought in present-day Harris County, Texas. It
was a decisive battle of the Texas Revolution.
“This is the San Jacinto moment for
traditional family,” Welch told me. “This is the
place where we stop the LGBT assault on the
freedom to practice our faith.”
We can no longer remain silent. We must
stand together - because one day – the
government might come for your pastor.""
Link.

I think its all stupid but Aaahhhh hell naw I don't want no men in the lady's restroom peeking in the cracks to see some ***** or even the possiblity of getting sexualy asulted by men in there omg ......f ing dumb azzes

Kinda related....karma's a bitch:


"" A student who was born female felt
perfectly comfortable identifying as a
man at Wellesley College — until people
said he shouldn’t be class diversity
officer because he is now a white male.
Timothy Boatwright was born a girl, and
checked off the “female” box when
applying to the Massachusetts all-
women’s school, according to an article
in the New York Times. But when he got
there, he introduced himself as a
“masculine-of-center genderqueer”
person named “Timothy” (the name he
picked for himself) and asked them to
use male pronouns when referring to him.
And, by all accounts, Boatwright felt
welcome on campus — until the day he
announced that he wanted to run for the
school’s office of multicultural affairs
coordinator, whose job is to promote a
“culture of diversity” on campus.
But some students thought that allowing
Boatwright to have the position would
just perpetuate patriarchy. They were so
opposed, in fact, that when the other
three candidates (all women of color)
dropped out, they started an anonymous
Facebook campaign encouraging people
not to vote at all to keep him from
winning the position.
“I thought he’d do a perfectly fine job,
but it just felt inappropriate to have a
white man there,” the student behind the
so-called “Campaign to Abstain” said.
“It’s not just about that position either,”
the student added. “Having men in
elected leadership positions undermines
the idea of this being a place where
women are the leaders.”
Boatwright told the Times that his high-
school friends knew he was transgender,
but he identified himself as female on the
application to Wellesley because he
didn’t want his mom to know. Of
course, Wellesley is also a female school,
and “it seemed awkward to write an
application essay for a women’s college
on why you were not a woman,” he said.""
Link.

Yeeeeeep tl:dr

I rep that H-town! lol