Character Trumps Tribe, Part I

The attack on freedom of religion by Houston Mayor Annise Parker brought to mind a point about identity politics. Or, to frame it from a better position, character trumps tribe.


Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his speech on the steps of the Lincoln Monument.
His dream was that we would judge each other by the content of our character,
rather than the color of our skin.

I mentioned last week that, when Annise Parker was running for mayor, she downplayed her connection to the LGBT community. She ran as a sensible businessperson with skills the city needed. And she just happened to be a lesbian, but that didn’t affect her skills. That, however, was a lie to get elected. She did not have adequate skills to overcome her tribal connection.

She has reigned as the first openly homosexual mayor of a major American city. Ah, the glory! And she has used the power of her position, time and again, to press the agenda of her tribe, rather than the overall needs of all the citizens. She may even believe that putting forward her tribal agenda is best for all. But it isn’t. She’s blinded by that overriding agenda.

She can’t see that pressing her agenda at the risk of giving sexual predators legal, unquestioned access to women’s bathrooms is not good for the community as a whole. She can’t even hear the huge outcry from the community who see that obvious danger. And she’s so sure she’s right that she arbitrarily throws out the 55,000 signatures of the people who want to put the question on the ballot. When she’s called on that illegality and must defend her actions in a lawsuit, she uses that opportunity to intimidate churches for speaking on this moral issue.

So, now that we have had a first openly homosexual mayor of a major US city, what do we know? The agenda of the tribe trumps the character of the candidate. Will that always be true? Perhaps not, but she has given us reason to beware. If her actual goal was to move members of her tribe into acceptance among the broader community, she set back that work a generation or more.

We have a similar situation with our first black president. [Style note: I do not know which changing term is best to use for the race previously referred to as black. Referring to it as African-American is inaccurate, since not all Africans are of the black race, nor are all blacks from Africa, nor are all people of that race Americans. So, for simplicity, I use the term black, meaning no disrespect or offense.]

He ran as post-racial. Many people succumbed to that. It’s a positive thing to show what so many of us already felt—race doesn’t matter; character and capability matter. Unfortunately, he was voted in because of his race, regardless of lack of character and capability. And, six years in I think it’s safe to say that his is the most racist administration we have had since Woodrow Wilson (who separated blacks serving in the military and encouraged eugenics that have led to a higher percentage of blacks being aborted than any other race—possibly more being aborted than being born).

Almost immediately after his election, he appointed a racist Attorney General, Eric Holder, who refused to prosecute Black Panthers for voter intimidation, because they were black. And it was his policy that anything racist that blacks do is fair, and only non-blacks will be prosecuted for racist (or perceived racist) offenses. See J. Christian Adams’s book Injustice.

The president has tried to construe disagreement with him and his policies as racism—just as Mayor Parker has tried to construe disagreement with her as being homophobic. He uses his tribalism as a power tool against numerous other segments of the people: Constitution respecters, religious people, people who assert their second amendment rights, people who respect the military….

Now that we have had a first black president, what do we know? The agenda of the tribe trumps the character of the candidate. With blacks, this may set things back even further than you might think. We have the additional data that more than 9 out of 10 blacks voted for this man—because of his race. In other words, we have clear evidence that an overwhelming majority of the black “tribe” identify with the tribal connection more than with the American connection. This is where stereotypes come from—a probable truth. Most of the blacks we meet failed to vote in favor of American freedom and constitution, because they had a chance to vote for someone of their color. Most blacks, we can conclude safely from the overwhelming data, are racist. Tribal.

This means racism is a bigger issue than before the Obama elections. I’m expanding this discussion to “tribalism,” because race isn’t the only group with an agenda. Tribalism isn’t a good thing.

Think back to high school. Your school had a cross-town rival. Were all the people in your school better than all the people in the rival school? No. Was your school better than theirs because you had a better football team? Or even because you had more graduates go on to college? There might be some useful measures, but chances are you rooted for your school team out of loyalty. You went there; you belonged. And that’s all that matters.

But in grown-up world, loyalty by happenstance isn’t a good enough reason for supporting a person or policy.

There’s more to cover here, to fully understand our divisions, and possibly to find some way out. So we’ll continue this in part II.

Houston's Intolerance Problem Is the Mayor

Houston; we have a problem. It’s the mayor, Annise Parker. She’s notable for being the first openly homosexual mayor of a major US city. The thing is, she ran, a known democrat for the nonpartisan position, as a sensible businessperson ready to rein in overspending and implement common-sense policies. She claimed to be able to clean up a number of money mismanagement areas left over from Mayor Bill White—also a democrat who had run as a businessman who cared about money management rather than liberal ideology, but who then went on to mess up the budget and follow liberal ideas like being a sanctuary city for illegal aliens.

Mayor Annise Parker, center
photo found here

So Annise Parker did not run as either a liberal or as a homosexual. In fact, I was not even aware she was a lesbian until the week before the election. And when that information came out, in the context of the rest of the campaign, it didn’t seem relevant. Houstonians didn’t elect a lesbian mayor; they elected the candidate who convinced them she would be most effective for the city.

I live a mile outside the Houston city limits, so I don’t vote in city elections (nor do I have to suffer additional city taxes). While the city leadership affects all of the Greater Houston Area, it’s less relevant when we don’t actually live in the city. There was a Republican opponent (and others), but I don’t remember who. In Houston, as in pretty nearly any urban area, getting the least liberal democrat is about the best you can hope for. So I looked on, hoping she wouldn’t be too bad.

Then, the moment she got elected, the big news was that Houston had shocked the world by not being bigoted against a lesbian in their mayoral election. Hmm. And she has been much better at pushing the LGBT agenda than getting Houston’s fiscal house in order. Practically every time she’s in the news, it has something to do with her lesbianism, rather than her caretaking of the city.

The big one this past several months has been policy purportedly for “fairness” toward transgenders. In June, she pressed a bill through the city council (so, not entirely her fault, but wouldn’t have happened without her pressure) what is referred to as the “bathroom bill.” The city created transgenders as a protected class, and one cannot do anything to “discriminate” against a protected class. In this case, transgenders get to choose which public restroom to use on any given day, depending on which gender they feel like that day. No matter how they may dress, one cannot question whether they’re inappropriately in the wrong restroom.

There’s an ick factor involved in having a six-foot-three obvious male, either dressed as a male or a female, in a women’s restroom. But it’s not so much with transgenders that the public has a problem. It’s sexual predators. No one is allowed to ask, or suspect. So if an obvious male appears in your women’s restroom, you must accept his presence or be subject to prosecution for going against the city ordinance that is intended to prevent transgenders from feeling uncomfortable (regardless of any discomfort they might make you feel). So that tells predators, “You can go into women’s restrooms and prey upon unprotected females, and no one can question your being there.”

The problem was brought before the city council and the mayor. They dismissed it as just more bigotry against LGBTs. That scenario, they claim, might never even happen.

But for some reason the public doesn’t trust them on that. Imagine you’re a dad with a 9-year-old daughter who needs to use the restroom. You let her go in, and you stand outside the door. Then, following her in is a burly, obvious male. What do you do? Follow the guy in and stand guard for your daughter? One thing you don’t do is think, “Oh, the mayor says I shouldn’t worry, so I’m sure my daughter is safe enough. I'd much rather risk my daughter's safety than risk hurting the feelings of a possibly transgender person.” The mayor is expecting the public to go against human nature. But, then, she’s not a father, and neither she nor her “spouse” can ever be.

There was a huge public outcry against the policy. Some 55,000 signatures were collected from the public in a referendum demanding repeal; only 17,269 signatures were required. The Houston City Secretary and staff counted the signatures, and when they got to 19,177, they validated the count without going on, since the threshold had already been surpassed.

But then the mayor decided to look into the validity of the signatures. Among the certified count were enough disqualified signatures (didn’t contain adequate information, or didn’t qualify as city residents) to drop the count to around 15,000. Without counting the additional 30,000+ signatures, the mayor threw out the initiative as invalid. In other words, she acted like a dictator and unlawfully overruled the people with her own dictates. Just like any other petty dictator.

A coalition was formed to sue the mayor over the issue, referred to as Woodfill v. Parker. (Lawyer Jared Woodfill was until recently the Harris County Republican Chair. He's on the legal team for the suit.)

This week the news got out that, in the city’s defense against the lawsuit (using taxpayer dollars), she has subpoenaed certain information from five area pastors. These pastors are NOT part of the lawsuit. They are, however, outspoken opponents of the mayor’s “bathroom bill,” (among 400 or so who took a stand against it) and sometimes against the mayor’s more general LGBT activism.

To be clear, in defense of a lawsuit, one can gather information from many places, including from witnesses that are not part of the lawsuit itself. Her seeking information from these particular pastors is not in itself illegal. But the overly broad request is a bit shocking: "All speeches, presentations, or sermons related to HERO [what the Mayor calls the ordinance], the Petition, Mayor Annise Parker's homosexuality, or gender identity prepared by, delivered by, revised by, or approved by you (the Pastors) or in your possession."

What she wants to know specifically is, did the pastors, or their surrogates under their approval, request that their congregation members sign the petition? She wants to claim that this would disqualify the churches for getting involved in politics.

But that, in itself, is a misunderstanding of political participation. Churches generally (not technically prohibited by the Constitution, but by recent readings of it by SCOTUS) aren’t allowed to choose parties or candidates to support. But issues—particularly issues related to religious beliefs—are always fair game. Always! Putting abortion, or “same-sex marriage,” or various family laws, or prostitution or public nudity, or location of bars, etc., on the ballot does not place those issues out-of-bounds for churches to talk about. That would be an absurd approach to religious freedom.

But absurd is the typical approach of Mayor Annise Parker and others who think they have the only acceptable beliefs—the intolerant.

There are a couple of other absurdities here: the sermons were already offered publicly. And sermons are not necessarily written. This is similar to subpoenas made by the IRS to True the Vote and King Street Patriots—requiring they detail, in writing, every person who spoke and every word spoken at meetings—where people get together to speak their minds—not typically written out, and not expected, in most cases, to be recorded. So, is it because Parker and her people don’t have going-to-church experience? Or is it less about gathering information and more about squelching future speech? As with the IRS, it looks like the latter is intended.

Already she has backed off the original subpoena—because of pressure, and bad press. She claims she wouldn’t have worded it the way her lawyers did. (The broader elements of the subpoena have been changed to more specifics, but the subpoenas are still in process.)

She’s still defending her behavior:

·        Forcing the “bathroom bill” on the people of Houston (and anyone who works there or visits and might need a public restroom).

·        Illegally throwing out the validated signatures expressing of will of the people.

·        Defending her position, using taxpayer dollars, against the people’s will, by attacking pastors in their churches.

So, while she isn’t, at this point, “monitoring” churches to make sure they don’t say anything she doesn’t like, we can probably assume she’s bigoted enough against religious people (or anyone who disagrees with her) to quash religious speech is she could. Ironically, she does it in the name of tolerance.