Texas Special Session

Here in Texas, the legislature meets mid-January to early June every other year, so we finished up last month. But the Governor can call the legislature back any time for a limited time. Usually this happens shortly after the end of the regular session, when the governor wanted something to happen that didn’t happen during the session. That’s the case now.

Governor Abbott has scheduled the special session to begin July 18^th, and he has listed twenty items for the legislature to deal with. That’s a lot of items. Among them are some bigger priorities. (The full list can be found here.) 

There’s a main reason that these things didn’t get handled in the special session: Speaker of the House Joe Strauss is not on the same side as Governor Abbott. He’s the same party. But the way the speaker is chosen now is slanted toward the liberal side, at least when the Republicans are in power.

The speaker comes from the majority party, but the Democrats in the House will support whichever candidate is most aligned with them. So the speaker gets 100% of the Democrat vote. Then the speaker just needs a relatively small percentage of Republicans.

He can totally ignore the strong conservative masses that have elected Republicans to every statewide office, and a robust majority in the House; he can curry favor with the more “moderate,” i.e., less conservative, House members, offer them their choice of committees and chairmanships, and he locks up the vote. And he’ll get some of the conservative votes too, because anyone who opposes him gets relegated to committees where they can do the least good for their constituents.

So, until we figure out a way to have Republicans do the electing of the House Speaker (as in the US House, where a caucus of each party chooses a speaker, and the one chosen by the majority party wins—so the minority party doesn’t do the choosing), we’re stuck with this roadblock to important legislation.

This past Saturday at the local Tea Party meeting, we heard from State Senator Paul Bettencourt and State Representative Mike Schofield, to talk about the upcoming special session.

Senator Paul Bettencourt

Sen. Bettencourt says there are three possibilities for how the session will go:

1)      The legislature will pass the sunset legislation and go home.

2)      The legislature will pass sunset plus a few items, but leave the big ones undone.

3)      The legislature will handle pretty much the whole list.

The sunset bill is to keep some state agencies from shutting down; it’s assumed to be necessary.

Option 1 would start a House meltdown. There are risks to failing to do what they’re supposed to do. If they do the bare minimum and vote to go home, that will lead to a roll call vote. That puts everyone on record as going against the Governor or not. It won’t go well for them at re-election time if they claim to be conservative but flout the governor’s agenda. Option 2 would be minimal, but still might lead to yet another special session.

There are three main issues among those twenty items:

·         Property tax relief.

·         School choice.

·         Privacy protection.

Property Tax Relief

The bills are not always written the same as for the regular session; sometimes we’ll get something that considers what failed in the regular session, but sometimes we’ll get something better.

Senator Bettencourt has been working for property tax reform. During the session he was asking for a cap of 3% plus inflation; during the special session the cap is lowered to 1% plus inflation. And in the special session he’ll only need 16 or 30 senators to pass it, (50% plus 1) instead of 20 (2/3 of the Senate).

There’s a swath of the state from Dallas-Ft. Worth to San Antonio (not including Austin, this time) with ridiculous property tax hikes. The current cap has been a percentage of home value plus inflation plus economic growth. Since the term “economic growth” is unmeasurable and totally meaningless, caps have been meaningless.

Chip and Joanna Gaines, of HGTV's Fixer Upper
image from here

Senator Bettencourt gave an example of why a real cap is needed. You know the HGTV show Fixer-Upper, with Chip and Joanna Gaines, of Waco, Texas? They take the worst house in the best neighborhood, and they turn it into the buyers’ dream home, right? Well, bureaucrats who assess property values have been following the show and purposely reassessing the value of the fixed-up homes. Homes have had as high as 1000% increases in their property taxes.

People are being punished for using their resources to make their homes nicer to live in; they’re being taxed for creativity and hard work. Those obscene property tax increases can put the cost of living in a house beyond the budget of those buyers—who were making a positive contribution to their neighborhood. That’s not the Texas way.

School Choice

Neither Senator Bettencourt and Representative Schofield were optimistic about school choice—even though they both favor the Educational Savings Account idea. Rep. Schofield says, “There’s too much fear of competition.” That’s fear among teachers unions—which have much more interest in wages for their union members that in education for children. 

We don’t know yet how the bills will read exactly, but the likelihood is that the ESA bill will be aimed at special needs students. While I’d prefer more market forces in every aspect of education, it’s tough to argue against meeting the needs of special needs students at lower cost per student. [Among several PragerU videos on school choice, is "Why Special Needs Students Want School Choice."]

The way it is working in Arizona, the family of the student is given a sum that is something like 90% of the cost of educating that student. It can be used only for education purposes (sort of like how a health savings account is used only for healthcare purposes), but the parents get to decide what is best for their child.

This is different from a voucher, which is a ticket, essentially, that can be spent as a whole at one alternative education place, such as a private school. The ESA can be used in part for a chosen form of therapy, in part for a tutor, in part for a block of a school week at a public or private school, or in part for homeschool curriculum—or any combination.

As they start looking for options, the market responds. And the market always eventually responds with better quality and lower prices.

If the family gets their student’s needs met without spending all the money in a given year, that money stays in the account for use in a later year, when maybe a more expensive program might be needed. If the money doesn’t get spent by high school graduation, the student can use it toward higher education. 

The program is optional, so no students would be forced into it. Any family can choose to stay in public school.

So ESAs are a win-win for special ed students and their families, and for school districts, which have trouble meeting the needs of these students anyway. And that 10% that the family doesn’t get stays in the school budget.

But the public school monolith sees it as the camel’s nose under the tent. If that camel is competition, then it is just barely the nose, but wouldn’t it be great if we had that whole camel in the education tent?

They absolutely don’t want competition. They want a public school monopoly, subsidized by people so frustrated that they pay out of pocket to meet their children’s needs elsewhere.

Opponents are misnaming the ESA option, lumping it in with vouchers, a term that causes a knee-jerk reaction in educators who get their information mainly from their unions.

Anyone who really knows about ESAs would likely vote for this bill, but fear of the overbearing unions will probably block it this time, leaving the special ed students with their critical needs unmet.

Privacy

The third big issue, privacy, is what we sometimes refer to as the bathroom bill, and which the media mischaracterizes as transphobic.

As Rep. Schofield said, “We didn’t make an issue of it; Anise Parker did.” Transgendered people have been quietly using whatever restroom made them comfortable, from the invention of public restrooms up until 2015, when Houston’s mayor decided to make it an issue by forcing it on the city—including not just public city buildings, but private business properties. She tried to thwart the will of the people by throwing out their petitions, and she really stepped over the line when she tried to subpoena every speech or communication given by churches, so she could search through them for things she might find objectionable.

image found here

Once the courts slapped her down—several times—the people got their say, and this very urban, majority-liberal city, which had twice elected a lesbian mayor, soundly voted against her proposal.

Then Obama got on the bandwagon and decided, by fiat, to force a private space rule on the whole country. To be clear, he said high schools (and of course other facilities with locker rooms, bathrooms, or dressing rooms) must, because of his insistence only, allow any anatomical male who wants to say he is a female (for any purpose—can’t be questioned for actual intent; and note that a male claiming to be transgendered to female is still likely to be sexually attracted to females) to shower naked in front of and with female high school students. No regard for the discomfort this would cause high school girls or their parents would be considered. End of subject. Anyone who objects would be labeled a bigoted, transphobic troglodyte who should be publicly shamed, fired, and never allowed to work or function in society again.

Compromises, such as private showers or bathrooms for transgendered students, were dismissed as insensitive to the transgendered—meanwhile, overruled as not worth considering are the sensitivities of the 99.7% majority.

Obama’s overreaching executive order has been repealed, but many school districts and businesses around the country have kept the rule change to appear “tolerant.” That is why Texas is taking the step of protecting citizens by returning to separate gender private spaces as a rule of law.

I think the bill will pass, because this is Texas, and we don’t like fools telling us we have no right to privacy in our private places. If Strauss fails to bring it for a vote again, it will mean coming back for another special session.

During this special session, expect the media to do its thing against anything good for freedom, prosperity, and civilization. But, if the people send their support to their representatives in Austin, we might get the work done that should have already gotten done.

Identity

Earlier this month I read an essay by Robert George, “Transgenderism,'Marriage Equality,' and Liberalism’s Tragic Error”—an excerpt from his recent book Conscience and Its Enemies. It’s philosophical, but I think it’s relevant to issues we’re dealing with. Issues we shouldn’t, if we’re sane, have to be dealing with, but here we are.

The essence of the essay is that there are two warring beliefs about who we are as humans: we are either mental energy in a random physical body—George refers to this as “nonbodily persons inhabiting nonpersonal bodies,”—or we are made up of a mind and body together, “a dynamic unity: a personal body, a bodily self.”

The difference is important, he says, because, “Whether in the courts, on campus, or at boardroom tables, it significantly shapes the expressive individualism and social liberalism that are dominant among elites.”

Christianity in general has rejected the nonbodily identity, in a similar way that Aristotle veered from Plato on the issue. As George continues:

The living body, far from being our external instrument, is part of our personal reality. So while it cannot exist apart from the soul—which is its substantial form—the body is not inferior. It shares in our personal dignity. The idea of the soul as the substantial form of the body is orthodox Christianity’s alternative to the heretical conception of the soul as a “ghost in the machine.” One can separate living body from soul in analysis but not in fact; we are body-soul composites.

My religion has something specific to say on this as well: we are who we are from before being born in a body; gaining a body is progress in becoming more like our Father in Heaven. This is the second paragraph of “The Family: A Proclamation to the World”:

All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.

George’s piece is about the liberal elite view of marriage—based on what the mind wants to create and be, rather than what is biological or real. He is a mentor of Ryan Anderson, and one of the best minds on marriage today.

But I’m going to use these ideas to talk about a different letter of the LBGT etc. alphabet: the T.

found here

It is my belief that we are in this life who we were when Heavenly Father created our spirits, and this included our maleness or femaleness. It’s not a matter of which body we got randomly put into. It is part of who we have always been and who we will always be. God does not mistakenly put us into the wrong body.

That means that, if a person thinks they are a gender other than what they biologically and to the core of their soul are, then they have a mental problem, accurately called gender confusion.

It is not possible to change gender. Gender comes up in every cell of the body. Genetically a person will continue to have a Y chromosome or not. What can be done is chemical and surgical mutilation of a body that will continue to have in all its cells that Y chromosome or not.

With that reality in place, the question becomes, how do we treat people who claim to be a different gender than they are?

The human dignity answer is, treat them with kindness and dignity, but as who they really are when confronted. This would include allowing them the same natural rights as the rest of us, but ends at creating special rights that encourage their delusion or negatively affect the natural rights of the rest of us.

It could include better mental health science and research to help them in whatever way will lead away from self-harm and toward a fully functional human life of contribution and joy.

However, the politically dictated answer is, we go along with their delusion, no matter how that inconveniences the rest of us, and no matter how harmful to the gender confused person.

As I mentioned earlier this month, adults who have gone through surgical and hormonal reassignment suffer 20 times greater rates of suicide than those who don’t undergo a chemical and/or surgical change. Wouldn’t it be kinder—healthier for the gender confused person—to treat the mental illness, to help them come to terms with reality, rather than to indulge their delusion?

The American College of Pediatricians recently called it child abuse to submit children to gender reassignment, since 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty. Isn’t it kinder to deal with the child’s confusion as an error that can be corrected, rather than indulge the error and deepen the damage that could otherwise have self-corrected?

So, let’s start the “bathroom” question with the assumption that accepting the delusion is more damaging and less kind than indulging it.

We dealt with the bathroom question this past year in Houston. To remind you, the lesbian then-mayor of Houston had pushed through an ordinance, purportedly for “equal rights,” that imposed a demand on all places with public restrooms or locker rooms to allow self-identified transgendered people to use their choice of facilities. The people immediately gathered signatures to put the issue before the people on the ballot to repeal the bill. Mayor Anise Parker illegally threw out the signatures, but was overruled by the courts. She tried to intimidate local pastors by demanding copies, transcripts, and recordings of their sermons and communications so she could look for words against her agenda. Again the courts slapped her down. In November the issue was put before the people and her bill was repealed, in part because it was successfully accurately renamed “the bathroom bill,” rather than “equal rights.”

People in a liberal city that had already twice reelected a homosexual mayor did not want to force all businesses and public places to force women and girls to share intimate places such as bathrooms—and even more shockingly gym locker rooms--with “self-identified transgendered” men.

The worry has not been about transgendered people, who are not only rare, but are not necessarily sexual predators (are probably not—although they are likely to still be attracted to the actual opposite sex, whom they’re sharing these private places with). It is that there is no way to identify the difference, and it takes away the rights of women and girls to feel safe. The law should not label a woman as a bigoted lawbreaker because as a punishment for feeling uncomfortable or threatened by a man. It should be obvious that is an infringement of her rights, and a loss of her freedom—as well as for those who care about the endangered women and girls.

In locker rooms, where private parts are more likely to be exposed, women—and particularly minors in schools—absolutely should not be exposed to the naked opposite-sex body and have no privacy from that person. Many of us thought the most traumatic part of going to junior high was being forced to shower and change in front of others of the same sex. (I’m told guys never had this same issue, but I’m telling you it was a normal fear and feeling among females.) A person who feels such natural modesty should not be told they’re the mentally ill ones, while the gender confused or the blatantly lying predator is protected.

We will not eradicate gender confusion, any more than we’re likely to eradicate depression, schizophrenia, or other mental illnesses. While we can work toward treatment, we meanwhile want to live kindly among suffering people.

We’ve actually been dealing with “transgendered” men in women’s restrooms for a long time. If they are serious about looking like the opposite sex, mostly they have been tolerated in the opposite-sex restroom, without a law. And good parents have been taking precautions in all restrooms all along: women take young boys in the women’s restroom with them. Once their boys are too old to do that, the mom waits just outside, within hearing range, and makes sure not too much time has passed. And boys have been taught how to avoid predators in those spaces. It’s not as ideal as being able to magically identify all predators and quarantine them, but failing that it has sufficed.

But females are more vulnerable, biologically, to sexual predators. It makes no sense to increase the vulnerability and then to shame them for noticing.

It seems like a parallel universe, that we are needing to discuss this obvious truth: men and women are different, and being separate in intimately private settings is respectful and important for safety. But a decade or two ago it was unthinkable that we would redefine marriage as something in which maleness and femaleness was irrelevant.

The “nonbodily persons inhabiting nonpersonal bodies” believers have the media megaphone. They are shoving their ideologies down our throats. But we don’t have to swallow.

The Emperor's New Clothes
illustration found here

If we don’t speak up wherever we can, we lose our freedoms. We need more of the honest child who stands up and says, “The Emperor has no clothes!” In the Hans Christian Anderson story, once the child spoke the words, everybody else gave up their pretense and embraced the truth. We need that to happen.

Haters

I came across this post a few days ago on Facebook:

When a person chooses hate, it is difficult to turn around and choose not to hate. Hate is not always the label they would choose for the emotion they put out. Usually, it is more as if they feel that they are right, no matter what.

OK. Basically I agree with that. But this particular statement is more than just a bit ironic. Here’s some background.

Several months ago, ahead of the November election, I posted my ballot recommendations, as I usually do. Unlike most of my posts, these occasional ones are meant for local/state friends that are looking at the same ballot I am and want more information before they vote. In this post I included a short section about the Houston mayoral race. I’m just outside the city of Houston, so I didn’t delve into the race, but I did point out some basic information:

 photo from David Bro/Zuma Press/Newscom,found here

The mayor, as well as city council races are non-partisan. That is, the candidates don’t run from a party, with a primary putting up a chosen candidate. The candidates themselves, however, generally have a strong party affiliation. And Houston hasn’t had a Republican mayor since 1938[i]….

Then we got Mayor Anise Parker, who ran as a businesswoman. She sounded sensible. You’re supposed to vote for the best person. I don’t vote in Houston city elections, but she seemed reasonable, and I wasn’t against her. As soon as she was elected, the news announced how remarkable it was that a lesbian had been elected.

During her campaign her sexual orientation had not been an issue. Suddenly it was. And she conducted her administration as an activist for homosexuality. HERO (the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance), Prop 1 on the city ballot, is an example—which you must vote AGAINST if you're in Houston; it adds no equal rights protections to anyone, but does take away the right to believe women and children are put at risk if men are allowed in their bathrooms. If you followed that issue, you know Mayor Parker threw out tens of thousands of signatures intended to put it on the ballot, rather than just going along with her. And she subpoenaed pastors for their sermons and communications to see if they said anything about LGBT issues. She was legally slapped down for that.

So now, maybe it’s time to forget about who appears to be the best person, cross off everyone that is a Democrat, a liberal, or a progressive (or any other code word). And from whomever is left, find the best conservative and vote for that person.

That commentary was a trigger. Was I wrong to say we shouldn’t vote for that sort of leadership? The writer of the anti-hate words I quoted above thinks so. Disapproval came as a late-night Facebook attack, even though he had known me since my teenage years—and had not that long ago told me I was one of the kindest, sweetest people he remembered from high school. Suddenly I was one of the most hateful people he’d ever encountered. “So much hate,” and “homophobia,” and “How is this not defending hate?”

What had I done to deserve that epithet? Only write the above portion of a story on local politics—which I had posted where he could go read them, but I had not invited him to do so.

Family and friends messaged me and said to block the jerk (worse word was used). I disengaged, went to bed, and didn’t block him until I saw that he had gone on through hours of the night, and still tried to bait me the afternoon of the next day.

Because I’m hateful? For not approving of the former mayor of Houston’s illegal attack on local churches and anyone who disagreed with her?

A reasonable person would see that, in actual fact, I didn’t say anything anti-gay or hateful; I noted that the former mayor was elected even though she was a lesbian, because people didn’t care about that if she was going to be a good mayor. But she wasn’t a good mayor. And she betrayed the people who voted for her by using her platform as mayor to favor a segment of the population and attacking people who disagreed.

Writers get this kind of attack. Why bother about this one? Only to illustrate about the definition of hate that is being forced on reasonable people. Truth and people who speak truth are attacked louder and louder as haters.

Matt Walsh summed up the situation earlier this week:

But it’s one thing to fail in your pursuit of holiness, and it’s another to call holiness ”hateful.” It’s one thing to sin, it’s another to say that sinning is not sinful. It’s one thing to disobey the Commandments, it’s another to categorically reject the authority of the Commandments. It’s one thing to crawl back to God and beg for forgiveness, it’s another to stand there and say you don’t need forgiveness because God was wrong when he called your sin a sin. It’s one thing to follow Christian teachings imperfectly, it’s another to loudly denounce them. It’s one thing to fall short of the faith, it’s another to change the faith to suit you.

He was speaking at Catholic University on religious liberty. One would think that would be a safe place to speak on such a topic. But, it’s a university, not the safest place for free speech these days, maybe especially religious free speech. Walsh talks about the Q&A afterward:

Nobody shouted or heckled during my speech, which was nice, but the Q&A afterwards was mostly dominated by one student after another fishing for applause by calmly explaining why I’m a mean, hateful bigot, and so forth. I argued with as many of them as I could before they kicked us out of the room, then I stood in the hallway and argued for another hour.

Most of the kids offended by my arguments and my very presence were upset that I don’t believe in “marriage equality.” Some said they agreed with me but believe my approach is hateful. The word hate was tossed around quite a bit. My words are hateful, my ideas are hateful, my beliefs are hateful. Everything is hateful. Except for a crowd of people pointing at me and calling me hateful. They’re not hateful, remember. Just me.

Yes, there’s the irony.

There’s been a lot of that hate word in the news lately. North Carolina’s HB2 bill was similar to Houston’s anti-HERO fight. The bill intended to keep things the way they had been since about the time public restrooms were invented, a month after the Charlotte City Council imposed transgendered bathrooms on people there.

In Washington State female victims of sexual abuse are speaking out against a transgender bathroom policy there. They’re getting called hateful, but the people who disregard their realistic fears are supposedly the caring, open-minded, tolerant ones.

Are their fears realistic? These incidents lead to a yes:

·         A sexual predator in Toronto was jailed after claiming to be “transgender” as a ruse to assault women in a shelter.

·         In southern California, a perpetrator dressed as a women, spent two hours in a women’s restroom to video women going to the bathroom before being caught.

·         A man who had victimized grade school girls was caught in a women’s changing room where girls were changing into swim suits. He was caught in similar acts two years later.

·         A man put on a bra and wig to spy on women in a community college women’s bathroom. This was not his first voyeurism incident.

·         A self-identified transgender boy dressed as a girl, and insisted on accommodations by the school district, including using the girls’ locker room.

·         A 24-year-old transgender male youth minister is guilty of dozens of counts of sexual abuse of a 9-year-old girl.

·         A man was arrested for multiple counts of indecent exposure was dressed as a woman in the women’s section of a Walmart.

·         A prisoner guilty of second-degree murder and beating up women decided he was a woman during his 28-year sentence and has been paroled.

·         A 6’3” 280-lb. martial arts expert decided he was transgender. A woman questioned his presence in a women’s bathroom and he knocked out five of her teeth.

·         A man was caught twice on voyeurism charges in a women’s bathroom of a public library.

These last eight are among many more compiled on a 23-minute video. There are plenty of examples, not for the squeamish.

“Transgendered” individuals are an extremely small subset of society—an estimated 3 per 1000, while women who are victims of sexual predators in their lifetime are estimated to be about 20%, and those who feel uncomfortable when subjected to possible voyeurism is almost universal. We ought to be able to come up with an agreeable practice that doesn’t ignore the concerns of half of the population and those who care about them. I believe we had one until agenda-driven activists started imposing this unacceptable new LGBT “right.”

The American College of Pediatricians recently called it child abuse to submit children to gender reassignment, since 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty[ii]. Of adults who have gone through surgical and hormonal reassignment suffer 20 times greater rates of suicide than those who don’t undergo a chemical and/or surgical change.[iii]

It is possible, even probable, that “transgenderism” is more accurately a mental illness. It was put like this, by Michael Brown, in an “open letter to Bruce Springsteen,” who has decided to boycott North Carolina over the issue, while not worrying about much greater violence to LGBT people in other parts of the world:

First, how do you know if someone is really “transgender” or not? Is it determined entirely by how they feel about themselves? If so, do you think that it might be hard to make laws based entirely on how people feel? Did you ever stop to consider that?

Second, what’s the difference between someone with “gender dysphoria” (or, as it used to be called, “gender identity disorder”) and someone, say, with schizophrenia or “multiple personality disorder” or some other psychological condition? In other words, if a man is a biological and chromosomal male but believes he is a woman, is he actually a woman, or does he have a psychological disorder?...

Since you don’t like HB2 — indeed, your guitarist called it an “evil virus” — what’s your plan to keep the predators out? How can we tell the difference between a “genuine” transgender person and a sexual predator?

I like his final question to Springsteen—about the irony:

When you booked the concert in Greenboro, the laws in North Carolina were just as they are today: In public facilities, people had to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that corresponded to their biological sex. Why, then, did you agree to come in the first place? Why cancel the concert when things today are just what they were six months ago?

I suggest that the answer is a knee-jerk assumption. By definition, they believe anyone who disagrees with their currently trendy yet ironically illiberal political correctness couldn’t possibly have any motive for their beliefs except hatred and bigotry. And they hate those different believers for it; they will not tolerate opposing beliefs or the people who hold them.

I do not accept their definition of hate.

I can tell I’m not hating. I’m calm; I’m feeling compassion toward all sides. I’ve considered the arguments on all sides and come down where I think God is guiding me to believe, which happens to be also where the scientific evidence is leading.

I think my belief is more compassionate all around. And when I find old friends who believe otherwise, I don’t throw away years of positive interactions to call them hateful sinners. Only the real haters do that.

---

[i] This detail was in error. I had misread some information on Wikipedia. Later I learned that the last Republican mayor of Houston was James Joseph McConn, from 1978 to 1982. My basic point still holds; the city has rarely had a Republican (even a moderate Republican) mayor in its long history.

[ii] American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Arlington, VA, American Psychiatric Association, 2013 (451-459). See page 455 re: rates of persistence of gender dysphoria.

[iii] Dhejne, C, et.al. “Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden.” PLoS ONE, 2011; 6(2). Affiliation: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Division of Psychiatry, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. Accessed 3.20.16 from http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885.

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.