Guest Editorial
BY MATT BARBER | NOVEMBER 12, 2014
Lesbian extremist mayor must go – now
Should we make an example of her?
Absolutely.
I was born in Waco, Texas, and lived in Houston, so I’ve got a dog in this hunt. Really, we all do.
Houston Mayor Annise Parker has disqualified herself from the privilege of serving the people of south Texas. She must either resign, effective immediately, or Houstonians should begin, without delay, the process of recalling her from office. Strike while the iron’s hot, I say, and right now it’s glowing cultural Marxist red.
Parker has been caught, cold, with her hand in the totalitarian cookie jar. She has, on multiple counts, betrayed her oath of office. She’s put her own radical self-interests above the best interests of her constituents and has all but spit on the very U.S. Constitution she’s sworn to uphold.
This woman (I’m loath to lend her credibility by calling her “Madam Mayor”) has revealed herself to be a single-issue-driven sexual extremist with zero regard for the rule of law. While Parker is now backpedaling on her unconstitutional sermon subpoenas faster than a dyslexic cyclist in the Four de Trance, she is, nonetheless, pushing ahead like Lance Armstrong on steroids with her unlawful subversion of Houston’s citizen petition process (arbitrarily tossing out nearly three-quarters of the already validated petition signatures needed to put her utterly insane gender-neutral “bathroom bill” up for a vote by the very people whose privacy it sexually assaults). This single act of political corruption alone has disenfranchised every single Houston resident.
These gross abuses of power have shocked and outraged millions of Americans across the country on every point of the political spectrum. Attorney, best-selling author and columnist David Limbaugh distilled nicely the controversy in an Oct. 16 WND column titled, “Fascist leftists in Houston”:
“There are at least three outrageous things about the Houston city government’s recent actions pushing an ordinance to allow men and women to use each other’s public restrooms,” began Limbaugh. “The first is the substance of the ordinance itself, which allows men and women, irrespective of their biology, to use bathrooms designated for the opposite sex.”
Indeed. As I noted in my own column the very next day, “[B]ecause it’s now illegal to ‘discriminate based on the basis of gender identity’ in Houston, and since it’s the only ‘tolerant’ thing to do, men who sign up for the ever-persecuted ‘LGBT’ class have secured the hard-fought ‘civil right’ to fully expose themselves to, and otherwise ogle, your daughters in the ladies’ room.
“Yay ‘gay rights’!”
Which brings us to Parker’s second offense – another that, despite her having now withdrawn the unlawfully issued sermon subpoenas in a panicked frenzy, remains both unresolved and unpunished.
Continued Limbaugh: “The second outrage is that the city has greatly overreached in subpoenaing the pastors of the city for copies of their sermons and their communications to their congregations to determine whether they have violated this Godforsaken ordinance. Lest you think this was a mistake, the mayor tweeted, ‘If the 5 pastors used pulpits for politics, their sermons are fair game.’”
Sermons are fair game? Uh, actually, no, Mrs. Stalin. In fact, hell no. Despite a bevy of “progressive” rationalizations to the contrary, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
First, notwithstanding the decades of mythical “church-state separation” nonsense spread by the Communist-founded ACLU, there is no legal proscription that would, or even could, prevent pastors from “politicking from the pulpit.” Doing so is their unalienable First Amendment-protected right. These are the issues that belong in the pulpit. This outrageous bathroom bill, and others like it, directly touch and concern matters of faith, morality and culture. Christians didn’t politicize this debate; lefty nut burgers like Annise “I-am-lesbian-hear-me-roar” Parker did.
Furthermore, the 1954 Johnson Amendment, which itself is facially unconstitutional, only presumes to prevent pastors from endorsing or opposing, on behalf of their tax-exempt church, candidates from the pulpit. Nowhere does it even hint at prohibiting them from addressing, opposing, or supporting legislation or ballot initiatives.
Moreover, none of the pastors whose sermons were subpoenaed were even party to the lawsuit. No reasonable judge or attorney would dream of trying to make a case that anything they ever said or did could, in anyway, be “reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence,” which, as any pre-law student with a pulse can tell you, is a fundamental must.
Finally, and as Limbaugh concludes, “The third outrage is the city’s lawless disqualification and rejection of valid petitions filed by voters to challenge the law. Voters submitted more than three times the legally required number of petition signatures to require city action (17,269 were required, and the voters submitted a whopping 55,000), and the city secretary initially certified them as sufficient in number. But the mayor and city attorney outright rejected the petition anyway, on the specious grounds that the petition signatures weren’t valid.”
This, my friends, is nothing short of fascism – lawlessness. It’s unabashed political corruption, out front and in your face. Forget Parker’s brazen attack on religious liberty and her twisted dudes-in-the-ladies’-shower ordinance. This disgusting abuse of power alone demands she be booted out the door posthaste.
I don’t care whether you’re Republican or Democrat, conservative or “progressive,” this should shock and infuriate you. If Parker’s allowed to get away with this while Democrats are in control, what’s to stop Republicans from doing the same thing when they run the show?
In Thursday’s “Washington Update,” Tony Perkins, president of FRC Action, boiled it down: “With the circus of the subpoenas out of the way, the country can start focusing on the real problem: the sexual tyranny that comes with redefining marriage. As far as the five pastors targeted by Parker are concerned, pulling the subpoenas makes room for the real debate over religious liberty. This week, the five released a joint statement about their intent to fight on. ‘If and when she withdraws these subpoenas does nothing to mitigate her willingness to trash the Constitution for her own agenda and covering up her crime of stealing our right to vote.’
“Their attorney, Andy Taylor, is happy to bring the media’s attention back to the lawsuit at hand. ‘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 pointed out. ‘It’s very simple why we filed a lawsuit: Because they won’t do what the city constitutional charter requires them to do.’”
At some point America is going to have to start pushing back against the rising tide of secular-”progressive” totalitarianism.
Parker’s head’s gotta roll.
Matt Barber is founder and editor-in chief of BarbWire.com. He is an author, columnist, cultural analyst and an attorney concentrating in constitutional law. Having retired as an undefeated heavyweight professional boxer, Matt has taken his fight from the ring to the culture war. (Follow Matt on Twitter: @jmattbarber).
