Okay, the religious right has really lost its shit now, more than usual. Here's what happened.
The City Council of Houston has subpeonaed five pastors in the state, demanding that they give to the Council their notes about sermons they dleivered on the topics of "equal rights, civil rights, homosexuality, or gender identity".
Here's why.
Last May, the Houston City Council, by a vote of 11-6, approved an anti-discrimination ordinance. It includes sexual orientation and gender identity, but interestingly, is the first non-discrimination ordinance of the city, period. Before it was passed, there were no protections at the local level, not even for non-LGBT groups like race, religion and biological sex.
Anti-LGBT bigots attempted to challenge the law with a referendum. To do this, they had to collect 17,269 signatures. In July, they presented over 50,000. This was obviously enough, but it was later revealed that most of the signatures had been obtained without adhering to the rules of collecting signatures. These signatures were invalidated, and the referendum effort thus failed.
The bigots filed a lawsuit against the city, demanding that it be placed on the ballot regardless. (They like courts intervening when it suits them.) Now, one of the pre-trial procedures of a civil dispute is discovery. This is the process where if you have evidence that is relevant to the case, you have to give a copy of it to the other party. So the City Council subpoenaed five pastors who had been fighting to repeal the law for their notes about sermons they dleivered on the topics of "equal rights, civil rights, homosexuality, or gender identity". As Carlos Maza at Media Matters explains, this is standard operating procedure.
But continuing in their long and proud history of ignoring facts and getting absolutely hysterical over nothing, the right-wing victim complex Christian conservative crybabies (I love that term) are doing just that: ignoring facts and getting absolutely hysterical over nothing.
From NOM:
The latest news from Houston is downright chilling. Not even our churches themselves are immune from attacks by a government determined to silence the voices standing up for the truth of marriage.
[...]
First of all, let me express both my gratitude and my admiration for the courageous religious leaders who were not only brave enough to preach hard moral truths in a society that is not welcoming of the discomfort they may bring, but also willing to stand up as champions in the face of Caesar's persecution.
Mayor Parker’s inquisition intentionally tramples the First Amendment, violating the most fundamental essence of the separation of church and state that the left claims to champion.
From
FRC:
The jaw-dropping move — one in a long line of Houston’s “gotcha” government — is only fanning the flames of outrage over the city’s totalitarian tactics.
[...]
It’s a sad commentary on our times that a nation founded by church leaders is trying to muscle those same religious voices out of the political process. Obviously, there’s no limit to how low the Left will stoop, and how many laws it will break, to impose its agenda on unwilling Americans.
From
ADF:
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.
From
Todd Starnes:
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.
From
CatholicVote:
To say this reeks of retaliation and intimidation against political opponents is an understatement. That it is being done in the name of equal rights is absurd. Merits or demerits of the ordinance aside, this kind of thuggish abuse of the law is incompatible with the rule of law and poses a threat to every basic civil right—including those Mayor Parker wants to defend.
From the
Australian Christian Lobby:
Tolerance is not a virtue of the purveyors of the sexual revolution. Conformity is their demand.
[...]
The Greens and same-sex marriage lobbyists continually told a recent Senate hearing I was at in Melbourne that same-sex marriage would have no impact on religious freedom.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
What’s happening in Houston is unreal. But as we can see, there are those in Australia who would like to see people who exercise their conscience fall foul of the law.
It’s not too late to protect religious freedom in Australia. But we will need to wake up.
From
Greg Abbott:
Whether you intend it to be or not, your action is a direct assault on the liberty guaranteed by the First Amendment.
ThinkProgress has a
round-up of everything else:
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, was on Fox News last night claiming that Houston Mayor Annise Parker (D) is “taking a bulldozer to that wall of separation [of church and state]” and trying to “dictate what pastors preach.” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) tweeted that the subpoenas constitute a “march against our freedoms.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) called the subpoenas a “grotesque abuse of power.”
[...]
Russell D. Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, similarly called on the pastors to defy the subpoenas because “the preaching of the church of God does not belong to Caesar, and we will not hand it over to him.” A coalition of Baptist organizations has now sent a letter to Parker asking her to acknowledge that the subpoenas are “improper and unwarranted.”
Conservative commentator Erick Erickson took the fear-mongering even farther, claiming that not only is Houston trying to “publicly shame Christian pastors,” but that they’ll also “try to revoke the tax exempt status of churches.” Jody Hice, a Republican congressional candidate in Georgia, took to his radio show Thursday to suggest that Houston “may be actually trying to bring legal charges against these pastors for sharing with their congregants scriptural passages.” Meanwhile, the American Family Association warned its members that if the pastors refuse to comply, Parker has personally “threatened to charge them with contempt of court and possible fines or jail time.”
Okay, a number of things.
1. Anyone who thinks this has anything to do with same-sex marriage is incredibly ignorant. If they don't know it already, 10 seconds of googling "gay marriage texas" would tell them that same-sex marriage is not legal in Texas. (I tried it; it literally took me six-and-a-half seconds.) So how can it have contributed to this in any way?
2. The subpoenas have nothing to do with punishing the pastors. They will face no consequences whatsoever by giving up their sermon notes. The purpose of the subpoenas is not to determine of they should be punished. That's not going to happen. Houston is not allowed to punish them for their speech. Were they to, there would be a big problem. But that is not what is happening here. Just because they got subpoenaed does not mean that the information will be analyzed to determine if they should be punished. (Indeed, if they're so reluctant to say what they're saying in their sermons, then that's a sure sign that what they're saying isn't right.)
3. Those who filed the lawsuit against the ordinance brought this on themselves. Conservative author Joel McDurmon, who opposes the ordinance, explains (emphasis added):
[W]hat happens when you file a lawsuit? You open up yourself and your relevant friends to discovery. Are the correspondences between these pastors and the Christian parties who filed the suit relevant to the case? It is possible that a judge could determine this is the case. That is what this subpoena is about.
4. This is not really an effort pushed by the officials city of Houston. The subpoenas were not prepared by the city itself, but outside lawyers. The city itself did not decide on what exactly should be subpoenaed. Indeed, the city itself has said that it opposes the breadth of the subpoena. From the
Houston Chronicle:
"Though Feldman stood behind the subpoena in an interview Tuesday, he and Parker said during the Mayor's weekly press conference Wednesday that the wording was problematic. Feldman is monitoring the case, he said, but had not seen the subpoena written by outside counsel working pro-bono for the city until this week. Parker said she also did not know about the request until this week. There's no question the wording was overly broad," [Parker] said. "But I also think there was some misinterpretation on the other side."
[...]
"I wouldn't have worded it that way myself," Feldman said of the request. "It's unfortunate that it has been construed as some effort to infringe upon religious beliefs."
At the absolute worst, what has happened here is that lawyers preparing a case on behalf of a client, not in an attempt to deliberately infringe on anyone's rights, but in an attempt to get as much information and evidence as possible, filed an excessively broad subpoena. Then, the client itself came out and said that the lawyers were mistaken to do so.
That's the absolute worst-case scenario.
That's what's feeding this persecution narrative.
When it comes to questions of tolerance and tyranny, how on earth can the religious right even pretend to have any credibility at all?