Houston has launched out a biblical regulatory dogma for churches in her city as five pastors recently had their sermons subpoenaed for an investigation by the city.
Even though many religious bodies seem to frown at the development, the city council deemed it a responsibility to guide the churches about what religious believe and dogma is passed to the people.
The genesis of the issue began earlier this year when Houston’s City Council passed the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), which was set out to grant equal rights protections to gay and provide protection against many forms of discrimination, including on the basis of sex or race, received criticism and suspicion that caught the interest of the media, considering the fact that the document was signed by Houston’s first openly gay mayor, Annise Parker.
Religious bodies who frowned at the ordinance wanted to initiate a ballot measure for the ordinance’s repeal in November. For the repeal to be successful, HERO’s opponents will have to collect over 17,000 signatures.
According to the Chronicle (paywall), they congress collected “well more than the minimum number of signatures.” In fact, they collected over 50,000.
After the signatures were taken, the Houston City Attorney , who was appointed by the Gay Mayor discarded many of the 50,000 signatures as invalid,” according to Josh Blackman, Assistant Professor of Law at the South Texas College of Law specializing in constitutional law.
In reaction to the condemnation of the vote, the groups who collected the signatures sued the city. As Media Matters for America puts it, “the lawsuit claims that the City Attorney ‘wrongly determined that they had not gathered enough valid signatures’ to qualify for a vote to repeal HERO.”
Reacting to the lawsuit against them, the city issued subpoenas against five pastors in the Houston area, asking them to turn over “all speeches, presentations, or sermons related to HERO, the Petition, Mayor Annise Parker, homosexuality, or gender identity prepared by, delivered by, revised by, or approved by you or in your possession.” They ordered.
Officials also want to find out if and how pastors might have instructed opponents as New York Magazine’s Kate Zavadski suggested.
“What exactly the pastors said, and what the collectors knew about the rules, is one of the key issues in pending litigation around whether opponents of the law gathered enough signatures for a referendum.”
