Asking for Sermon Approval is Wrong No Matter the Religion

The Mayor's Office of Houston, Texas, has recently issued suboenas  asking for copies of any pastor's sermons in which they violate the newly enacted HERO law. Snopes.Com describes it as a mixture of truth in this way:

The measure bans discrimination based not just on sexual orientation and gender identity but also, as federal laws do, sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, religion, disability, pregnancy and genetic information, as well as family, marital or military status.

The ordinance applies to businesses that serve the public, private employers, housing, city employment and city contracting. Religious institutions would be exempt. Violators could be fined up to $5,000.

Opponents of the equal rights ordinance are hoping to force a repeal referendum when they get their day in court in January, claiming City Attorney David Feldman wrongly determined they had not gathered enough valid signatures to qualify for the ballot. City attorneys issued subpoenas during the case's discovery phase, seeking, among other communications, "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."

The issue centers around a subpoena sent to some pastors actively involved in collecting petition signatures against Houston's non-discrimination ordinance. The subpoena asked the religious leaders 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."

Pastors claim it's an overly broad fishing expedition. "The city council and its attorneys are engaging in an inquisition designed to stifle any critique of its actions," said a rep for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal firm. "Political and social commentary is not a crime; it is protected by the First Amendment."

But their complaints make it sound like the pastors are about to be tried for hate speech using the new law, which is far from the case.

[City attorneys] were looking into what instructions pastors gave out to those collecting signatures for a referendum on the non-discrimination law. (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.)

Feldman said the pastors made their sermons relevant to the case by using the pulpit to do political organizing. That included encouraging congregation members to sign petitions and help gather signatures for equal rights ordinance foes, who largely take issue with the rights extended to gay and transgender residents.

"There's no question, the wording was overly broad. But I also think there was some deliberate misinterpretation on the other side," [Houston mayor Annise] Parker said at a press conference. "The goal is to find out if there were specific instructions given on how the petitions should be accurately filled out. It's not about, 'What did you preach on last Sunday?'"

To reiterate: The mayor's office is not interested in what they preached, or how the pastors feel about Parker or her sexual orientation. (Those things are all well protected under the First Amendment, as they should be.) All officials want to know is what kinds of instructions the pastors gave out with respect to collecting petition signatures, and whether what they said agrees with what they're arguing in court while appealing the referendum.

All this presupposes that the information in the subpoenaed sermons really is substantially relevant to a case or an investigation. I don't quite see how "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" would be relevant to the litigation about the validity of the referendum petitions. At the very least, the subpoena seems vastly overbroad. And the fact that it seeks the contents of religious speeches does counsel in favor of making the subpoena as narrow as possible (which would likewise be the case if it sought the contents of political speeches). I'm not sure what sort of legally relevant information might be contained in the subpoenaed sermons. But the subpoena ought to be narrowed to that legally relevant information, not to all things about homosexuality, gender identity, the mayor, or even the petition or the ordinance.

For the churches, the issue of whether those subpoenaed documents could call their tax-exempt status into question also is at stake. Legal and political science experts said it is a politically fraught issue that governments generally have trod carefully, or avoided altogether.

Tax-exempt churches cannot use the pulpit to promote a specific candidate, but can use it as forum to discuss policy, such as the city's equal rights ordinance, Southern Methodist University political science Professor Matthew Wilson said.

"The city was counting on the fact that the distinction would be muddled in the court of public opinion," Wilson said. "It wasn't."

Feldman said the intent behind the subpoena was never to prove the churches were violating the terms of their tax-exempt status, but to produce proof that pastors who organized a petition drive to put a repeal referendum on the ballot knew the city's rigorous charter rules but failed to follow them.

At the crux of opponents' lawsuit is whether Feldman incorrectly invalidated their petitions to force a referendum.

"The fact that you happen to be a pastor and you happen to be at a church doesn't provide you with protection," Feldman said.

The city may have a point, University of Houston law professor Peter Linzer said. While the churches are correct that the original subpoena was too broad, the city likely has a legitimate right to seek communications about what specific petition instructions may have been given out, he said.

The original subpoena requests much more than that, seeking "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."

Much of that request likely would be difficult to obtain, Linzer said, but instructions germane to the case should not be protected.

"When it comes to whether the ballot petition was correctly done, I see no constitutional problem with that," Linzer said. "I do see most of the current subpoena as overly broad."

Mayor Parker agrees with those who are concerned about the city legal department's subpoenas for pastor's sermons. The subpoenas were issued by pro bono attorneys helping the city prepare for the trial regarding the petition to repeal the new Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) in January. Neither the mayor nor City Attorney David Feldman were aware the subpoenas had been issued. Both agree the original documents were overly broad. The city will move to narrow the scope during an upcoming court hearing. Feldman says the focus should be only on communications related to the HERO petition process.

My question is simply this. Where is the ACLU, an agency dedicated to protecting the Bill of Rights? Where are all the free speech advocates and why aren't they going nuts about this? Why is it that if this were Buddhists or Muslims being persecuted, these folks would be going crazy making this the number one story on the nightly news? I encourage interested parties to go to snopes.com and read the entire text. Parts of it I could not cut and paste. 

Why is there this double standard for Christians?

Perhaps the Best Weapon of All.

The repercussions still ripple in Ferguson, MO after the death of Michael Brown. After the media's weak attempt to garner sympathy for the officer by posting a phony photo of the officer having been beaten up (it wasn't the officer), the citizens have continued their protests. But now they will be taking to the polls instead of the streets.

Voter registration is skyrocketing in Ferguson. Anthony Bell, a St. Louis 3rd Ward committeeman, arrived shortly after the shooting and watched Brown's body lay on the street for hours. That's when he decided to begin to actively register voters. And he's not alone. Rita Days, the St. Louis County Director of Elections says that her office has been fielding questions from individuals and groups asking how to register voters. The NAACP's League of Women Voters, as well as sororities and fraternities have taken classes to learn how to register citizens.

In the election coming this fall, the biggest issue will be the race for county executive of St. Louis County between Republican State Rep. Rick Stream, and County Councilman Steve Stenger, a Democrat. However the real impact may not be felt until next spring when three Ferguson City Council seats are up for grabs.

In a town that many still count the days by how many days police officer Darren Wilson remains free since killing Brown, over 8,000 new voters will weigh in in November, and maybe many, many more by next spring. And perhaps a new era can be ushered in without bullets and tear-gas.

And maybe this can be a lesson for the rest of the country. Register. And vote.

Death and guns.

An Oklahoma prosecutor decided last week to go for the death penalty in the recent beheading case there. Good for the prosecutor. But if the perpetrator would have merely shot her, would they be as zealous? I don't know. But I hope we all recognize that a life is a life no matter how it was taken.

And by the way, when the guy started in on his second victim, and the plant manager shot him to stop him, where are all the gun control freaks crying out about how he shouldn't have had a gun at work?

Think about if a teacher at Sandy Hook would have access to a gun. Could kids have been saved? But no. The faculty there were law abiding citizens, and Sandy Hook was a "no gun zone." Once again folks, these people are called criminals because they don't obey the law.

The Supreme Court Does a Side-Step

The conservative Supreme Court last week took a side-step that most didn't see coming. A court that is so eager to give favorable nods to Hobby-Lobby and other conservative issues, got a little faint of heart when it came to the decision of same-sex marriage in the US.

My theory is this: They being certain that this is an issue that is going to happen, the tide is rolling with no end in sight, decided not to betray their conservative brethren and elect to just fail to do their job, and opt for hiding behind some vague States rights idea. They have opted for the decisions in the lower courts to stand.

So without the Supreme Court taking a clear and decisive stand, West Virginia, Virginia North Carolina, South Carolina, Indiana, Wisconsin, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The irony of the fact that all of these states seem to be the bastion of Republicanism does not elude me.

Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia still all ban same-sex marriage as does Alaska, Nevada, Arizona, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska. But several states now are awaiting the rulings of lower courts. These are Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Florida, Texas, Louisiana, and Idaho.

Rather that rule on whether gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry as both proponents and opponents asked them to, the Supreme Court just decided to not decide. How convenient. What a bunch of wimps.

However this Republican majority Court are being clever in a way. They understand that even though it was they who dared not stand up and say "Gay Marriage is Unconstitutional" (because as scholars of the law they know it isn't) they decide to look the other way. All the Republican states that now have to allow gay marriage will resent it. Will they think, "Wow, we were really betrayed by our conservative buddies on the Court"? No. In their typical shallow way they will only remember that it happened in the Obama years.

As they believe as they do of every problem in the world, it's the fault of that uppity President.