Forced Participation by LGBT Lost and Rights of Conscience Won in Houston

The people of Houston spoke loud and clear Tuesday, November 3, 2015, that they want the right of conscience, religious liberty and no special rights for sexual orientation gender identity including men in women’s restrooms. “Failing to pass the Houston Equal Rights Protection Ordinance (HERO) came as a blow to LGBT (lesbian gay bisexual transgender) advocates, who have won recent victories at the U.S. Supreme Court and beyond,” reported the Daily Signal.

While being outspent 4 to 1, pro-family forces for Biblical justice including the Campaign for Houston, Texas Values, the Houston Area Pastor Council, Black pastors PACs including two Baptist ones and a Church of God in Christ one, local Hispanic pastors networks, the United States Hispanic Action Network and the National Black Robe Regiment to name a few, mobilized the grassroots through churches, social media, Christian and secular media and door to door. It was a grassroots effort unlike the top-down effort by the Human Rights Campaign (the largest homosexual advocacy group in America) run out of the Houston Mayor’s office with national figures like President Barack Obama, Secretary Hillary Clinton and Sally Fields endorsing the LGBT side. The grassroots, armed with the truth, won.

Last year when openly lesbian Houston Mayor Annise Parker threw out the lawful petitions gathered by churches to put HERO on the ballot that would have allowed the people to decide and then her city attorneys subpoenaed the sermons and private communications of 5 of the most outspoken pastors opposing HERO, she woke up a sleeping giant—not just in Houston but across the nation.

They picked the wrong state to force the issue into the courts because Texas judges are elected by the people. The Texas Supreme Court ultimately ruled in the pastors’ favor putting HERO on the ballot and letting the nation see where the values of ordinary people in Houston stand.

The pro-lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender side tried to deceive the people by saying the ordinance was about helping veterans and against racial discrimination. They were hiding the fact that these anti-religious-liberty city ordinances have been used across the nation as a legal hammer to force bakers, florists and photographers who hold Biblical values into participating in their same-sex marriage ceremonies. It is forced participation and coercion by the intolerant LGBT proponents of tolerance who are the real bullies in city after city. They have no room for the first freedom that the Founding Fathers advocated for—the right of conscience.

What Houston proved is that when given the facts and the right to vote, the people still hold basic American values including the right of conscience, religious freedom and the right of free speech.

The Human Rights Campaign will fight on, focusing on unelected judges in court, where they win more than on the ballot, where they lose. It’s a wake-up call to every city that mayoral/city council and school board elections are where the real battle for our freedoms is taking place. Those elections matter.