Mac-Coleman

16 October 2014 –

An Apology Is In Order

I must apologize for my final statement in yesterday’s column about Houston Mayor Annise Parker.  According to the official City of Houston website, she is only fifty-eight years old.  Therefore, she is not an ”Ole Gay Mayor.” 

Yesterday, I explained my view on how we should use personal passion to express our own rights and reasoned tolerance to examine others’ expression of their rights in the public forum.  This helps create a peaceful, ordered society where legitimate rights can be accommodated. 

Today, I want to posit how Mayor Parker’s personal passion for lesbian, gay, bi-and-transgender (LGBT) causes combined with her lack of reasoned tolerance for others’ rights to create an embarrassment for her as the leader of Houston government. 

Personal passion is essential to define and maintain one’s rights in society.  In that vein, I defend Mayor Parker’s constitutional right to say during the city council debate in June that the now-passed, non-discrimination ordinance was a “personal” matter.  This ordinance contains, among other clauses related to sexuality and gender identity, a statement that would allow self-described, transgender men and women to use any public restroom of their choice.  Public expression of support for such radical change in society is Mayor Parker’s right.   

     

But, when the Mayor, the Executive Officer of the City of Houston, publicly declared that her bill was a reflection of her personal mores, she legitimately invited conservative and religious groups to declare not only her bill, but her personally, as morally offensive.  Those are the rules of the game.  Welcome to the fight, Mayor Parker!

Mayor Parker’s second mistake was to not conduct a clear-headed assessment of others’ rights—the First Amendments rights of people and groups whose opinions are diametrically opposed to hers—when she fought to defend her position.  Mayor Parker should have exercised reasoned tolerance by writing her city ordinance with constrained scope and wording.  I would say that Mayor Parker failed to do so.   

She may still have survived the political storm if she had not tried to subpoena Christian pastors’ sermons on homosexuality, gender identity, or the Mayor herself.  Up to that point in this saga, reasoned and tolerant people may have concluded that Mayor Parker was using the political process to encode her passionately-held view of sexuality in a city ordinance.  In return, Christian-based political groups were using the same political process to produce overwhelmingly large petitions to require the ordinance be put on a city-wide referendum.  The political process was playing out with vigor in the public forum.  But, the game changed when the subpoena was issued.    

Many Houstonians are deeply religious Christians.  They hold traditional views of marriage, sexual relations, and public displays of sexuality.  Many believe that God defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman and that sexual activity is sanctioned only within the bounds of that institution.  To them, all sexual activity outside of such a marriage, including homosexual acts, is a sin.  They also see the public use of restrooms by those who aren’t of the same sex as deeply offensive.  Their views are religious tenets of their faith in God.  Expressing such tenets of faith has been and is fully protected by the First Amendment.  This protection has consistently covered public expression as well as sermons and discussions within a religious congregation. 

Mayor Parker either did not understand the universal legitimacy of the religious, speech, and redress of grievances rights in the First Amendment or she allowed her supporters to intolerantly dismiss them.  Either way, the buck stops with her.

Apparently, the Mayor’s supporters wrote, then made public, a subpoena for some of Houston’s more vocal Christian pastors to turn over any sermons dealing with homosexuality, gender identity, or Mayor Parker herself.  Their response to the obviously illegal subpoena went national within hours.  Pastors publicly refused to comply.  Protestors gathered outside city offices.  Pundits had a field day.  Quickly, city attorneys and the Mayor herself backed off; they said that the subpoena’s wording was obviously too “broad.” 

It seems to me that the Mayor’s passion for LGBT causes clouded her and her supporters’ reasoned tolerance of others’ rights of expression.  This has put her into an embarrassing and politically damaging predicament.  What’s worse—or better, depending on your personal beliefs—is that the subpoena may have condemned her pet ordinance to the dustbin of public opinion and her personal credibility to the narrow hallways of her most ardent supporters. 

A lesson learned.