Meanwhile, here in Texas...

[Lou]

...Houston mayor Annise Parker (through the agency of the city attorneys) has issued subpoenas for the written or recorded sermons of several of the city's pastors who had spoken out publicly against the controversial Houston Equal Rights Ordinance:

[ET]

Probably needing to know who to send to "re-education" camps like the baker in Colorado or the folks running an inn up in the Northeast, to mention but a couple of recent examples.

[Dave Roberts]

The mayor here seems badly out of line and ready to be slapped by the courts. If he wants to read my sermons, he is welcome. They are televised every week anyway. Maybe he will learn something about the First Amendment.

[Tim Bonney]

[Dave Roberts]

There seems to be more to the story that five of the churches are in a lawsuit against the mayor and city attorney. The demand for documents seems to be related to the defense of the suit. Sermons are public speech, and I doubt they are protected. I do doubt that the private communications asked will be provided.

[Lou]

[William Thornton]

This should be fun to watch.

[Tim Bonney]

[Sandy]

It seems that there's a bit more to this than just a liberal lesbian mayor picking on pastors for preaching against equal rights. The pastors whose sermons were specifically requested are all involved in a lawsuit against the city as a result of this ordinance. My guess is that anything they say from the pulpit can be used as evidence in the lawsuit, which is why they received a subpoena.

Of course, the extremist right is going to couch this as a first amendment issue, even though a subpoena doesn't violate anyone's rights. I'd guess the city's attorneys are combing those sermons for anything that was said which will nullify their lawsuit, or which can be used as evidence.

[Tim Bonney]

[Lou]

Interesting development: Today, Mayor Parker expressed surprise that attorneys doing (pro bono) work for the city had subpoenaed the sermons of the ministers involved, and also expressed agreement with the 1st Amendment concerns raised by those subpoenas:



But yesterday on Twitter she was defending the use of those subpoenas:



The phrase "throwing under the bus" comes to mind...

[Sandy]

[William Thornton]

SBCs Russell Moore, our point guy on religious liberty hits the softball out of the park (though his title "Houston, We have a constitution" is cornball):



Lest my mod/lib friends offer the usual knee jerk contra Moore, Weldon Gaddy, a prominent mod agrees. Baptist News Global (formerly ABP) story below:



The houston mayor looks very bad in all this.

[Tim Bonney]

This may be one of the few things that many conservative and liberal Christians can get together on. I'd go to jail before I'd violate pastoral confidence for some mayor. Not to mention I'd be on the phone with the ACLU to boot setting up my own lawsuit.

[Lou]

Baptist Standard editor Marv Knox wrote this in his most recent editorial:

"Houston Mayor Annise Parker might be in the running for the next Nobel Peace Prize for accomplishing the seemingly impossible. Her honor’s administration inadvertently gathered fundamentalist and liberal Christians, Muslims and Jews, and even Baha’is and Baptists in one accord. They’re together. Solid. United."

This is a no-brainer. The mayor should instruct the city's attorneys to rescind the subpoenas, dispatch her political janitors to start mopping up the mess, and call it a day.

[Tim Bonney]

[Sandy]

Where's the requirement to disclose confidential information? The subpoenas were issued because the pastors involved filed a lawsuit against the city regarding an ordinance they didn't like. The city has the right to have a judge determine what is admissible as evidence. If the lawsuit goes away, the subpoenas go away. And I don't care if it isn't politically expedient, if these pastors are allowed to bully then we might as well resign ourselves to living in a society where certain people, because of who they are and the influence they wield, are allowed to be above the law.

So if these pastors are allowed to circumvent the law, we need to stop prosecuting Catholic priests for sexual abuse. They shouldn't have their confidence violated, or be subject to subpoenas, either.

[William Thornton]

Sandy, religious freedom and free exercise allows clergy to bully, if you want to call political advocacy that, without being harassed or intimidated by gummit because of the church's political/moral positions. What would your alternative univers look like? Pastors jailed for refusing to cough up sermons in which the state disliked the content?

[Dave Roberts]

I think the city may have had rights to public communications, but the way the mayor went about things was utterly insensitive to First Amendment concerns, politically insensitive, and a stupid PR move.

[KeithE]

I think subpoening sermons is counter First Amendments Rights but is a good one, passed by a 11 to 6 margin. Religious grandstanders show an ugly side when they start nitpicking a law such as this. Exemptions for bonafide private clubs, bonafide religious organizations and curiously government owned facilities are given in Section 17-54. Refer to those exemptions if they do not want to hire an LBGT.

including equal rights for 15 “characteristics” including sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, familial status, marital status, military status, religion, disability, sexual orientation, genetic information, gender identity, or pregnancy.

Wednesday but still may ask for “the focus should be only on communications related to the petitions to overturn the ordinance” which would be wrong headed in my mind. We will see.

While it may seem that a church’s tax exempt status may be in question, I personally believe preachers can and should speak about political issues from the pulpit and elsewhere, recognizing that may be un-Baptist. There is a line where if the primary or substantial purpose of a church institution is political comment, then tax exempt status should be halted - but that can be a close call requiring “judges”. That’s what judges are for, calling the close ones based on motivations/passions. Separation of church and state should not be thought of separation of religious ideas and political ideas (there really cannot be such a line). When a religious “institution” (be it RW or LW) starts being primarily or substantially about politics, it must end its tax exempt status. The whole body of a church’s sermons/communications (not just ones about the political issue at hand) would be required to “judge” the characteristic of the church involved. I thank God that political “institutions” have not been involved in the business of enforcing religious beliefs in this country.

Now we will see if Houston’s conservatives will support the good law or grandstand showing an ugly side.

[KeithE]

[William Thornton]

Odd, hundreds of clergy from churches all across the theological, racial, and cultural spectrum join together on this. Keith sniffs, "grandstanding" and cherry picks a verse he applies to the situation.

Like I said, this is fun to watch.

[KeithE]

[KeithE]

See also the discussions in the SBC Forum .

[Ed Pettibone]

Ed; to no one in particular:

have been too involved with a couple other projects the past week (still am with one) to be up on this topic but browsing the two threads here I can't separate the wheat from the chaff. Does any one have a coherent out side source.

Personally I am not very bent out of shape about the Subpenas per se , until I see how they are used. I do understand the potential for misinterpretation and mishandling of the information. Why else would any pastor want to suppress what they had presented in a public forum. And yes I consider worship services in our church to be public events, aren't they in your church?

What am I missing?