In Houston the Voters are the Real HEROes

Renew America ^ | Nov. 5, 2015 | Tim Dunkin

[Yashcheritsiy]

A rare and wonderful thing happened Tuesday night – voters in Houston, Texas chose common sense over leftist mau-mauing and voted down Proposition 1, dealing the Gaystapo an embarrassing, high-profile defeat. Proposition 1, officially entitled the "Houston Equal Rights Ordinance" (HERO), was the brainchild of Houston's openly lesbian and radically left-wing mayor, Annise Parker. Though it was sold to the citizens of Houston by the Left as an innocuous "anti-discrimination" law, its primary function was to codify special rights for homosexuals and it contained provisions that would have allowed Houston to bully and attack Christian-owned businesses much as has happened already in places like Oregon, New Mexico, and Seattle. The ordinance was originally passed by the Houston city council in May, 2014, but faced numerous legal challenges because of its assault on religious liberty. Eventually, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that the city council either must rescind the ordinance or else put it up for a vote of the people. The council chose to hold a vote, and the results were a resounding rebuke of the gay agenda, with the ordinance failing 62% – 38%.

The Left has fallen all over itself trying to explain why this happened. They point to the (successful) campaign against the ordinance that was based on opposition to one provision that would allow so-called "transgendered" men to use restroom facilities designated for women. However, that was only one part of the overall opposition to the measure. Much more broadly, many Houstonians were rightly concerned about the threat to the religious liberties of business owners in the city. Admittedly, these concerns were not assuaged by Mayor Parker's ham-handed attempt earlier this year to intimidate area pastors by using the police powers of the city to try to force them to hand over their sermon notes so she could monitor (and presumably punish) them for speaking out against the ordinance – a move which blew up in her face and was quickly withdrawn once she started taking too much flak for it. While "no men in women's bathrooms" was one current in the overall flood of opposition to the ordinance, it was certainly not the only factor in play.

As I was reading the news about the ordinance's defeat, something that was said in one article gathered my attention,

"The defeat of the bitterly contested ordinance represents a rare recent win for social and religious conservatives, four months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage."

Let's take a moment to dig into this statement a little. While it is true that social conservatives have been dealt a series of setbacks over the past couple of years, especially in dealing with the imposition of the gay agenda, the sentence above contains the explanation for why this is. Simply put, gay "rights" and the socially liberal agenda in general advance because the courts do an end run around the people and impose them. Gay "marriage" is "settled law" (actually, it's neither) because the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutionally to force the states to accept it. Mind you, 37 of these states had specifically voted against it, only to have the will of the people overturned by unelected left-wing judges. In nearly every case where the people are actually allowed a voice, they vote against the gay agenda.

Which is why the Left hates putting these things up for a vote.

The only reason this win was "rare" was because the opportunities to actually vote on these left-wing agenda items are rare.

This vote is only the latest in a series of clues that suggest that the gay agenda, gay "marriage" and the rest are not actually as popular as the left-wing politicians and their handlers in the media and the various social justice warrior (SJW) pressure groups would have us to believe. Remember that in the lead up to the Supreme Court's imposition of gay "marriage," we were inundated with all kinds of polling that supposedly showed same-sex "marriage" garnering wide support nationwide (in the 60+% range). Remember also that after the Court made its ruling and there was no longer a need to game the polls, support for it suddenly fell back to where it had been a few years before. At the time, I considered it extremely unlikely that the country had gone from opposing gay marriage at the ballot box, often by incredibly wide margins, to suddenly supporting it by wide margins, all in the space of a couple of years. Radical swings in opinion just don't happen like that – and I was right to be skeptical. In 2009, the state supreme court in Iowa forced gay "marriage" off onto the people of that state, and two of the judges who were up for re-election that year were then resoundingly turned out of office because of it. Back in June of this year, while the Supreme Court was busy subverting the Constitution for the sake of the radical gay lobby, a TV station in the Triad area here in North Carolina polled North Carolinians about gay "marriage." The results were basically identical to the results of the vote on Amendment 1 in 2012, which added a ban on gay "marriage" to the state constitution, and which passed 61%-39% – there had basically been no change in opinion, at least in North Carolina. I suspect the same basically holds true in most of the rest of the country.

Simply put, the only reason the Left is winning the culture war is because the courts are handing them their victories. They're not winning because they're putting forward credible or believable arguments and convincing large numbers of Americans to see things their way.

Annise Parker, Houston's radical nutso mayor, isn't taking this defeat at the polls lying down. Rather than accepting the will of the people, she's playing the typical left-wing sore loser and scathing the people of Houston, issuing dire warnings of economic catastrophe, which she apparently believes will be visited upon the city as companies across the nation suddenly avoid Houston because the city doesn't allow gays to bully and terrorize everyone else.

This is extremely unlikely to happen, however, if previous data are any indication. Colorado's Amendment 43, a 2006 "anti-gay" amendment that constitutionally defined marriage as between one man and one woman, led radical gay groups to label Colorado the "Hate State," with all the usual threats to boycott. Colorado ended up doing just fine. The same can be said for other states which passed laws that the gay lobby didn't like. At a corporate level, I'm sure we all remember what a fiasco the Gaystapo's attack on Chik-Fil-A was for them. Millions of people turned out on Chik-Fil-A Appreciation Day in support of religious freedom, while the threatened boycott and protests fizzled out completely. Does anyone remember when Mozilla fired Brendan Eich because he had made some private contributions to groups supporting Proposition 8 in California, thus indicating that he opposed gay "marriage"? That totalitarian act merited Mozilla a loud and angry campaign against their company, with hundreds of thousands of users leaving their signature product Firefox for other web browsers. Despite claims that this had no effect, Firefox's share of the browser market has shrunk considerably.

As such, there simply is little to no evidence that crossing the SJWs and the gay lobby actually does economic damage the offender. On the other hand, being too blatant in pro-gay, pro-SJW bigotry does have negative consequences, as Mozilla found out.

Here's the dirty little secret about the radical Left, the SJWs, the hardcore social "progressives," and the rest – they are in a distinct minority. They make a LOT of noise, and they are very adept at working their way into businesses, universities, and other institutions (a process called "entryism"), but ultimately, they simply do not have the numbers to match their reputation. That's why they rely on the courts. That's why they depend on point-and-screech bullying tactics against individual offenders. That's why they lie all the time about their intentions when they know they wouldn't be able to have their way if they had to compete on a level intellectual playing field. This is why they seek to get control of "chokepoints" like the human resources departments in businesses or chairmanships in university academic departments – by gaining control of these, they can block out wrongthinkers, punish transgressors, and impose their values system, all without having to have large numbers.

Again, on the political level, they've done this with the courts. While conservatives were busy trying to win Congress back, the Left was busy making sure it got its people placed on the federal bench at all levels. Which is why a relative handful of unelected judges can now overturn the wills of millions of American voters.

What are the lessons we can learn from this?

First, the silent majority needs to remain silent no longer. We need to stop merely showing up to vote on election day while doing nothing else. We need to start getting loud, getting in their faces. When the Left tries to bully a business owner, step up to the plate and call them out. Make life difficult for them, just as they're trying to make life difficult for those on our side. Don't allow them to just get away with their violence and threatening – it's time that we start making it clear to the Left that continuing their campaign of bullying, of intimidation, of threats will result in real, and really unpleasant, consequences for them. Band together. When the Left starts trying to isolate and intimidate someone who has drawn their ire, there should be hundreds of thousands or millions or people who will tie up their phone lines, flood their inboxes, camp out in front of their offices (or their homes, if necessary), and do whatever else is necessary to force them to stop.

But the other thing we need to do is to start encouraging legislators in conservative states to start standing up for their rights via nullification and interposition. When you're dealing with unconstitutional federal laws and court rulings, nullification is a perfectly legitimate (and in fact, preferable) way to deal with them. The states should simply stop complying with unconstitutional federal acts. Gay "marriage"? Sorry Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I don't think we'll be recognizing that anymore.

Stop sitting on the sidelines while the gay lobby, the radical Left, and the SJWs are handed gimme victories. It's time to fight them and break them.

[Impy]

So this bitch is term-limited, election for new Mayor in December.

Anyone got the skinny?

[thackney]

She is not eligible for reelection after her 3rd 2 year term.

Either Sylvester Turner and Bill King will elected Mayor in the run-off election December 12, 2015 and sworn into office in January.

http://abc13.com/news/turner-king-headed-for-runoff-for-houston-mayor/1066658/

[tanknetter]

Are the demographic numbers from this vote available somewhere?

I fundamentally disagree with the authors premise that the Left is only winning because of the courts.

They’re winning because they’re able to hold together a pretty ideologically fractured coalition that still has enough cohesion to elect Democrats to office.

When it comes to specific referendum policy votes the Left loses badly because parts of their partisan coalition are able to abandon it to vote true ideology. Prop 8 in California is another good example of this.

[Impy]

So King (R) made the runoff, good. Does he have any chance you think?

He’s a former Mayor of a suburb of Galveston? That’s pretty unusual.

[Inspectorette]

Just because she’s term-limited out, it doesn’t mean she’ll go away. Next, she’ll run for Congress, or for governor of Texas. Hopefully she’ll fade into oblivion like Abortion Barbie, but I wouldn’t bet on it.