Free Republic

The City of Houston will withdraw its controversial subpoenas of five pastors tied to a lawsuit over the city's equal rights ordinance, Mayor Annise Parker announced at a news conference Wednesday. The announcement came amid a national firestorm about the subpoenas, which have prompted outrage among Christian conservatives. Parker said two meetings yesterday, one with local pastors and another with national clergy, persuaded her to pull the subpoenas altogether. The subpoenas are part of a discovery phase in a suit filed by equal rights opponents, who largely take issue with the rights the law extends to gay and transgender residents.

Houston announced Wednesday that it will withdraw the subpoenas of sermons from five pastors who publicly opposed an ordinance banning discrimination against gay and transgender residents, The Houston Chronicle reported. "I didn't do this to satisfy them," Mayor Annise Parker said, referring to critics of the subpoenas. "I did it because it was not serving Houston."

Although much has been reported regarding the ethics and legality behind the city of Houston's subpoena of five Houston-area pastors that had asked them to turn over all of their sermons that address homosexuality, gender identity, and the city's first openly-lesbian mayor, little attention has been given to who those five pastors actually are and the ministries they operate.Although those five pastors, Steve Riggle, David Welch, Hernan Castaño, Khanh Huynh and Magda Hermida, were not technically parties of the lawsuit against the city's new equal rights ordinance that sparked the need for the subpoenas, they all participated in the coalition...