HERO Updates, Notes and News-October 20

Things are definitely heating up on the HERO news front and it came from an unexpected direction. 

The HERO haters filed a lawsuit designed to clean up the mess they made of the signature gathering process and force a repeal vote  that will be heard in state district court January19. 

So with things inexorably creeping toward that date,  all of a sudden we hear over the top headlines coming from the conservative ranks that the city of Houston was 'attacking the religious liberty if Houston pastors'.   

Alvin McEwen of the Holy Bullies And Headless Monsters blog that tracks hypocritical right wing pastors and anti LGBT human rights activity, sent me a link to a Tony Perkins radio show on the topic.  Then FOX Noise, the junior senator from Alberta, and even Greg Abbott jumped into the faux controversy.

What happened was the law firm working pro bono for the city sent a discovery motion asking for all communications related to the failed petition from David Welch, Steve Riggle, Khan Huynh, Magda Hermida, and Hernan Castano.   While that motion may have been  overly broad in asking for the sermons, there is precedent for subpoenaing sermons in a legal investigation. 

While the city later refiled and cleaned up that language in the motion, it was still basic Legal Work 101.

"There's no question, the wording was overly broad. But I also think there was some deliberate misinterpretation on the other side," Mayor Parker said at a press conference Wednesday. "The goal is to find out if there were specific instructions given on how the petitions should be accurately filled out. It's not about, 'What did you preach on last Sunday?'"   

The HERO haters filed a lawsuit.  One  of the consequences of that is when you do, it opens you and your associates to legal scrutiny.   The subpoenas are seeking to gather information about improper church behavior, which is why the wingers are tripping in the first place.

And these conservafools, as usual, overplayed their hand by hating on Mayor Parker and spouting the usual hysterical lies about a HERO ordinance that isn't being implemented yet pending the court case..

Moving on to other topics.  The Houston Black TBLG community is continuing its efforts to handle its business.  There was a another strategy meeting held  October 15 in which this issue was not only discussed, but an upcoming November 22 trans health fair    We also have ongoing efforts to do HERO mythbusting in the Houston African-American community ranks. 

 In addition to continuing the education efforts inside the community, there are also other initiatives we are doing that fall into the Houston Black LGBT Revolution Will Not Be Televised territory, and to enhance their success I can't discuss them in this post.

One thing that is in the works is another sisterhood panel in which Black cis and trans women get together and discuss issues of importance to both groups.   There is still far too much disinformation out there about transgender people in the African-American ranks, and it's feeding into anti-trans animus and hysteria eagerly whipped up by our  sellout  pastors.

The first sisterhood panel back in July was a success, and there will be more of them to come. 

The struggle to keep the HERO continues.