Over the summer, anti-gay activists attempted to repeal the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance through a public referendum, but failed to gather the needed number of valid signatures to put the non-discrimination ordinance up to a vote. The activists sued the city to force them to in the discovery phase of the case accept the petitions, and in response attorneys working with the city subpoenaed several pastors involved in the anti-gay coalition for communications, including sermons, related to petition-gathering.
This complicated case has sparked an outpouring of outrage from Religious Right activists, even though Houston’s mayor, Annise Parker, has since agreed that the subpoenas were too broad and clarified that they weren’t issued by city attorneys.
Pat Robertson, for his part, is so angry about the subpoenas that on “The 700 Club” today he declared the incident to be one of the worst events in all of American history, one that exposes the “predilections” of the openly gay Parker.
“This lady ran as a moderate or whatever and she was a lesbian but she’s stayed quiet, under wraps so to speak, and now suddenly her predilections are coming forward, and this is one of the most outrageous demands that I have ever heard in any city in the United States in our history,” he said. “They’ve got to stop this thing and this woman has just exceeded any authority of any city official that I have ever heard about in the entire history of the United States of America.”
Robertson qualified that “somebody will say ‘you don’t remember what happened in Plymouth in 1700,’ but right now as far as I’m concerned, modern times, this is the worst I’ve ever heard.”
