The Sky is Falling! The Sky is Falling! And It’s Gay!
Okay, so yesterday the Houston City Council passed the Houston Equal Rights Ordnance (HERO) by a vote of 11 – 6.
The measure bans discrimination based not just on sexual orientation and gender identity but also, as federal laws do, sex, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, age, religion, disability, pregnancy and genetic information, as well as family, marital or military status.
The ordinance applies to businesses that serve the public, private employers, housing, city employment and city contracting. Religious institutions would be exempt. Violators could be fined up to $5,000.
I don’t know why this has the haters upset. After all, they can still discriminate at church.
The reaction from the Bible Thumpers has been delightful. They are going to try to recall the Mayor (remember that she won with 57% of the vote against eight opponents, with one of them spending enough money to burn a wet elephant) and are threatening to let the world know that there are gay people in Houston.
But, one of the cutest is the Texas-based GOPUSA group this morning in their newsletter.
Yes, it’s an AP story copied word for word. The only difference is that they changed the headline from “US Aims to Identify, Promote Historic LGBT Sites” to “Holy Crap, They Have Sex In a Bathhouse!”
I don’t know how the AP will feel about this. I know how I feel. Republicans are lazy, unable to write a sentence, and even less able to research.
Houston: where the only place you can discriminate is church.
Damn, you gotta wonder if the rightwing really thinks these things through.
Laughing out loud.
1To answer your question: no.
2Teh gays are coming! Oh, they’re already here. Nothing to see, folks, just more right wing hysteria and hyperbole. Pfizer loves the nut jobs with every new manufactured crisis to send them scurrying to the medicine cabinet for blood pressure pills and tranquilizers.
3I seem to recall you reporting that if this happened there was some buybull thumper and geebus jumper there who was going to call down fire and brimstone on the whole city.I haven’t heard of any unnatural disasters in that area. Maybe the Big Invisible Sky Boohoo is taking a nap.
4SMH….
http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2014/05/29/3442566/texas-anti-gay-restaurant/
5I lived in Houston in the mid-1970s, and it was one of the gayest places on earth (well, at least in certain neighborhoods, like Westheimer). I guess the fundies (who are no fun) are trying to stop progress.
6JJ, the RWNJs do “research” but the results are already predetermined. Doing the real thing? Hell, their heads would explode.
7I work with a man, who went cube to cube telling people to call councilmen and women to let them know how you do not want gay men in the women’s restroom. That is what he took from this bill. sigh.
8I am reminded that in 2009 something similar was passed by the Salt Lake City city council, an ordinance that banned discrimination against the hiring or selling/leasing of property based of sexual orientation. Now, you would have thought the Mormon Church would have been against such a thing… but they took a somewhat more pragmatic approach, in which they stated their non-opposition based on the position that no one should be denied the right to work, nor the right to have shelter/a home.
Now, if only more churches could learn to swallow their bigotry…
9Although I am glad that Big Earl’s Bait Shop will be fined $5K – I am not sure that it was on many people’s list as a great place to dine, anyway. A bait shop???
10@Cheryl Cox
Glad he has no issue with gay men using the men’s bathroom.
Progress!
11This is something else, that if it were not so sad, it would be hysterical.
I read the story in the local paper this morning, about the passage of the ordinance.
My thoughts were: “so”? (Many Texas cities have similar laws.)
Then I read the “comments”.
Good Lord Above…….the sky is going to fall, and there will be gays in the bathrooms. Hello….. even gay people have to pee.
What I cannot believe….. is the total and complete ignorance of my fellow Houstonians…… when it comes to equal rights….
It’s sad. But predictable. Y’all please get out and vote in November and rid us of this idiocy.
Thanks.
12Ever hear of the “Sutro Baths” they are in …wait for it… San Francisco. Well they are gone now but the ruins are part of a
National Monument. Oops, too late!!
Nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutro_Bathsational
13donquijoterocket,didn’t you hear? All the storming and flooding we had was to forewarn this sinful place! We might get it for forty days and forty nights now!
14Wingnut ‘murrica where thinktanks isn’t a noun,its a whole sentence.
15Meanwhile, at the state level, Texas Republicans are hell-bent on driving another nail in their own coffin. Now if they can only repeal women’s suffrage …
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/29/log-cabin-republicans-texas_n_5411728.html
16Well, if they are taking requests, I would like to nominate the apartment building made famous by the Lawrence v Texas case. You know, the one in which SCOTUS ruled against Texas sodomy laws?
Ladies, if you think Perty has been shining a flashlight on your uterus, you should have seen what Texas did to arrest Lawrence and partner. The cops broke in to their apartment and entered their bedroom to catch them doing the nasty!
So yes, hell, let’s rope off the whole block around that apartment, paint rainbows on the street and have guided tours given by some of our more interesting LGBT residents!
17“Republicans are lazy, unable to write a sentence, and even less able to research.” This statement is so correct.
Examine the accusations of plagiarism against Rand Paul, Herman Cain and the Pokemon poem, and several other recent events. They are too lazy to write their own speeches.
The republicans want to replace the ACA but haven’t written their law, they use ALEX written legislation, they permit lobbyists, and corporations to write legislation for them. They are LAZY.
They complain that they have no time to read laws before voting. They are LAZY.
They are paid the read and write legislation, they can’t, because they are LAZY.
18@ Merdie R #14- No, I make a conscious attempt to be as little aware of doings in Texas as I can. I was stationed at Ft. Hood on my return from Asia and didn’t lose a thing in the state worth going back for. Besides how do you know it’s not a delayed reaction to the prayer meetings to break your drought? The Big Invisible Sky Boohoo waking from its nap and taking a look at its to do list? Closest I get is I now have a keep Austin Weird bumper sticker on my vehicle.
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