Houston voters repeal gay rights ordinance

It was a year ago that the Houston City Council, with the backing of lesbian Democrat Mayor Annise Parker, decided that private businesses owned by Christians had no rights, nor did women who preferred to feel confident that those they might encounter in public restrooms who looked like women actually were. Last night, in a demonstration that normal people have not traveled as far down the lunatic track as politicians, Houston voters repealed this nonsense:

The ordinance would ban discrimination in city employment and city services, city contracts, public accommodations, private employment and housing based on criteria including an individual's sexual orientation and gender identity. The political wrangling over the measure had gone on for more than a year. Some conservative Christians saw it as an attack on their religious liberties. Backers of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community said it reflected the values of a modern and multicultural city and was needed to stamp out bigotry. Many opponents focused on a small part of the ordinance that they said concerned the use of public bathrooms by transgender men and women. They also said it could allow for sexual predators in public restrooms. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, a Tea Party Republican, said in an advertisement opposed to HERO: "It's about allowing men into women’s locker rooms and bathrooms. No woman should have to share a public locker room or restroom with a man." Mayor Parker said after the vote, HERO's defeat may have stained the city's reputation.

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That's a cheap line that supporters of these ordinances always use. Why, if we don't have this gay rights law, we might have a reputation as haters! Oh? And where might people get that idea? They only get it because they hear it from the very people who claim to be concerned about it. It's the same tactic that was used in Indiana when that state briefly had the guts to pass a Religious Freedom Restoration Act, only to have its own business leaders - terrified of gay activists - shriek that the state would now become known as a bunch of haters. What they really meant is that activists who specialize in leveling that accusation would be sure to do so, and that Chamber of Commerce types would rather appease them than defend the state for respecting the rights anyone other than those favored by the activists. At any rate, opponents of the Houston gay rights ordinance focused on a measure in the now-repealed law that would allow "transgender" people (i.e., dudes in skirts) to use the rest rooms of the gender they wanted to pretend they were rather than of the gender they actually were. As far as the left is concerned, if you decide you want to be a woman, you are one. The liberal media painted those who had a problem with this as some sort of wild-eyed nutcases, which I guess tells you how far we've fallen culturally. If men want to dress up as women and use the ladies' room, and you have a problem with that, you're crazy. OK. Houston voters disagreed. And yet Houston voters elected the lunatics who passed this ordinance in the first place. Maybe they need to give that some thought the next time they elect city leaders, so they don't have to keep going back to the polls to repeal the insanity put in place by the people they elect. It might help.