Houston strikes sermons from subpoena

Houston’s city leaders claim they no longer want pastors’ sermons, but they’re still demanding access to their personal communication.

The city “still doesn’t get it,” said Alliance Defending Freedom’s Erik Stanley, who represents the pastors. The five subpoenaed pastors are part of a group opposing the city in a lawsuit over a petition drive to get an LGBT rights ordinance on the ballot. Changing seven words in four pages of requests does nothing, he told me.

Requesting the court to “overrule any objection” to the “preliminary” revision, lawyers representing Mayor Annise Parker and the city changed the one sentence in the subpoena that included the word “sermons.”

Parker in a statement about the revision remained adamant that the pastors’ actions in the petition drive remain relevant to her case. Parker has faced widespread criticism over the subpoena, with even the progressive Houston Chronicle calling on her to withdraw the request entirely because it appeared to be “intimidation” of her religious and moral opponents.

The edited subpoena leaves 16 different unrevised demands, including documented proof of the petition drive’s finances and any communications surrounding the claim that men can use women’s bathrooms under the disputed ordinance. The subpoena also requests any communication on the general topics of equal rights, civil rights, homosexuality, or gender identity.

With the subpoena’s provided definitions of “documents” and “communications”—which take up nearly one page in their detail—Stanley confirmed that what’s demanded of the pastors really hasn’t changed.

Protesting the subpoenas was never just about the sermon demands, Stanley said. “The problem isn’t just the fact that the subpoenas asked for ‘sermons.’ The problem is that the subpoenas were sent at all to pastors who were simply exercising their right to free speech and freedom of religion,” Stanley told me.

The revision’s change in semantics arguably resembles Parker’s actions during the campaign to pass the embattled ordinance itself. Parker removed a section of the ordinance explicitly criminalizing those who refuse to open restrooms to the opposite sex unless they have a “good faith” reason. But a different section still broadly bans all discrimination in public accommodation, which includes restrooms.

City spokeswoman Janice Evans defended the new document against continued criticism.

“We don’t want the sermons, period. ... We are seeking documents to help prove they knew the rules and knew they would not qualify for the ballot if they didn’t follow those rules,” Evans told me in an email. “It has absolutely nothing to do with sermons or preaching. Again, they filed against us not vice versa. We are simply working to defend the case.”