Note: this is a guest post submitted by Greg Degeyter.
Proposition 1’s (HERO) only hope for passage was low voter turnout and Mayor Parker ended any chance of passage with the subpoenas for preachers’ sermon notes since that energized the natural opponents of the proposition.Although it’s tempting to argue Houston is a solid democrat city therefore the proposition should carry such an analysis ignores the conservative bent to minorities beliefs when it comes to religion in a vacuum and lgbt issues in a vacuum.
Older and also first generation immigrants from Mexico and Central America are largely conservative on social religious issues. When the proposition was essentially turned into a referendum on the lgbt aspects of the proposition this segment of the voting population which normally votes democrat was going to switch alignment on this particular issue.While solidly democrat blacks are also significantly opposed to lgbt issues being given special privileges. Once again a solid democrat constituency was switching alliance for this particular issue.
Although minorities would benefit from the proposition the lgbt focus was enough to change a substantial amount of the minority vote. Rather than focusing on how minorities benefit from other aspects of the proposition the mayor’s office took the minority vote for granted and engaged in a lgbt campaign rather than promoting the proposition as a whole.
With most conservatives opposed to proposition 1 and two solidly democrat constituencies opposed to the proposition all it takes is a reason to come out and vote. The mayor ensured the vote with the sermon notes seizure. Not only did it ensure voting energy against the proposition; it also ensured that the minority vote would be active since some of those churches were targeted.
The take away is that on social conservative religious issues even deep blue Houston will vote their beliefs over party lines. Simply being statesmen and reaching out and working together when beliefs overlap will begin to build goodwill overall and make future cooperation easier.
Greg Degeyter
Pearland, Texas
Actually where this one failed was when Annise decided to molly-coddle the men in dresses. It is interesting that for all the bleating done by TransInc about how it is biological in nature, they are not content with protections based upon ‘genetic information’ like was in HERO. No, they wanted to codify ‘feelings’ into law and to gain the right to intrude into women’s spaces.
It does not matter how many of them might actually be predators. The reality is that one incident is too many and there have been far more than one incident involving males in women’s safe spaces. Colleen Francis in Oregon or Washington, Christopher “Jessica” Hambrook in a Canada women’s shelter and goes on to assault multiple women in a short period of time, ‘Carlotta’ Sklodowska or however the hell that fetish freak spells his name and was the source of the Michigan law suit with Planet Fitness (and who maintains/maintained a presence in Houston where his website acknowledged letting his freak flag fly at fetish parties).
There was a number of other problems with the poorly written ordinance as well, and I believe voters saw those problems in addition to the trans provisions. Quite honestly, I believe it passes if it only had the language about gays and lesbians and had omitted the ‘gender identity’ provision.
Greg, I agree with everything in your analysis save this:
“Although minorities would benefit from the proposition…”
I disagree that minorities would benefit from the proposition. They would have been harmed, just like everyone else. The only group that would have benefited would be the Bar.
Jeff, help me. The bar?
Yes, the bar, the legal bar. Along with all its other defects, the bathroom ordinance created a bureaucracy to regulate and litigate, and promote litigation by the plaintiff’s bar, against businesses. This regulation and litigation disproportionately burdens small and medium-sized businesses.
The cost of compliance is about the same for each case, so big businesses with larger revenue can absorb these costs more easily, and as a result they actually favor such regulation, in order to create barriers to entry in their industry against small and medium-sized competitors.
Accordingly, the local big business cartel, the Gay Houston Partnership, and several big businesses supported the bathroom ordinance.
The bar, both plaintiff’s and defense, benefits from the increased regulation and litigation, until business leaves or peters out, as in Detroit.
Racial and ethnic minorities would have gotten no additional protections had the ordinance passed.
The ordinance specifically stated that if there was a federal or state agency that could handle the complaint, that it was to be referred out to that agency.
So basically what we would have bought with a yes vote would have been a new bureaucracy handling accusations from the BLT etc. community that they were discriminated against., on our dime..
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