It may seem hard for the average person to have sympathy for a politician who wields her power to unconstitutionally silence her opposition but that is exactly what Washington Post writer Krissah Thompson tried to summon in her puff piece on Houston mayor and budding totalitarian Annise Parker in Wednesday's paper.
Back in October, the media was silent as openly lesbian Parker attempted to tried to stop churches and pastors who were speaking out on one of her pet pieces of legislation-- a transgender rights bathroom bill called “HERO.” "HERO" --The Houston Equal Rights Ordinance -- would allow people who identified as transgender to choose whichever public bathroom they wanted to enter. At least 5 local pastors gathered signatures to try to repeal the impending bill, but Parker ordered City attorney David Feldman to throw out the signatures so they couldn’t appear on the ballot. She also issued subpoenas, demanding the pastors submit their sermons to the city government to monitor when/if they mentioned the bathroom bill.
Parker didn’t just want talk about HERO to be punished. She also called for any sermons that mentioned herself, homosexuality or gender identity to be submitted to her office for review.
This action caused an immense national backlash and Parker was forced to withdraw the subpoena order.
The Post buried this highlight of Parker’s tenure. When Thompson finally did get to that unflattering truth in paragraph 24, she frames the case as a “divisive” struggle for gay rights, instead of a case of a bully attempting to silence Christians and her constituents.
Instead, Thompson painted Parker as the underdog, who’s struggled for success and endured Republican opposition as a liberal and a lesbian. She started the piece by mentioning a journal that Parker keeps on her desk:
“If it [the journal] had a title, she says, it would be: “Would This Have Happened to Another Mayor?” Its pages are filled with her cursive script of the stories she could tell about being the first openly gay mayor of a major American metropolis.”
Parker tells lots of stories. Like the untrue one about anti-gay bigotry towards her daughter. She claimed the Department of Public Safety wouldn't let her daughter take the driving test because she had "two moms." Huffington Post and other lefty outlets jumped on the sob story of discrimination, and reported on the tweets. However, a few hours later the real story came out: Turns out Parker's daughter just hadn't brought "sufficient documentation" for residency the DPS required, and she obtained her license once she had brought the right papers. Parker's phony story left her embarrassed clearly because she stopped tweeting about it and would make no further comment to the media, according to the Los Angeles Times.
But that’s beside the point to the fawning Thompson, who described Parker’s “personal” battle for gay rights in office over and over. This was never seen as a negative but always a positive, as if somehow ignoring the majority of her constituent’s needs in lieu of obtaining privileges for a special interest group is laudable.
But Parker isn’t keeping that a secret either. She allegedly told a group of Houston clergymen who met with her back in October, “I’m not going to let the citizens of Houston vote on my civil rights.” [emph. added]
Oh, but Parker isn’t an activist, Thompson assured readers, offing this assurance: LGBT people don’t run for office as as activists, they run “to fill the potholes.” The source of the quote: Denis Dison, the executive director of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund and Institute.
