Steve Hotze just pulled out a sword on stage pic.twitter.com/SZIoXdBzsN
— Christopher Hooks (@cd_hooks) August 14, 2015
The campaign to repeal the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) became even more vile Thursday night when one of the anti-HERO campaign leaders insisted that gay and transgender people should be forced to leave Houston and even suggested that they face the same destruction the American military inflicted on Nazi Germany.
Christopher Hooks at the Texas Observer reported from the so-called “Faith Freedom Family Tour” event in a Houston hotel ballroom. When Steven Hotze took the podium, the head of the influential Conservative Republicans of Texas waved around a sword as he launched into a fiery — almost unhinged — attack on the LGBT community. From Hooks’ Observer article:
“Homofascists,” Hotze said, were enabled and appeased by those who treated their behavior as normal or acceptable. The indoctrination started in public schools, by design. “Remember: Homosexuals can’t reproduce. They have to recruit.”
Swift action was needed. “Drive them out of our city. I don’t want them in our city. Send them back to San Francisco.” No half-measures could be contemplated when dealing with the truly wicked. “Has anybody ever heard of the Nazis? Were they wicked? OK. What did we send our boys over to do in World War II? What did our preachers pray that would happen in World War II?”
They weren’t praying that the Germans would straighten up and fly right. “They prayed, ‘give our boys victory in battle,’” Hotze said. “Sometimes you have to do that when people are totally opposed to God like that, and wickedness rises up.”
You can read the full Texas Observer piece here.
Hotze has been one of the leading opponents of HERO, which the City Council passed in May 2014. HERO bars discrimination in employment, housing and public services based on more than a dozen characteristics, including race, age, sex, military status, sexual orientation and gender identity and expression. HERO opponents have succeeded in putting repeal of the ordinance on a November election ballot.
The campaign to support HERO, Houston Unites Against Discrimination, was launched at a press conference on Monday. The Texas Freedom Network is supporting the pro-HERO campaign. Click here to sign the pledge to support HERO and send a clear message to opponents: Discrimination has no place in Houston.
9 Comments
I keep posing this question to homophobia-frenzied right-wing religious nuts and never get an answer: Are some “sins” worse than others? Why are you so hellbent on ostracizing gay people yet do not mind adulterers and liars holding jobs, getting motel rooms, getting marriage licenses, etc.? Are there gradations of “sins”? If so, please provide a score card so we can keep track of who is a bigger sinner.
And the unanswered question I keep posing: What constitutes a “religion”? Can I declare my own religion and be guaranteed “freedom” to practice it? OK, The First Church of Me proscribes that honking your car horn when you lock it and having bright floodlights on your house aimed at thy neighbors are serious sins. OK, Constitution & state legislatures, protect me from THOSE sins! Ha, ha.
That’s what I was thinking! The Bible-the New Testament specifically-condemns adultery, divorce, drunkenness, and premarital sex as sins, but you don’t see right wingers trying to outlaw them. Why do they only focus on gay marriage and abortion?
Well, the Roman Catholic clerus and most militaries (today*) also have to recruit because they do not reproduce (even ban it inside their ranks).
*In the past at least officers were bred by officers and some armies (like the Mamluks in Egypt) were fully dependent on self-reproduction.
Good lord. I think Hotze and his followers have jumped the shark with this one. They know they’ve lost the war so they’re just getting increasingly crazy and desperate.
Seriously, I had just eaten when I stumbled on this story. My stomach heaved up every bite I’d eaten.
Where do people like that come from? If you were to ask him, he’d tell you what a WONDERFUL Christian he is. And that is the problem that modern Christianity has to deal with.
Non-Christians see that level of hate and if they were even considering that religion would RUN away from it.
As things are, today’s young people refuse to have anything to do with churches. Too many Christians see what is happening and just walk out.
There is no “war on Christianity” as jerks like Bill O’Reily claims, Christianity is warring on itself.
The most outlandish statement made is that gays do not reproduce so they have to recruit. I know many couples, male and female alike, who do not reproduce, does that mean that they have to recruit other couples to not have children?
He would light the fires of another Holocaust, put another way the bigot is a Nazi at heart.
Does he give a damn that it has been proven that sexuality is fixed prior to birth? Hell no. He prefers to wade in his hatred.
How can people whose sexuality was predetermined while still gestating? It would be interesting to see if he is legitimate himself; I believe that he is illegitimate if not indeed, in practice.
Do you know what many pastors think of childless couples and say about them publicly?
They attack them either for alleged use of contraceptives or for being cursed by G#d with inferility for their wickedness (or that of their ancestors). And in times of war charges of sabotage and treason were and are also common. In countries where Christianity competes with Islam seeming lacking efforts in the ‘arms race in the beds’ is also a main target for radical preachers. Not to forget charges of crypto-homosexuality, i.e. that those childless couples are secretly gay and are together just to avoid suspicion.
[sarcasm]Given the revelations of the last years those foaming at the mouth preachers know very well what they are talking about given how many are found to be actually bi or gay while traditionally married[/sarcasm].
Typical unhinges rhetoric from Christians that sound just as fringe Moslem Jihadists and the idiots can’t or wont see it.
I stand with HERO.
Seriously, is this Hotze for real. I ca only imagine the outrage. I stand with HERO.
“Send them back to San Francisco.”
Now, that’s a new one!