Huckabee To Lesbian Mayor: Keep Your ‘Filthy Gov’t. Hands’ And ‘Gestapo Actions’ Off Churches

Probable GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee spent the weekend attacking Houston Mayor Annise Parker, and didn’t mince a single word.

In repeated and stunning attacks on Houston Mayor Annise Parker, Mike Huckabee spent the weekend positioning himself as the defender of religious freedom in America. The former Arkansas governor has been at the top of nearly every poll of likely GOP presidential candidates this year, thanks no doubt to his not infrequent attacks on the LGBT community and his consistent “religious liberty” flag-waving. 

(By the way, Clinton consistently beats Huckabee by an average of nearly 10 percentage points.)

Thursday morning, Huckabee, the host of the Fox News show that bears his name, appeared on “Fox & Friends” to slay the great Democratic, fire-breathing Parker dragon. 

On Thursday evening, Huckabee visited with Fox News Business anchor Lou Dobbs and unleashed his fury and outrage over the city of Houston issuing subpoenas to a handful of local pastors. Pastors in Houston have been exceptionally active in attempting to derail HERO, the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, which finally passed in May. The City issued subpoenas to just five pastors, requesting communications with their congregations, emails, and yes, sermons, surrounding Houston’s attempts to pass an anti-discrimination bill, and their subsequent efforts to place the law on there November ballot via a petition drive in which nearly two-thirds of the signatures gathered were invalid.

Why did the pastors get subpoenaed?

“All officials want to know is what kinds of instructions the pastors gave out with respect to collecting petition signatures, and whether what they said agrees with what they’re arguing in court while appealing the referendum,” New York Magazine succinctly explains.

But Huckabee charges Mayor Parker with trying “to stop speech, stop religion, stop the free assembly” by issuing the subpoenas. Of course, subpoenaing documents is not an attempt “to stop speech, stop religion, stop the free assembly,” and subpoenas are issued every day in America as a means to obtain information and evidence. It’s an integral part of the legal system, not an assault on the First amendment.

“I would say, ‘Earth to Mayor, there’s something called the First Amendment,'” Huckabee quipped. 

And that’s where Huckabee’s comments took a decided turn into Falsehood Land.

An ordained Southern Baptist minister himself, Huckabee strongly suggested that Mayor Parker was telling pastors what they can and cannot say from the pulpit — which of course she never did. “You don’t get to run the churches of your city,” Huckabee insisted.

“Separation of church and state has never meant that the church is to shut up, be still, and go away,” he clamored.

And then Huckabee got even more heated.

Calling the subpoenas “an unbelievable outrage,” the church, Huckabee insisted, should “say to the government, ‘Keep your filthy government hands off of religious liberty.”

Mayor Parker has been a favorite target of Huckabee’s for years. In May, he slammed Parker’s Equal Rights Ordinance on Facebook. In 2011 he attacked her for wanting churches to be included in paying a nominal tax for a street and drainage improvement program. And Media Matters has detailed Huckabee’s repeated attacks on non-discrimination ordinances around the country.

Dobbs disgustingly claimed that it was “pertinent” to point out that “the mayor of Houston is the first openly-gay mayor to serve in that office.” 

Actually, Mayor Parker being a lesbian has nothing to do with the lawsuit, as much as Fox News would like to presume.

Dobbs then wrongly characterized the non-discrimination ordinance as “very restrictive of those who would express an opinion about the LGBT community.”

Houston’s Equal Rights Ordinance (full text) protects against discrimination in employment, public accommodations, and housing. 

Speech has nothing to do with the ordinance, as much as Lou Dobbs might like his audience to believe.

Huckabee vented his outrage from morning to night on Thursday.

Meanwhile, on Friday the City of Houston removed the request for sermons from the subpoenas.

But on his Fox News “Huckabee” show on Saturday, the likely Republican presidential candidate went one step further.

Totally ignoring the fact that Houston amended the subpoenas to exclude sermons, Huckabee continued to drive deep into Falsehood Land.

“Should the government demand that pastors hand over their sermons, sermon notes and even correspondence with their members?,” Huckabee asked as an opener to his Fox News show. “Sure it happens in North Korea, China and Iran, but should churches in America just sit back and shut up when their religious liberty, free speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of religion is directly threatened?”

What ever happened to “thou shalt not bear false witness“?

“The Houston mayor and her ilk, like mayors in Chicago and Boston who tried to prevent businesses opening in their cities because the business owners were Bible-believing Christians, well, she needs to apologize, start respecting all citizens, or at least have the integrity to resign,” Huckabee continued.

“They shouldn’t expect the taxpayers to fund their hate-filled, Gestapo-like actions to openly attempt to shut down the free exercise of religion and their attempt to establish a religion of godless secularism.”

Oh dear God.

 

 

Image: Screenshot via Fox News