Houston’s Anti-LGBT Activists Return With Disgusting TV Ad Opposing A New HERO (Video)

Anti-LGBT “toilet trolls” aim to block equal rights ordinance from being revived.

The group that repealed Houston’s Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) has released yet another disgusting, transphobic TV ad featuring a sexual predator preying on a young girl in a women’s bathroom. 

The ad, which recycles clips from one of the anti-HERO Campaign for Houston’s previous spots, encourages people to oppose efforts to revive the ordinance by voting for city candidates who oppose it in the Dec. 12 runoff. 

“We sent a message and defeated the bathroom ordinance, but some politicians don’t respect our vote, and want to bring it up again,” the ad’s narrator states. “That’s why we need to support candidates in the Dec. 12 runoff who will stand up for women’s privacy and safety. Look for your sample ballot or visit CampaignForHouston.com to see which candidates we can trust to say no to men in women’s bathrooms. Vote Dec. 12. The stakes are too high”

The Houston Chronicle reports that the ad was set to begin airing on cable and broadcast TV on Tuesday.  

After HERO’s resounding defeat at the polls Nov. 3, Mayor Annise Parker initially said it was possible the current City Council could consider a new HERO before she leaves office at the end of the year. However, Parker said Saturday she now believes it’s too late to resurrect the ordinance before her third and final term expires.  

“The problem is, I’m running out of runway,” Parker told The Texas Observer. “I have only so many council meetings left, and so it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to do anything with it. The council members who supported it still support it, and I do hope the the next mayor of Houston will pick it back up again.”

Democratic state Rep. Sylvester Turner, who supports HERO, faces Bill King, who opposes the ordinance, in the Dec. 12 runoff for Houston mayor. The Campaign for Houston has endorsed King and at least five other city candidates who face opponents backed by LGBT groups in the runoff. The Campaign for Houston has also made 300,000 robocalls urging voters to contact council members and ask them to oppose efforts to resurrect HERO. 

“Our battle to keep men out of women’s bathrooms, showers and locker rooms is not over,” longtime anti-LGBT activist Dr. Steve Hotze wrote in an email for the Campaign for Houston on Nov. 11. “I will not tell you that it is imperative that we elect a mayor and members of council who oppose Houston’s Proposition 1, the Bathroom Ordinance. … If Sylvester Turner is elected mayor, then you can be sure that he will try to pass the Bathroom Ordinance again. The only way to prevent this is by electing a mayor and members of city council who oppose the Bathroom Ordinance.”

Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said this weekend during an appearance in Dallas that he believes TV stations in many markets would refuse to air false, fear-mongering ads like those put out by HERO opponents. However, Houston TV stations thus far have accepted them. 

Griffin also said he’s confident Houston will eventually have a new HERO. But he offered few specifics about what the LGBT movement’s strategy will be going forward when it comes to countering the transgender bathroom myth. 

“It is going to require fighting back much harder at the lies our opponents pushed forward, and I don’t know what all the answers to that are today, but I’m certain that by the time any other community in this country faces those scare tactics and lies, the movement as a whole will be ready for them,” Griffin told the Observer.

Judging by the newly released ad, that time has already arrived in Houston. If the Campaign for Houston is successful in using this strategy to defeat progressive city candidates in the runoff, it greatly diminishes the chances that HERO will be reconsidered anytime soon. 

Given that the pro-HERO Houston Unites campaign is no longer active, the question becomes, who’s going to respond to these attacks? And how? 

 

Image: Screenshot via Campaign for Houston/YouTube