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The Same People Who Killed Houston’s HERO Are Now Working To Repeal Dallas’ Nondiscrimination Law

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Anti-LGBT Groups Attack City’s Updated Nondiscrimination Ordinance – Dallas Could Be Next Battleground In Transgender ‘Bathroom Wars’

A week after scoring a major victory in Houston, anti-LGBT groups and Republican Texas lawmakers are threatening to try to overturn Dallas’ 13-year-old nondiscrimination ordinance, which the City Council unanimously amended Tuesday to strengthen transgender protections. 

The Dallas City Council’s vote came just one week after Houston voters overwhelmingly rejected an Equal Rights Ordinance, or HERO, based largely on the debunked “transgender bathroom myth” — with opponents falsely claiming the measure would lead to sexual predators entering women’s restrooms to prey on victims.

In the wake of the Houston vote, LGBT advocates said they feared anti-LGBT groups would attempt to replicate their fear-mongering Houston strategy in other places across the country, and now it appears their first target could be Dallas. However, Dallas has a significantly higher bar than Houston for repealing ordinances by referendum, which would make opponents job that much harder. 

The anti-LGBT hate group Texas Values, which was part of the anti-HERO campaign, issued a statement Tuesday calling the Dallas ordinance “a threat to safety and freedom.” Texas Values also accused the City Council of fast-tracking amendments to the ordinance, which were added to its agenda on Friday and discussed by a committee in executive session Monday. 

“This Dallas bathroom ordinance will allow men into women’s bathrooms and that’s why the Dallas City Council is deliberately trying to avoid the people,” Texas Values President Jonathan Saenz (photo, left) said. “Their fast track method of passing this dangerous bill that threatens the safety of women and children is the same strategy used in Houston to disenfranchise voters with their failed bathroom bill. Creating law behind closed doors and forcing it onto the people the next morning  is a recipe for disaster. These Obama and D.C. style tactics will not work in Texas. Get ready for a Texas-sized response.” 

The Texas Pastor Council, which was behind the petition drive and lawsuit to get HERO on the ballot in Houston, said in an email that the ordinance “removes the doors of women’s restrooms, showers and locker rooms in Dallas, as well as criminalizes businesses, employees as well as eventually, churches who attempt to keep men out.”

“We will work with Dallas pastors to determine how to appropriately respond to the wholesale catering by City Council to the radical, anti-faith, anti-family agenda of the LGBT Human Rights Campaign,’ said Dave Welch, executive director of the Texas Pastor Council. 

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (photo, right), who spent $70,000 on a TV ad opposing HERO, called the Dallas council’s vote “mind-boggling and appalling,” accusing officials of putting “political correctness ahead of both common sense and common decency.” 

“The facts are clear,” Patrick said in a statement. “No woman wants a man to be allowed in a ladies restroom or locker room, no matter the reason. And no man wants his wife, daughter, mother, or sister to be forced by law to contend with such an uncomfortable, disruptive, and potentially dangerous intrusion. This ludicrous ordinance, like the one in Houston, reveals officials who are totally out of touch with Texas values, I have no doubt that if this issue is put to the voters, as opposed to being decided without adequate public notice and discussion, the people of Dallas – like those in Houston – will give it a resounding no.”

Sen. Don Huffines, R-Dallas, who authored an unsuccessful bill that would have barred Texas cities from enforcing LGBT protections, has launched a petition calling for the repeal of the Dallas ordinance. 

“The City Council may have acted in good faith believing that this was a tweak or ‘clean-up,’ but I wish they had let voters fully vet the potentially far-reaching ramifications of today’s policy change,” Huffines wrote on Facebook. “Allowing men in women’s restrooms — and vice versa — is a whole-cloth social change that business owners and families will be forced to endure.”

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings noted that the ordinance, first approved by the council in a 13-2 vote in 2002, already prohibited discrimination against transgender people in employment, housing and public accommodations. However, gender identity was included under the definition of sexual orientation. The amendments approved Tuesday list gender identity and expression alongside sexual orientation and more clearly define the terms. 

Rawlings also noted that in 2014, voters approved an amendment to the Dallas charter, by a margin of 77 percent, prohibiting discrimination against LGBT city employees.

“While we respect others’ points of view, our goal is to protect all of our citizens, including minority groups,” Rawlings said Wednesday. “Yesterday’s unanimous City Council vote did not change the scope of our 13-year-old anti-discrimination ordinance. We took action that is consistent with what our voters approved last year and the protections already afforded to our employees. It is not forthright or honest to minimize this issue to a question about where people relieve themselves.”

Eileen Youens, assistant Dallas city attorney, told The New Civil Rights Movement that to repeal the ordinance, opponents would have to submit an application to the city secretary with the signatures of five registered voters. Then, they’d have 60 days to gather signatures on a petition from 10 percent of the city’s registered voters, or roughly 50,000 people. In Houston, which has roughly twice as many registered voters as Dallas, HERO opponents needed only 17,269 signatures, or 10 percent of those who voted in the last election. If opponents gathered enough signatures, the Dallas council would be forced to repeal the ordinance or place it on the ballot in the next general election.  

“I just don’t see them being successful in Dallas,” City Councilman Philip Kingston said. 

 

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News

‘Antisemitism Is Wrong, But’: Marjorie Taylor Greene Pilloried for Promoting Antisemitic Claim

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May 1, 2024

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U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was strongly criticized Wednesday after promoting a historically and biblically false, antisemitic claim while declaring antisemitism is wrong.

As the House voted on an antisemitism bill that would require the U.S. Dept. of Education to utilize a certain definition of antisemitism when enforcing anti-discrimination laws, the far-right Christian nationalist congresswoman made her false claims on social media.

“Antisemitism is wrong, but I will not be voting for the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023 (H.R. 6090) today that could convict Christians of antisemitism for believing the Gospel that says Jesus was handed over to Herod to be crucified by the Jews,” Greene tweeted.

The definition of antisemitism the House bill wants to codify was created by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

Congresswoman Greene highlighted this specific text which she said she opposes: “Using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism (e.g., claims of Jews killing Jesus or blood libel) to characterize Israel or Israelis.”

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What Greene is promoting is called “Jewish deicide,” the false and antisemitic claim that Jews killed Jesus Christ. Some who adhere to that false belief also believe all Jews throughout time, including in the present day, are responsible for Christ’s crucification.

Greene has a history of promoting antisemitism, including comparing mask mandates during the coronavirus pandemic to “gas chambers in Nazi Germany.”

Political commentator John Fugelsang set the record straight:

“If only you could read,” lamented Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder, Esq., CEO and Director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center. The Antisemitism Awareness Act “could not convict anyone for believing anything, even this historical and biblical inaccuracy. It only comes into play if there is unlawful discrimination based on this belief that targets a Jewish person. Do you understand that distinction @RepMTG ?”

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“Not surprising,” declared Jacob N. Kornbluh, the senior political reporter at The Forward, formerly the Jewish Daily Forward. “Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been accused in the past of making antisemitic remarks — including her suggestion that a Jewish-funded space laser had sparked wildfires in California in 2018, voted against the GOP-led Antisemitism Awareness Act.”

Jewish Telegraphic Agency Washington Bureau Chief Ron Kampeas, an award-winning journalist, took a deeper dive into Greene’s remarks.

“Ok leave aside the snark. The obvious antisemitism is in saying ‘the Jews’ crucified Jesus when even according to the text she believes in it was a few leaders in a subset of a contemporary Jewish community. It is collective blame, the most obvious of bigotries.”

“The text she presumably predicates her case on, the New Testament,” he notes, “was when it was collated a political document at a time when Christians and Jews were competing for adherents and when it would have been plainly dangerous to blame Rome for the murder of God.”

“Yes,” Kampeas continues, “that take is obviously one that a fundamentalist would not embrace, but it is the objective and historical take, and *should* be available to Jews (and others!) as a means of explaining why Christian antisemitism exists, and why it is harmful.”

CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere also slammed Greene, saying she “is standing up for continuing to talk about Jews being responsible for the killing of Jesus. (John & Matthew refer to some Jews handing over Jesus to Pilate,not Herod. But also: many, including Pope Benedict, have called blaming Jews a misinterpretation)”

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OPINION

MAGA State Superintendent Supports Chaplains in Public Schools – But Not From All Religions

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May 1, 2024

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Visitors to Oklahoma’s State Schools Superintendent’s personal social media page will notice a post vowing to “ban Critical Race Theory, protect women’s sports, and fight for school choice,” a post linking to a Politico profile of him that reads, “Meet the state GOP official at the forefront of injecting religion into public schools,” a photo of him closely embracing a co-founder of the anti-government extremist group Moms for Liberty, and a video in which he declares, “Oklahoma is MAGA country.”

This is Ryan Walters, a far-right Republican Christian nationalist who is making a national name for himself.

“God has a place in public schools,” is how Politico described Walters’ focus.

Last week the Southern Poverty Law Center published an extensive profile of Walters, alleging “hateful rhetoric toward the LGBTQ+ community, calls to whitewash curriculum, efforts to ban books, and attempts to force Christian nationalist ideology into public school classrooms.”

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“Walters is superintendent of public instruction, and public schools are supposed to serve students of all faiths, backgrounds and identities,” Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of GLAAD, told SPLC.

Walters is supporting new legislation in Oklahoma that follows in Texas’ footsteps: allowing untrained, unlicensed, uncertified, and unregulated religious chaplains and ministers to be hired as official school counselors.

“We heard a lot of talk about a lot of those support staffs, people such as counselors, having shortages,” Rep. Kevin West, a Republican, said, KFOR reports. “I felt like this would be a good way to open that door to possibly get some help.”

Walters praised West, writing: “Allowing schools to have volunteer religious chaplains is a big help in giving students the support they need to be successful. Thank you to @KevinWestOKRep for being the House author for this bill. This passed the House yesterday and moves on to the Senate where @NathanDahm is leading the charge for this bill.”

As several Oklahoma news outlets report, there’s a wrinkle lawmakers may not have anticipated.

“With the Oklahoma House’s passage of Senate Bill 36, which permits the participation of uncertified chaplains in public schools, The Satanic Temple (TST) has announced its plans to have its Ministers in public schools in the Sooner State. If the bill advances through the Senate, this legislation will take effect on November 1, 2024. State Superintendent Ryan Walters, a vocal advocate for religious freedom in schools, has endorsed the legislation. The House approved SB 36 by a 54-37 vote on Wednesday,” a press release from The Satanic Temple reads. “The Satanic Temple, a federally recognized religious organization, has expressed its dedication to religious pluralism and community service.”

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Walters responded on social media to The Satanic Temple’s announcement.

“Satanists are not welcome in Oklahoma schools, but they are welcome to go to hell,” he wrote.

Former Lincoln Project executive director Fred Wellman served up an equally colorful response.

“Hahahaha!!! You are an idiot,” Wellman wrote. “How did you not see this coming? Satanists, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Pastafarians…come one come all! After all you’re not trying to establish Christianity as the state religion are you? We had a whole ass revolution about that. There are history books about it…oh…right. Not your thing. What a fool.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) served up a warning.

“The state of Oklahoma cannot discriminate against people or groups based on their religious beliefs,” the non-profit group wrote. “Walters’ hateful message shows, one again, that he only believes in religious freedom for Christians and that he is unfit to serve in public office.”

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News

Potential Trump VP Pick Says ‘If You’re a Billionaire’ You Should Vote for Trump

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May 1, 2024

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One of the possible picks to be Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate, seen as “rapidly ascending” the list, is urging billionaires to vote for the ex-president.

North Dakota Republican Governor Doug Burgum “is quickly moving up former President Trump’s list of possible vice presidential picks because Trump’s team believes he would be a safe choice who could attract moderate voters,” Axios reported on Sunday. “Burgum is on a long list of VP contenders, but Trump’s rising interest in the North Dakota governor has been clear in recent weeks — and reveals his latest thinking about how he thinks his running mate could help him with undecided voters.”

Praising Governor Burgum, the National Review’s Michael Brendan Dougherty on Monday wrote he was “the only candidate in 2024 to easily exceed expectations in the debates.”

“He is a well-liked governor from a small state. He projects seriousness and sobriety, two qualities Pence also had that were important to balance the 2016 Republican ticket. Burgum is also good at championing Republican policy, including our desperately needed policies of energy abundance and supply-side reform. He is also the right age — 67 — with no signs of slowing down. Burgum needs to survive the millions poured into opposition research, but, if he does, I think he would bring credit and balance to the Republican ticket.”

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On Tuesday, Gov. Burgum, appearing on Fox News, told Laura Ingraham, “when you see someone who cares this deeply about this country, what he’s going through and what the Democrats and the liberal media is putting him through, and how he gets up and fights for every day people in America every day, and then his policies are all in the right direction.”

“If you’re a billionaire and you care about your shareholders, you care about your family and your grandkids, you should be voting for someone that’s going to bring prosperity to America and peace to the world, that’s what President Trump is going to do, that’s what he did for us when he was president,” Burgum claimed.

The Hill adds, “Ingraham suggested a lot of billionaires are still planning to support President Biden, especially those that are the ‘Wall Street types.’”

Last year, asked if he would ever do business with Trump, Bergum told NBC News, “I don’t think so,” and added, “I just think that it’s important that you’re judged by the company you keep.”

Some reports call Bergum a billionaire, while Forbes last year reported it “estimates Burgum’s net worth to be at least $100 million.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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