Fight Over Fort Worth Atheist Bus Ads Escalates

Joe.My.God has been doing an excellent job of following the fight over pro-atheism bus ads in the Fort Worth area which say "Millions Of Americans Are Good Without God."

The ads ran on four buses and sent ministers up the wall. They resorted to following the buses around with a truck which had a pro-religious message and now the transport authority has said that they are banning all faith-based ads:

Open Lesbian Parker Leads Houston Mayor's Race

Rod 2.0 alerts me to this poll released yesterday which shows that Houston City Controller Annise Parker leads former Houston City Attorney Gene Locke in Saturday's run-off mayoral election by thirteen points, 49-36.

Previous polls had shown the race to be close, but Stein said Parker opened up a double-digit lead because her message of fiscal responsibility has helped her gain support among a variety of voting groups: white Republicans, African-Americans, Hispanics and independents.

Both Locke and Parker are Democrats in the nonpartisan race. Houston is a predominantly Democratic city and is about 25 percent black and one-third Hispanic. It has about 60,000 residents who identify as gay or lesbian.

The poll, commissioned by television station KHOU and radio station KUHF, is based on telephone interviews earlier this week with 442 registered voters in Houston. It has an error rate of plus or minus 4.7 percent.

If Parker wins, she will make history as the first openly gay head of a major American city, Houston, which with an estimated population of 2.2 million is the United States' fourth largest, behind New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Homophobes Worried Next Mayor Of Houston May Be Lesbian

Annise Parker, the City Controller of Houston,is the current frontrunner to become the next Mayor of Houston. She finished first in a crowded field of candidates on November 3rd and is in a runoff election with African American City Treasurer Gene Locke scheduled to be held December 15. She is also openly gay. She's been elected citywide five times in the last dozen years or so.

Now there comes reports of a concerted effort being made by conservatives to scuttle her chances of making history as the first openly-LGBT elected mayor of a major American city (with apologies to Portland, Oregon's Sam Adams).

TowleRoad quotes from the Houston Chronicle

"The group is motivated by concerns about a 'gay takeover' of City Hall, given that two other candidates in the five remaining City Council races are also openly gay, as well as national interest driven by the possibility that Houston could become the first major U.S. city to elect an openly gay woman. Another primary concern is that Parker or other elected officials would seek to overturn a 2001 city charter amendment that prohibits the city from providing benefits to the domestic partners of gay and lesbian employees. 'The bottom line is that we didn't pick the battle, she did, when she made her agenda and sexual preference a central part of her campaign,' said Dave Welch, executive director of the Houston Area Pastor Council, numbering more than 200 senior pastors in the Greater Houston area. 'National gay and lesbian activists see this as a historic opportunity. The reality is that's because they're promoting an agenda which we believe to be contrary to the concerns of the community and destructive to the family.'"

Parker, however, has not made these issues a central part of her campaign: "Parker has tread carefully in her candidacy for mayor, stressing frequently that she is running not as a gay candidate but as a qualified city official who's won election six times. In a televised debate last month, she voiced 'no current plans' to revisit the city charter amendment if elected, although she said the city will need to offer benefits to the same-sex partners of its employees 'at some point.'"

Oh, and it turns out that Parker's rival for the Mayoralty of Houston is Black.

So, here we go again: Black versus Gays! This race will almost definitely get more coverage as the end of the year approaches. See the CNN profile on Annise Parker from earlier this year.

Racism Is Not Dead, Exhibit #467

It took Pam Spaulding to point out this heart-wrenching story about that hoary cliché, a racist Texas sherrif in a small town, that appeared in my hometown newspaper yesterday:

David Guillory, an attorney in nearby Nacogdoches who filed the federal lawsuit, said he combed through Shelby County court records from 2006 to 2008 and discovered nearly 200 cases in which Tenaha police seized cash and property from motorists. In about 50 of the cases, suspects were charged with drug possession.

But in 147 others, Guillory said the court records showed, the police seized cash, jewelry, cellphones and sometimes even automobiles from motorists but never found any contraband or charged them with any crime. Of those, Guillory said he managed to contact 40 of the motorists directly -- and discovered that all but one of them were black.

"The whole thing is disproportionately targeted toward minorities, particularly African Americans," Guillory said. "Every one of these people is pulled over and told they did something, like, 'You drove too close to the white line.' That's not in the penal code, but it sounds plausible. None of these people have been charged with a crime; none were engaged in anything that looked criminal. The sole factor is that they had something that looked valuable."

Read the whole thing, it's stomach-churning.