Don’t Mess With Texas — Governor Bars State from Compelling Pastors to Testify About or Turn Over Sermons

When five pastors in Houston, Texas, filed a lawsuit against the government over the city’s so-called Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), the lesbian mayor subpoenaed their sermons.

After a backlash, Mayor Annise Parker retracted the subpoena.

The state’s governor, Greg Abbott, wanted to make sure that never happened again. He recently signed into law SB 24, which bars the government from compelling religious leaders from testifying about a sermon or turning over written copies, audio, or video recordings of sermons delivered during a worship service. From Life News:

The bill went into effect immediately upon its signing by Gov. Abbott, because it was passed by a two-thirds margin in both houses.
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SB 24 is only the latest repercussion in Texas from a controversial pro-“transgender” bill call the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) pushed through by Houston’s then-mayor Annise Parker, an open lesbian. Parker signed HERO into law in 2014 on a rushed timetable, based on a section of the legislation declaring it a “public emergency.”

In the name of “transgender rights,” the HERO legislation would have allowed men who identify as “women” to enter female public restrooms, and vice versa.

Although voters in Houston sent a lesbian to the mayor’s office, they rejected HERO by a wide margin, repealing the ordinance. Some voters feared the measure would allow men pretending to be women into women’s restrooms and other private facilities.

Gov. Abbott signed a bill into law in 2015 protecting pastors who refuse to perform homosexual “marriages.”

Photo credit: By Ed Uthman, Houston, Texas, USA – Own work, CC BY 3.0, Link