HUGE win for Houston LGBTs - there will be no referendum

According to LGBTNation, an lgbt-inclusive nondiscrimination ordinance approved by the Houston city council in late May will not be challenged via referendum this November:

Opponents of Houston’s LGBT-inclusive Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) fell short of qualifying for a ballot referendum, Mayor Annise Parker announced Monday afternoon.The petition needed at least 17,269 valid signatures from registered Houston voters to put a repeal of the ordinance before voters in November.

City Attorney David Feldman said Monday the number of valid signatures submitted for the petition came to only 15,247.The group behind the repeal effort submitted more than 5,000 petition pages last month containing approximately 31,000 signatures.

But Feldman said his staff had found many invalid pages, most notably because some of the circulators who collected signatures were not qualified Houston voters, as required by law. In such cases, all the signatures the circulator gathered would be void, Feldman said. Other issues included names on valid pages that did not belong to registered Houston voters, Feldman said, and some signatures were gathered prior to June 3, when the ordinance was published and the petition drive could begin.

The article goes on to say that Parker doesn't think the situation is over. She expects opponents of the ordinance to file a suit against the city's findings with regards to the petition.