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| 'I Stand Sunday' was actually an event defending election fraud |
The sponsors of last night's 'I Stand Sunday' would have you to believe that the event was simply about defending their freedom of religion against encroachment by an city government.
However, thanks to Carlos Maza of Equality Matters, who analyzed the event, we now know that there was something else going on. According to him, the sponsors and speakers of this "Christian" event was attempting to defend and force through election fraud:
Texas conservatives failed to submit enough valid signatures to put Houston's city-wide non-discrimination ordinance up for a public vote in November. Now those conservatives, led by Fox News, are pressuring the city to accept signatures determined to be improperly collected or otherwise irregular in order to "let the people vote" to repeal the measure.
In August, opponents of Houston's recently enacted Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) reportedly submitted more than the seventeen thousand signatures needed to qualify put the measure on the November ballot. However, upon review of the petition under the City Charter, City Attorney David Feldman determined that thousands of the signatures failed to meet the legal requirements set by local and state law for a voter referendum
. . . On November 2, thousands of conservatives met in Houston at the "I Stand Sunday" rally to demand that the city government allow for a public vote on the ordinance, despite the failure of the repeal petition. The event, which was hosted by the anti-gay hate group Family Research Council (FRC), was widely promoted by Fox News and featured speeches from Fox's Todd Starnes and Mike Huckabee.
At the rally, speakers demanded that the city of Houston "let the people vote" on the ordinance, accusing openly gay Mayor Annise Parker of violating the religious liberty of HERO's opponents by refusing to count their improperly collected signatures.
And just how improperly colllected were those signatures? Maza goes into great detail:
The city of Houston declared the signatures in question invalid after several weeks of reviewing the thousands of signatures submitted. City Secretary Anna Russell's published a thorough report on the petition effort, finding that over half of the submitted signatures failed to meet the City Charter's requirements to be considered valid. Pages of signatures were disqualified for being improperly notarized, including signatures collected before the allotted start date, and including unregistered and non-Houston area voters.
. . . A public policy analyst helping lead an independent review of the signatures called them a "mess," adding "they are the worst petitions I've ever seen."
In audio captured by TransAdvocate's Cristan Williams, one petition circulator was found illegally gathering signatures on government property and knowingly accepting a signature from an unregistered vote.
So that was the gist of last night. In spite of all of the posturing and great speeches about America's "Christian heritage" and "standing up to persecution," the entire thing was just a puppet show, a performance of histrionics put on by a crowd of ecclesiastical liars for the benefit of a bunch of willfully gullible folks who cling so hard to their Bibles that they refuse to recognize that they are being taken for a bad ride which will only end in an upsetting crash.
Go here for more details, including video of the 'I Stand Sunday' event.
