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Kevin

Administrator

From: Tanglewilde

Registered: 2004-09-08

Posts: 6,929

Do you care about the mayor's sex partner, or her policies (or both)?

Mayor Parker getting political pushback on gay marriage support - Chris Moran, Houston Chronicle

Emboldened by Parker's poor showing in November in which she barely avoided a runoff and by the victories by two opponents of gay marriage who became the first challengers to unseat City Council incumbents in 12 years, social conservatives have gone on the attack. They accuse Parker of reneging on a campaign promise to put the city first and social issues advocacy second, and they charge her with violating the Texas Constitution by advocating for a change to it.

"What they're saying is, 'We smell blood,'" said Rice University political science professor Bob Stein, whose wife previously served as Parker's agenda director.

Memo to Chron editors and reporters: When you have to include that bolded disclaimer about someone you are quoting in a story, find someone else to comment. Bob Stein is not the only political scientist (or bicyclist) in the city. Seriously!

Annise Parker, Houston Mayor, On President Obama, Gay Marriage And Being An Out Politician - Michelangelo Signorile, Huffington Post

Houston’s openly lesbian Mayor Annise Parker, newly re-elected to a second term, says President Obama needs to evolve "faster" on marriage equality, and that the Democratic platform should promote same-sex marriage. She also slammed a "hard-core group" in Houston -- the largest city in the U.S. with an openly gay mayor -- that is "just mortally offended that there is a lesbian mayor."

Speaking on my SiriusXM radio program, Parker, who was elected to her first term in 2009 and won re-election in November of last year, said she’s happy to have won reelection without a runoff against five opponents (getting just over 50 percent of the vote) but that she had to "work harder" than she believes she should have had to in order to win.

"While it’s been a tough time to be an incumbent at any level of government, there's definitely a hard-core group here that is just mortally offended that there is a lesbian mayor, and one of my opponents ran specifically because of that issue and raised it at every opportunity," she said.

In my opinion, Parker's narrow avoidance of a runoff while facing a weak field is more reflective of the mayor's two-year governing record than any imagined anti-gay backlash.

I don't much care who's sleeping beside Mayor Parker. But it does seem of late that she seems to want the public to think more about it. So what say you, public?

Link to post:  http://www.bloghouston.net/item/8906

IHB2

Member

Registered: 2006-05-06

Posts: 291

Re: Do you care about the mayor's sex partner, or her policies (or both)?

one would think the reelection of a lesbian Democrat as mayor of the nation's 4th largest city located in the nation's reddest state would be an indictment of the impotence of the right in local politics, not a cause for even the slightest mention of them by that mayor.