Last month, openly gay Houston mayoral candidate Annise Parker was targeted by an anti-gay activist who 35,000 copies distributed a mailing picturing Parker and her partner under the headline “Is This The Image Houston Wants To Portray?”
Now, according to the Houston Chronicle, Parker’s opponent’s campaign has been bankrolling efforts to attack her over her sexuality:
The finance chairman and a finance committee member of Gene Locke’s mayoral campaign helped bankroll the conservative political action committee that sent out an anti-gay mailer targeting City Controller Annise Parker and other municipal candidates earlier this month, according to Texas Ethics Commission documents.
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Locke has been dogged by Parker, her supporters and some uncommitted Democrats for seeking the endorsement of conservative activist Steven Hotze, who has a long history of opposing gay candidates and causes. A mail piece Hotze sent out last week urged voters not to choose Parker and several others seeking municipal offices because they were “endorsed by gay lesbian political action committee,” a reference to Houston’s Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Political Caucus. It labeled others as “radical liberals” and supported some candidates based on a record of fiscal conservatism.
According to financial documents, Hotze’s political action committee received a $20,000 donation about a week before the mail pieces went out from Ned Holmes, finance chairman of Locke’s campaign, and $20,000 from James Dannenbaum, who is on Locke’s finance committee.
Hotze’s PAC, Conservative Republicans of Harris County, lists $56,000 in donations between Oct. 25 and Dec. 2. Only two other donors, who contributed a total of $16,000, are listed.
You may remember Hotze from this post we wrote a few years ago when he held a fundraiser for Mike Huckabee during his presidential campaign in which we chronicled Hotze’s long history of right-wing anti-gay activism and his ties to the Coalition on Revival’s Manifesto for the Christian Church back in 1986 which declared:
• A wife may work outside the home only with her husband’s consent
• “Biblical spanking” that results in “temporary or superficial bruises or welts” should not be considered a crime
• No doctor shall provide medical service on the Sabbath
• All disease and disability is caused by the sin of Adam and Eve
• Medical problems are frequently caused by personal sin
• “Increased longevity generally results from obedience to specific Biblical commands”
• Treatment of the “physical body” is not a doctor’s highest priority
• Doctors have a priestly calling
• People receiving medical treatment are not immune from divine intervention or demonic forces
• Physicians should preach to their patients because salvation is the key to their health
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