Houston LGBT Ordinance Opponent Lance Berkman Talks About Personal Attacks by Mayor Annise Parker
Lance Berkman, former Rice University and former Houston Astro star who was among the leaders of the successful efforts to defeat the controversial Houston "Equal Rights" Ordinance, or HERO, talked about personal attacks he received by the city's openly gay mayor, Annise Parker, following the vote.
"I didn't expect the mayor to make a personal attack," Berkman, who is now the head baseball coach at Second Baptist High School in Houston, said on KTRH 740 AM's "The Michael Berry Show." "I didn't expect her to talk about my girls or my family."
After the Tuesday's defeat of the ordinance, which would allow transgendered men to use women's bathrooms, Parker tweeted: "Lance Berkman played in St. Louis. Guess his girls didn't go to his games! SL has a non-discrimination ordinance."
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She also tweeted, "When Lance Berkman went from NYC to STL to play ball did he do it to escape NYCs scary nondiscrimination law?" In another one, she wrote: "Then Lance Berkman went to Dallas. Oops. Dallas amended its charter to clarify gender identity protections. Can you spell hypocrite?"
Berkman doesn't have a Twitter or Facebook account.
On her Facebook page, Mayor Parker added: "For me, this fight is about how much I love this city. I don't want anyone to ever disparage Houston. That someone who made his name in our city would inject himself into this debate by taking to the airwaves to discredit an effort to ban discrimination in all forms did upset me. This ordinance protects all Houstonians and his remarks diminished it to something trivial."
"I'm against depriving anybody of their civil rights but by the same token the ordinance was so poorly-written," explained Berkman, who played Major League Baseball for 15 years. "First of all as a Christian I felt that I had an obligation to stand for what is right," Berkman added. "I am about articulating my belief system and taking a stand for it when I have the opportunity."
Berkman also said it has become a "shame" that "it seems like anybody who has an opinion that comes more from right immediately gets castigated, called a bigot, by voicing that opinion."
In an ad produced by the Campaign for Houston, which opposed the ordinance, Berkman said: "No men in women's bathrooms. No boys in girls' showers or locker rooms. I played professional baseball for 15 years, but my family is more important. My wife and I have four daughters. Proposition 1, the bathroom ordinance, would allow troubled men to enter women's public bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms. This would violate their privacy and put them in harm's way."
The Rev. Franklin Graham, who leads the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, applauded the ordinance's defeat in a Facebook post.
"In spite of high-profile endorsements from the White House, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and Houston's gay activist mayor—this outrageous referendum lost," he wrote. "That's a victory and great news for Houston!"
