Religious leaders declare "spiritual warfare" over bathroom bill
Updated 2:47 pm, Thursday, August 3, 2017
- General Presbyter Sallie Sampsell Watson, of Mission Presbytery in San Antonio, asks Texans to "love thy neighbor" Tuesday at a Capitol gathering of religious leaders to protest the proposed "bathroom bill." Photo: Tom Reel, Staff / 2017 SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS" class="landscape" />
Calling it "spiritual warfare," religious leaders from around the state rallied on the steps of the Texas Capitol Thursday to demand passage of the so called bathroom bill that has stalled in the House of Representatives.
The rally of more than 200 pastors and religious leaders comes just two days after a different group of religious leaders rallied on the same steps of the Capitol in opposition to the legislation and calling it discrimination against transgender people.
"What distinguishes this group from others who claim to be clergy is that this group actually believes the Bible is true," said Houston Pastor David Welch, whose U.S. Pastors Council helped organize the rally.
Welch said what he and others are asking for is not discrimination against anyone, but the "privacy and safety of our women and children."
They support Senate Bill 3, which would require schools and local governments to require people to use the bathroom of the gender that is listed on their birth certificates or driver's license. It would also prohibit schools and local governments from deviating from state policy on the issue.
State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, a Republican from Brenham, said her bill is aimed at stopping predators and voyuers who would try to exploit transgender bathroom policies to gain access to places that women and girls deserve privacy.
Critics of her legislation have called the bill discriminatory and harmful to people who are transgender who are already marginalized in society already. Business and tourism leaders have come out in force against the legislation, warning it could trigger a boycott like North Carolina faced after it passed a similar law.
That argument hasn't slowed Kolkhorst at all.
"I pick daughters over dollars," Kolkhorst said at Thursday's rally.
Repeatedly at the rally, supporters of the legislation chanted: "Let them vote." They accuse House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, of blocking a vote on the measure. They say if the bill gets to the House floor for a vote, they think it will pass.
Welch lashed out at opponents of the bill for trying to claim the issue is a civil rights issue. He packed the list of speakers at Thursday's rally with black church leaders like the Rev. Bill Owens who said he marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 60 years ago.
"I marched to be able to go to the school of my choice, to get a job that I was qualified for," said Owens, creator of a group called the Coalition of African American pastors. "I did not march one foot, on yard one mile for men to go into women's restrooms."
But critics of the measure, including those who rallied Tuesday, compared the bathroom bills to discriminate of the 1960s.
"I grew up in the South in the 60s when targeted groups of children and adults were told which bathrooms they could use," said the Rev. Diane McGehee of the Bering Memorial United Methodist Church in Houston. "Those laws were discriminatory and unfounded, yet here we are again considering the bathroom bill."
In an open letter to legislators organized by Welch's group, supporters of the bathroom bill accused some of "hijacking the righteous cause of Civil Rights."
Dallas Pastor Stephen Broden warned that some of the left are going even further to promote "doctrines of demons."
"We are engaged in a spiritual warfare here," Broden said.
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