Annise Parker takes the oath of office during inaugaration event. She was officially sworn in this past Saturday, January 2nd.
Houston’s Wortham Center sits just a couple of blocks away (as the crow flies) from my office and the public inaugaration of Mayor Annise Parker as well as city council members and other newly-elected officials is ongoing. One of the Houston Chronicle’s political writers is blogging the event.
A big surprise for me is that giving the prayer for the inaugaration was Joel Osteen of Houston’s mega Lakewood Church, which is now housed in the building that was the previous arena for the Houston Rockets of the NBA (the Summit, later called Compaq Center). I put this in almost the same category as Rick Warren giving the convocation at President Obama’s inaugaration just a year ago. It was only a couple of month’s ago when Osteen appeared on The View and said, “. . . homosexuality is not God’s best.”
Osteen has a big draw in Houston, and I know some gay people that go to Lakewood. I also know gay Catholics and gay Mormons. I don’t know why gay people would want to belong to a church whose leader doesn’t think they are God’s best. I also don’t know why gay people want to belong to any church that keeps hammering them down.
Speaking of hammering, some of the Phelps clan from Topeka’s Westboro Baptist Church is in town to protest Annise Parker’s inaugaration. However, the Phelpses aren’t one-stop shoppers when it comes to hating; they are making a 2-day trip of it in order to picket a wide spectrum of venues, which includes among others, the Co-cathedral downtown, the Holocaust Museum, the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish school, and even Osteen’s own Lakewood Church.
(Click on Home for other posts on Annise Parker’s election.)
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