Last night’s “I Stand Sunday” rally opened with remarks from some of the Houston pastors who had their sermons subpoenaed by the government as part of the lawsuit seeking to overturn the city’s nondiscrimination ordinance, with pastors from Cuba and Vietnam warning that America was now falling under tyranny, just like the nations they had fled.

Magda Hermida declared that she and her husband had fled Cuba’s police state because their rights to free speech and free exercise of religion were oppressed by the government only to discover that now the same thing is happening in America.

“This mayor wants to use her power to see the sermon of our pastor and use them against us,” she said. “The police state this creates is that same that my husband and I experienced in Cuba.”

Khanh Huynh echoed that statement, declaring that he and millions of others had fled Vietnam because “the freedom of speech and freedom of religion were among the first to be lost in Vietnam and now I’m facing the same marching boot of tyranny right here where I live.”

Finally, Willie Davis railed against the city’s nondiscrimination ordinance, asking “how can you call something right when it’s all wrong” and declaring that since the city had no problem with anti-gay discrimination, the ordinance has ended up needlessly dividing the city because gay rights is not a civil rights issue.

“I’m deeply offended simply by this ordinance,” Davis stated, because “it piggy-backs on the 1964 Civil Rights Act which has nothing to do with this [issue].” With the crowd giving him a standing ovation, Davis declared that they will continue to fight against this ordinance until it is repealed “for we know it’s what’s right in the sight of God”: