A Houston activist who is trying to overturn the city’s nondiscrimination ordinance by ballot referendum said last month that a judge’s ruling against him and his allies represents a “kind of tyranny literally trampling on every fundamental right” in America.

Dave Welch and fellow anti-LGBT activists sued the city of Houston after failing to collect the required number of petition signatures to force a ballot referendum on the nondiscrimination measure, which covers sexual orientation and gender identity. Last month, a judge rejected their claim, ruling [PDF] that the activists failed to gather enough valid signatures.

Incensed by the judge’s decision, the group claimed that the judge “caved in to political pressure” and vowed to “take this to the Texas Supreme Court if needed to assure that the rule of law is restored in Houston.”

Welch reacted to the decision in an interview with “The Sam Malone Show” last month, lamenting that “when you elect corrupt, amoral, godless leaders, who obviously have no respect for God’s law, they certainly have no respect for man’s law.”

“We just can’t allow this kind of tyranny literally trampling on every fundamental right that’s been handed to us by the blood of many to be stolen by one mayor,” Welch said, prompting Malone to accuse Houston Mayor Annise Parker of using “Nazi-esque, Gestapo-esque behavior.”

It doesn’t help Welch’s cause that he is on video training petition-gatherers in how to obey rules for collecting signatures, rules that he now says are trampling on his rights.