Texas Lawmakers Vote to Repeal Ban on Same-Sex Intimacy
The Supreme Court struck down Texas' ban on "homosexual conduct" more than 20 years ago, but that law has remained on the books. Now, a bipartisan effort to repeal the law has succeeded in the state's House of Representatives.
The term "homosexual conduct" is defined in Texas law as "deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex," noted political news site The Hill.
A dozen GOP state representatives voted to purge the defunct law, even though, The Hill noted, "The Texas Republican Party's platform calls homosexuality 'an abnormal lifestyle choice'" — a plank that remains in the platform despite "prominent party leaders like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) hav[ing] said they believe the state should rescind the law, which the state adopted in 1973."
Surprisingly, support for the bill came from "Texas Rep. Brian Harrison, a Republican who earlier this year threatened to defund a state university over its gender and LGBTQ studies programs," The Hill relayed, noting that Harrison "signed onto the bill as a co-author."
The political news outlet quoted State Rep. Harrison saying, "Criminalizing homosexuality is not the role of government."
Addressing his fellow lawmakers about the bill, Harrison called it "a law that strengthens the fundamental civil liberties and individual freedoms that all Texans deserve," and "pointed to support for the law's repeal from Republicans like Cruz and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who called Texas's law against sodomy 'uncommonly silly'" — even though that view from Thomas was part of a dissent "to the court's majority ruling in Lawrence v. Texas," The Hill detailed.
A bill for repeal "now advances to the Senate," The Dallas Morning News reported, "making it the furthest this push has gone in the Texas Legislature."
The newspaper recalled that "In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered the landmark Lawrence v. Texas ruling that struck down the criminalization of gay sex, making it unconstitutional and unenforceable."
But victory in the effort to purge the dormant law is far from assured: The site said that "a companion bill has not had a committee hearing" by state senators.
All the same, the vote in the Texas House is historic. "Efforts to remove [the ban] have been brought session after session, including this year's HB 1738 by Rep. Venton Jones, D-Dallas," the Dallas Morning News said. "And the overturn of Roe v. Wade in 2022 has only raised fear that the Lawrence ruling could be reconsidered next."
State Rep. Jones, who is out and HIV-positive, told the Dallas Morning News that the bill's passage in the House "gave a little bit of hope."
"When you have a lot of really long and bad days in this chamber," Jones said, "it's nice when we can come together and get something right."
Even if the state senate follows suit and approves the bill, it still faces the prospect that Gov. Greg Abbott would refuse to sign it. So far, The Hill said, Abbott has not said that he would.