If you're gay and have the misfortunate of living in Texas, welcome back to the late late Middle Ages. In league with America's High Court of Inquisitional Pecksniffery, Texas state Attorney General Girolamo Savonarola, a.k.a. Ken Paxton, is gearing up for another tempestuous bonfire of the inanities — a pyrotechnic display of just how backward a culturally isolated and politically arrested bunch of Christianist bullies can be.
Following the High Court's abolition of our second-class citizens' rights, immediate speculation commenced about the inquisitional panel's abolition of other constitutionally guaranteed and Nature-given liberties. Among them is the freedom to engage in same-sex relationships. We're not talking same-sex marriage here, just sexual coupling, a behavior that humans of all intimate stripes have enjoyed since humans have been on earth.
Enter the Texas attorney general and, for that matter, Texas itself and the Christianist bullies who run it. The latter are keen to revisit the state's criminalization of same-sex togetherness, outlawed by what was formerly known as the U.S. Supreme Court in the same year as Roe, 1973, in the case of Lawrence v. Texas.
A.G. Paxton says he'll not only defend the resurrection of his state's anti-sodomy law, he strongly implies he would be strongly in favor of its resumption. "Certainly the Supreme Court has stepped into issues that I don’t think there’s any constitutional provision dealing with," says Paxton. "They were legislative issues, and this is one of those issues.... Look, my job is to defend state law, and I’ll continue to do that."
Paxton also expresses unhappiness at "George Soros district attorneys" who have vowed to uphold legal decency by refusing to prosecute women for exercising control over their own bodies.
Parenthetically, a word of television-news caution. A.G. Paxton said these asinine things in an interview with NewsNation's Leland Vittert. The network has heavily promoted itself as a nonideological outlet, just as Fox News did in its earlier years. And it's a lie, just as Fox News' self-promotion was a lie. A Variety piece of last year reported that NewsNation — formerly WGN — was undergoing staff resignations in protest of its "conservative bias." Indeed, anchor Leland Vittert worked for Fox News for 12 years, and NewsNation hired former Fox News executive Bill Shine as a consultant.
As for the Texas legislature — which represents only the state's white, Christianist minority — and Attorney General Ken Paxton? If you're gay, look out. Because they're both coming for you.