Texas GOP To Consider Anti-Gay Resolution Directly Defying SCOTUS Marriage Decision

A new proposal calls for Lone Star State to go all Kim Davis.

The Texas GOP may be about to go all Kim Davis. 

Anti-LGBT activists want the state’s Republican Party to approve a resolution calling on GOP Gov. Greg Abbott to convene a special session of the Legislature to pass a bill that would directly defy the U.S. Supreme Court on same-sex marriage. 

The bill would bar state and local employees from issuing, enforcing or recognizing same-sex marriage licenses — and prohibit public monies from being used to do so — regardless of any court order.

“Traditional marriage and religious liberty are under attack all across the nation,” former Harris County GOP Chair Jared Woodfill (photo) wrote in an email Friday. “We recently witnessed a federal judge incarcerate a Kentucky clerk, Kim Davis, because she refused to compromise on her faith and issue homosexual marriage licenses. In my hometown of Houston, we continue to battle Mayor Annise Parker and her liberal LGBT agenda for the City of Houston. Ultimately, the goal of the left is to silence people of faith and require them to sacrifice their deeply held religious beliefs on the altar of political correctness. We must not allow this to happen on our watch!”

Woodfill goes on to quote anti-gay marriage planks in the 2014 Texas GOP platform, which call for “withholding jurisdiction from the federal courts in cases involving family law, especially any changes in the definition of marriage.” And he notes the demise of anti-LGBT legislation in the 2015 legislative session. Woodfill says State Republican Executive Committee member Terry DuBose will introduce the resolution Saturday. 

The resolution states that the high court issued “a non-Constitutional opinion purporting to overturn Traditional/Natural Marriage,” but says that under the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, no branch of the federal government has the power to “redefine” it. It says that the high court’s decision “usurps the powers of the U.S. Congress and the states [SIC] sovereignty …”

Despite calls from anti-LGBT activists, Abbott declined to call a special session on same-sex marriage in June. This was after more than 20 anti-LGBT proposals died, in large part due to opposition from the state’s chamber of commerce, the Texas Association of Business. 

HB 4105, an anti-gay marriage bill from GOP Rep. Cecil Bell Jr., was defeated after House Democrats ran out the clock on the legislation.

According to the Log Cabin Republicans of Texas, the Executive Committee is also set to consider a resolution Saturday that “would exclude any organization who rejects any of its ‘core principles’ — including opposition to marriage equality— from formal participation in the Texas State Republican Convention.” Log Cabin has repeatedly been denied a booth at the convention over the years.

“The idea that the Texas GOP is once again considering excluding Log Cabin Republicans from the exhibitor hall at the state convention is indeed a troubling one,” Log Cabin Republicans of Texas Chair Jeff Davis said in a statement Friday. “We’ve gone down this road several times already, both in Texas and in other parts of the country, and every time it results in bad press for the party. Moreover, it doesn’t deter Log Cabin Republicans one bit. If anything, it shows us that we have more work to do and it emboldens us to become even more involved. It inspires our members to become precinct chairs and delegates who attend convention with the power to change the party platform. If the party can accept us as precinct chairs and delegates, why can it not accept our money when we wish to purchase a space in the exhibitor hall? If excluding us from the exhibitor hall has caused embarrassing headlines before, what’s to be gained by doing the same thing again, especially on the eve of the national convention and a presidential election?” 

Read the proposed resolution on same-sex marriage below. 

 

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