GOP Lawmakers, Pastors, Activists Sign Court Brief Calling for Right to Ban Same-Sex Marriage Benefits

Say Supreme Court’s Obergefell Decision ‘Did Not Create … Rights to Spousal Benefits or Even the Right to Live With Your Spouse’

Nearly one-third of Texas state lawmakers, along with candidates for the state legislature, pastors, and other anti-LGBT activists are saying the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell decision does not give legally-married same-sex couples who are government employees the right to the spousal benefits their different-sex peers have, or even the right to live together.

50 Republican state lawmakers and others have signed an amicus brief making those assertions, along with others, including the claim that the Obergefell decision would compromise the state sovereignty of Texas if it were used to require the Lone Star State to spend any taxpayer funds, especially on spousal benefits for same-sex couples.

At The Texas Observer, John Wright explains the brief “was submitted Friday in a lawsuit brought by anti-LGBT activists against the city of Houston in response to then-Mayor Annise Parker’s decision to extend benefits to the same-sex spouses of city employees in 2013.”

Wright notes the Texas Supreme Court had refused to hear the case, but “Jonathan Saenz, president of the anti-LGBT group Texas Values, and former Harris County GOP chair Jared Woodfill, have petitioned the nine-member court for a rehearing.”

Also signing the brief is Rep. Cecil Bell, an anti-LGBT extremist.

The brief essentially argues that even the U.S. Supreme Court does not have the constitutional right to direct any state to treat same-sex couples the same way it treats different-sex couples.

It claims “nothing” in the Obergefell ruling “compelled the taxpayers of Texas to pay for a vast array of benefits for same-sex spouses.” 

Note that the signatories of the amicus brief have no qualms about the taxpayers of Texas paying for a “vast array of benefits” for different-sex spouses.

“Indeed, it would unnecessarily implicate constitutional issues of state sovereignty if Obergefell were misconstrued as imposing spending requirements on the state of Texas to fund expensive health care and other benefits without authorization by Texas law,” they claim.

The lawmakers and others who signed the brief call on the justices “to diminish federal tyranny and reestablish Texas Sovereignty,” by denying these same-sex couples spousal benefits.

 

Photo: Cecil Bell and Jonathan Saenz, via Facebook

The title of this article has been updated to more accurately reflect the amicus brief.