Texas AG vows he’d defend anti-sodomy law
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says he would defend the state’s archaic anti-sodomy law if the conservative Supreme Court takes aim at LGBTQ rights next.
Paxton, an archconservative Republican who is running for reelection, said he would defend the hateful law if the top court overturns its decision legalizing same-sex intimacy, a very real possibility after the justices nixed the constitutional right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade.
“My job is to defend state law, and I’ll continue to do that,” Paxton said. “I’m certainly willing and able to do that.”
“Ultimately, if it’s constitutional, we’re going to go defend it,” the Republican added in an appearance on News Nation’s “On Balance With Leland Vittert.”
Paxton is heavily favored to win a third term as the Lone Star State’s top law enforcement official in November’s general election.
His Democratic opponent, Rochelle Garza, called the remarks a reason to vote Paxton out of office.
“They won’t stop till they roll back all of our civil rights,” Garza wrote on Twitter. “When I’m Attorney General, Texans will have a Civil Rights Division to protect ALL of our rights. Y’all means all. Period.”
In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence vs. Texas that states cannot criminalize same-sex intimacy. Texas and 15 other states still have anti-gay sex laws on the books that would immediately go back into effect if the justices overturn that decision.
The Lawrence ruling, like similar decisions giving the green light to gay marriage and contraception, rested heavily on the precedent established in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion rights.
Justice Clarence Thomas, who opposed Lawrence, urged the court to reexamine all those cases in a fiercely worded concurring opinion to the recent decision eliminating a women’s right to choose.
Thomas, who is Black and married to a white woman, left out another famous ruling: Loving vs. Virginia, the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned a Virginia law barring interracial marriages.