In the event that the Supreme Court decides that the states should have the authority to regulate matters like sex, birth control, and same-sex marriage, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has stated he would be willing to defend the state’s law prohibiting “sodomy,” which was struck down in the famous Lawrence v. Texas case.
Paxton ordered his office to be closed on a holiday “as a monument to the millions of lives lost due to abortion” after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health reversed the precedent-setting Roe decision and abolished the national right to an abortion. Additionally, Paxton is a stridently anti-gay politician who has sued the city of Houston over benefits for same-sex couples and offered legal support for Governor Greg Abbott’s executive order to investigate the parents of transgender children for child abuse.
Ken Paxton's talk about reviving Texas's sodomy laws, comes as Equality Texas has had to fight back against 76 anti-LGBTQ bills offered in the Texas legislature last year, a significant increase from less than 20 introduced in the previous session in 2019 https://t.co/l4BIWWEJRM
— Emmanuel Felton (@emmanuelfelton) June 30, 2022
Paxton was asked if he would “feel comfortable supporting a statute that once again outlawed sodomy,” in addition to homosexual marriage and birth control, during an appearance on NewsNation Saturday.
“Yeah I mean, there’s all kinds of issues here, but certainly, the Supreme Court has stepped into issues that I don’t think there was any constitutional issues dealing with, they were legislative issues,” Paxton told NewsNation. “[Abortion] was one of those issues, and there may be more.”
NEW: The Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton (R), just said that the Supreme Court should overturn Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down laws that banned LGBTQ people from having sex. If this happened, 16 states have laws banning “sodomy” that would immediately go into effect.
— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) June 28, 2022
Paxton responded, “My responsibility is to defend state law and I’ll continue to do that,” when asked explicitly about Lawrence v. Texas, a 2003 Supreme Court decision that invalidated a state anti-sodomy law and rendered all such laws throughout the country ineffective. According to the Constitution, I am required to perform that duty, and I am more than capable of doing so.
Not really a hypothetical situation, like this. The Court should review other decisions that, like Roe, had their legal foundation in the 14th Amendment and substantive due process, according to Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, who is arguably the court’s most far-right member. Thomas made this statement in a solo concurrence to the Dobbs ruling.
NEW: The Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton (R), just said that the Supreme Court should overturn Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down laws that banned LGBTQ people from having sex. If this happened, 16 states have laws banning “sodomy” that would immediately go into effect.
— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) June 28, 2022
“In future we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” Thomas wrote. Griswold v. Connecticut is a 1965 case.
“Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous.’ we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents,” Thomas added, quoting himself.
Texas AG Ken Paxton says he will defend sodomy laws to target LGBTQIA citizens
Paxton was indicted for felony securities fraud charges in 2015 and awaits trial. He also violated the state's open records law last January. But go ahead tell us which laws we violated?
— flexghost. (@flexghost1) June 29, 2022
Abortion was prohibited in Texas before Roe, and the state never repealed its six-week abortion restriction, which at the time was the nation’s strictest abortion statute. The Dobbs decision allowed for the reinstatement of that statute; however, on Tuesday, a Harris County judge issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting the state from carrying it out.
“Today a Harris County judge froze pre-Roe laws criminalizing abortion in TX. But w/ SCOTUS’s Dobbs decision, these laws are 100% in effect & constitutional,” Paxton said in a tweet Tuesday. “The judge’s decision is wrong. I’m immediately appealing. I’ll ensure we have all the legal tools to keep TX pro-life!”
The Texas AG wants to recriminalize gay intimacy. This is how extreme these Republicans are getting. They want to destroy our liberties, freedoms and families. https://t.co/Eo4yRp3H88
— Troy Williams (@TroyWilliamsUT) June 29, 2022
In response to Paxton’s remarks, Rochelle Garza, the Democratic candidate challenging Paxton in the fall and a former ACLU staff attorney, tweeted that “they won’t stop till they roll back all of our civil rights.”
“We MUST kick Ken Paxton out of office this Nov.,” Garza wrote. “When I’m Attorney General, Texans will have a Civil Rights Division to protect ALL of our rights.”
