Want to know a big reason the Texas House is dragging the Lone Star State into the public relations firestorm that engulfed Indiana this spring, when the legislature there moved to enshrine discrimination against LGBT people in state law? It’s what religious-righters want, and they hold the Texas Republican Party in their grip.
In fact, Steven Hotze, head of the Conservative Republicans of Texas, this week vomited out another anti-LGBT screed to religious-right activists. In an online post Monday, Hotze demanded that lawmakers pass House Bill 4105 by state Rep. Cecil Bell, R-Magnolia. Bell’s legislation would bar state and local officials from granting or recognizing licenses for same-sex marriages even if the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down the state ban on those unions. HB 4105 is now set to go to the floor of the Texas House on Tuesday (May 12).
Hotze’s rationale for passing such a bill? From his Monday post:
Wickedness needs to be called wickedness. The practice and promotion of sodomy and sodomatrimony is wicked. The homofascists intend on forcing Christians and everyone else to accept, condone, affirm and even celebrate sodomy as normal. The homosexuals want it taught to children starting in kindergarten so they can sear their consciences and more easily recruit your children and grandchildren to homosexuality. This is what is happening in Massachusetts which was the first state to allow homosexual‘mirage.’ It will lead to the criminalization of Biblical Christianity. It’s evil. It’s wicked.
Hotze and other opponents of equality are trying to make Texas the last bastion of discrimination in this country. It’s important that supporters of equality and the freedom to marry fight back. Click here to send an email telling your legislator to vote against HB 4105 on Tuesday. Texas is constitutionally bound by Supreme Court rulings, and HB 4105 is both an embarrassment and an outrageous attack on the principle of equality under the law for all Texans.
Why is he doing it? The primary reason is that he knows the Christian fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals who elect him are ignorant morons who have no understanding of the Supremacy Clause in the U.S. Constitution. No state law can countermand, impinge on, or limit the scope of a federal law or court ruling. He must surely know that and believe that his constituents do not know that. One of the safest things a politician can do is to promise he will TRY to deliver to them something that he KNOWS is not deliverable. In other words, this is a slick form of lying to his constituents to trick them into thinking that he is a “gawdly man” just like them who is trying honestly to serve them.
How many times have we heard it: “And if you will elect me to Congress, I promise to you this day that I will get the ball rolling on a Constitutional amendment to ban abortion!!!” Promises. Promises. This guys knows even before they make these promises that their chances of delivering on them are nearly nonexistent. But they also know the rhubarbs in the pews are so stupid they will believe any cockamamie story he tells them—because he is a man of “gawd” (supposedly).
Texas. What a laughingstock! This is NOT a Christian country, therefor biblical law is NOT the law of the land or Texas.
Trying to invoke religious law is identical to trying to invoke sharia law which we all agree has nothing to do with the United States or Texas.
Our founders deliberately prohibited the making of laws regarding religion. Most of the founders were DEISTS and not Christians at all.
If the religious right is intent on disobeying the Constitution, so be it. But for every crime there is a punishment and deliberately disobeying the Constitution and laws that the SCOTUS interprets as law, then a crime has happened and Texas is no exception.
Christianity has no business in trying to make our laws. CHRISTIANITY HAS NO BUSINESS IN MAKING OUR LAWS! Get that through their heads before Texas winds up in law suits that will bury us.
When I say “Christians” I refer to ALL religions. To beat a dead horse, this Republic is not in any sense a religious nation.
The “religious right” traditionally attempts to cozy up to fascism and that, in fact, is the goal of the “religious right” is to turn our REPUBLIC into a Fascist state within 20 years.
Any laws that the Christians try to push though our lawmakers need to be show for what they are: Filled with hate and ignorance of facts.
I wonder what data Hotze has to share on what IS actually happening in Massachusetts? Of course, I wonder if Hotze understands the concept of “data.”
You have to ask yourself, who cares what Hotze thinks!
He’s one guy running a PAC on a website hosted by Blakemore and Associates, a fundraising and consulting firm in Houston.
He doesn’t represent anybody except himself.