redneck Texas still has anti-homosexual law on the books

[barefootbob]

I love my state, but fuck, it is so backwards assed, redneck, conservative, rightwing, narrow minded that is just boggles the mind. anyhoo, here is a article from the Austin American Statesman newspaper


AUSTIN -- "Homosexual conduct" is still on the books as a crime in Texas, eight years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional.

Although the state's so-called sodomy law cannot be legally enforced, civil rights advocates say it should be removed because it creates a climate favoring bullying and other hate crimes.

But the Austin American-Statesman reports that legislation that would bring state law in line with the U.S. Constitution faces a questionable future in the Legislature, which has been reluctant to provide legal protections to citizens based on sexual orientation.

In 2003, the nation's highest court ruled that Texas could not stop people of the same sex from engaging in sexual activity. Today, the Texas Penal Code still states that it is a Class C misdemeanor to engage in "deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex" -- just after a line explaining that the law is unconstitutional.

Jim Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, says leaving the law on the books creates the potential for abuse.

Harrington represents two gay men who were kicked out of an El Paso restaurant in 2009 for kissing in public.

The men refused to leave and called the police, believing the restaurant, Chico's Tacos, was out of line with a city law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation. Instead, an officer told the men it was illegal for the two to kiss in public and that they could be cited for "homosexual conduct."

A department spokesman described the officers involved as relatively inexperienced, and the men were not cited. However, Harrington said the incident is about harassment.

State Rep. Jessica Farrar, D-Houston, is sponsoring legislation to strip the language from the books in Texas.

"There is archaic language in our code that is used against our citizens today," said Farrar, whose colleague Rep. Garnet Coleman, also a Houston Democrat, has filed an identical bill.

Gay rights legislation has often faced political hurdles in Texas.

The James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which strengthened penalties for crimes against people based on race, religion and sexual orientation, endured a nearly 10-year fight before becoming law in 2001.

Republicans hold 101 of the 150 seats in the Texas House, a supermajority that allows them to easily control legislation.

Chuck Smith, deputy executive director of Equality Texas, said the state's biggest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender lobbying group is not pushing too hard for rewording the penal code, because the makeup of the Criminal Jurisprudence committee makes its passage unlikely.

Farrar said she knows her bill is unlikely to pass, but that she filed it to at least start the conversation.

[Belfast-Bottom]

I'm sure that Texas is full of Republicans who worship the U.S. constitution as if it were the BuyBUll - well those bits of the constitution which suit their prejudices.

Double standards... dontcha jus luv em!

[Hotload84]

It's not just Texas, Barefootbob. The House Judiciary Committee in Kansas was considering a bill to up-date the criminal code in that state. A provision in the bill would have repealed those sections of the Kansan Code that prohibit gay sex. Two members of the committee, Lance Kinzer (R), and Jan Pauls, (D), chair and ranking minority member, respectively, went out of their way in early March 2011 to remove the language repealing the anti-gay sex provisions from the bill. http://www.wlbz2.com/news/watercoole...storyid=151269.