Texas AG: Supreme Court Should Let States Ban Same-Sex Intimacy

When the court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday, Justice Clarence Thomas said it should revisit other privacy precedents like those governing birth control, marriage equality, same-sex intimacy, and interracial marriage (though Thomas didn’t cite that last one for some reason!).

Twitter was abuzz Tuesday with news that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) had called on the court to overturn Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 case that struck down laws banning same-sex intimacy.

But it’s actually worse than that. On Saturday, Paxton went on a channel called NewsNation and said in a response to an anchor’s question that he would defend state laws outlawing sodomy, as well as ones outlawing birth control and same-sex marriage.

Here’s a clip of the exchange shared by American Bridge, a political action group dedicated to holding Republicans accountable.

Here’s the exchange:

Anchor: Would you, as Attorney General, be comfortable defending a law that once again outlawed sodomy? That questioned Lawrence again, or Griswold or gay marriage that came from the state legislature? To put to the test what Justice Thomas said?

Paxton: 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 provision dealing with, they were legislative issues. And this is one of those issues and there may be more.

Paxton also apparently retweeted the clip then deleted it, probably after someone informed him that American Bridge wasn’t praising his comments.

Texas is a testing ground for all kinds of horrible things, like the six-week abortion ban that took effect in September, which is enforced by private lawsuits. In October, a Texas state representative asked Paxton whether the success of that type of law meant that Texas residents also had to recognize same-sex marriages under Obergefell.

We live in hell!