Texas May Keep Sodomy Law For Hate In It

Texas may keep sodomy law for hate in it

This is Texas, where sodomy is still in the penal code and its conservative leaders like it that way.

Legislators criminalized such behavior back to the 1800s.

When the Texas penal code needed updating in the 1900s, lawmakers saw fit to keep their anti-sodomy law on the books, banning “deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex.”

Texas is also where, in 1998, a Houston police officer arrested a gay couple in a private residence for breaking that law by engaging in “homosexual conduct.”

It’s also the state where a lawsuit over that arrest reached the U.S. Supreme Court. It ruled in 2003 that anti-sodomy laws are unconstitutional.

Lawrence v. Texas told states — Texas wasn’t the only one — to stay out of people’s bedrooms, because, you know, due process, liberty and privacy.

Policing private, consensual behavior between adults is also ridiculous, even if the couple engaged in such sexual relations is straight and married.

But this is Texas, where far-right extremists continue to meddle in places where they have no business, including who uses what bathroom, what sex one was at birth and what teams they can play on.

They especially want to control what Texas women do with their bodies, limiting their health care options to death.

What certain men do in private is also a concern for the far-right, so keeping a so-called “zombie” sodomy law in place is important to them, even if unenforceable.

It’s the symbolism of hate that counts.

The Texas House of Representatives bravely but narrowly voted 59-56 to strike the law and send House Bill 1738 to the Senate.

It’s interesting to note that an early ballot came in at 72 for repeal and 55 against.

Sen. José Menendez, D-San Antonio, is offering to sponsor the Senate version and hopes it’s assigned to a committee.

Time is against him.

The Legislature wraps up its session in early June.

I expect that the state’s Republican leadership, headed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick in the Senate, will determine that repealing the anti-sodomy law isn’t good for politics.

Giving Democrats and sane Republicans a win isn’t good in the hate business.

Instead, by letting a so-called “zombie” law stay in place, Republicans can look to the next election and use it to feed its extremist masses.

They haven’t seen enough zombie movies.

Zombies are capable of rising from the dead.

So, this is still the Lone Star State, where politicians can be cruel and their voters more so.

It’s part of our nation’s legacy of intolerance, starting with colonial statutes that criminalized sexual acts.

Those early arrivals were hell-bent on enacting laws that punished homosexual activity in particular.

Those found guilty got the death penalty.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, things started to look up after the American Revolution.

It found that “in 1796, New Jersey passed ‘An Act for the Punishment of Crimes’ that made sodomy punishable by a fine and solitary confinement with hard labor for no more than 21 years.”

The center said 20th-century state legislatures continued to focus on criminalizing homosexuality.

“Several sodomy laws were expanded to include oral sex,” it said.

“In the 1950s, state and nationwide ‘witch hunts’ of homosexual men ensued, and hate-based rhetoric equated consensual adult sex with child molestation.”

Human Rights Watch, the independent group that monitors and investigates human rights abuses worldwide, maintains the origins of anti-sodomy laws rest in British colonialism.

Here’s the hope in this story.

A bipartisan team led HB1738. It’s the first time a bill has gotten this far in several decades of trying.

That’s a remarkable feat.

Rep. Venton Jones of Dallas, who is openly gay and was born when this fight to repeal the law began, authored the bill. In his success, he remembered those who came before him.

“I am standing on the shoulders of people who have carried this bill before me, and that’s where I get my strength,” he said.

Jones didn’t build his case on the Supreme Court ruling.

Instead, he asked his colleagues “to vote for a law that upholds the principles that Texans should have the freedom and ability to make their own private decisions without unwarranted government interference.”

Even one of the worst lawmakers in the state, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, supports repealing the state law.

But this is Texas, where an unconstitutional law is likely to remain in the penal code.

Far-right Christian nationalists will raise their Bibles in unison.

The rest of us can carry on the march toward sanity that the Texas House began.

Brad Pritchett, interim CEO of Equality Texas, said people hear “gay rights” and imagine all sorts of things.

But their struggle is simple. It’s “the privacy to live our lives in peace.”

And no one — gay or straight — can live in peace when zombies can come back from the dead.