If it weren't already clear from the Texas Republican party platform, recent bills send a loud message that the GOP wants queerness hidden, eradicated, and even criminalized.
From singling out transgender athletes at state universities to attempts at defunding public libraries that host drag queen story hours to banning health care for trans youth, thewill go down as one of the most hostile sessions toward the LGBTQ+ community in the state's history.
But intolerance against the LGBTQ+ community is nothing new. This week's bill, House Bill 2055 from Rep., D-Dallas, serves as a reminder that gay Texans couldn't even legally have consensual sex in the privacy of their homes in 2003. It was then that the U.S. Supreme Court, in landmark case, found the state's anti-sodomy"Homosexual Conduct" law unconstitutional. The relevance of HB 2055? That law is still on the books in Texas.
This isn't the first time repealing the crime of gay intercourse has been introduced, and after HB 2055 ran out of time for consideration by mid-May, it won't be the last. Other bills that effectively died before the House's deadline for first reading, which passed May 11, paint a broader picture of how queerness is still criminalized in Texas. HB 4596 from Rep., D-Austin, would have limited the legal strategy of blaming assaults on the victim's gender or sexual orientation .
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