Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is the only statewide elected official in Texas willing to say that he opposes the state’s ban on gay sex.
“Consenting adults should be able to do what they wish in their private sexual activity, and government has no business in their bedrooms,” a spokesperson for Cruz said, adding that the state sodomy law was “an uncommonly silly law.”
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the Court should “reconsider” the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision, which overturned state laws that criminalized homosexuality. Last month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said that he would be open to defending a state law to ban homosexuality again and take the case to the Supreme Court.
So the Dallas Morning News asked Texas’s statewide elected officials whether they think that the state’s ban on “homosexual conduct” – which is still on the books – should be repealed.
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No one answered except for Cruz, which comes as a surprise considering his recent statement that the Supreme Court was “clearly wrong” to legalize marriage equality in the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision. Cruz said the Court was “overreaching” because it ruled, “Now every state must sanction and permit gay marriage.”
While he can’t accept the individual liberty argument in favor of allowing people to marry whoever they want, he apparently can understand it when it comes to sex between consenting adults.
Other officials the Dallas Morning News asked include Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), Gov. Greg Abbott (R), and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R). Speaker of the Texas House Dade Phelan (R) declined to comment on the possibility of repealing the state sodomy law during the legislature’s next session in 2023, although several bills Democratic lawmakers filed to repeal the sodomy law last year weren’t allowed to come up for debate.
Cornyn criticized the Lawrence decision in 2004, saying it would bring about “a rather ominous succession of events” including marriage equality.
Earlier this year, the Texas GOP adopted a platform that called homosexuality “an abnormal lifestyle choice.”
