Texas Republicans, Defiant as Always

[TexasTowelie]

As America equates Independence Day with a meat hangover, consider instead freedoms, like the First Amendment: a right to free speech, but not to be heard. Over the last few weeks, it's become blindingly clear: whether you're in the press or on the Supreme Court of the United States, Texas Republican leaders are defiantly deaf to you.

Case in point: Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton are both posturing constantly over the Supreme Court of the United States' 5-4 ruling to uphold the right to marriage equality. Abbott's response was to instruct heads of state agencies to "prioritize compliance with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, Article I of the Texas Constitution, and the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act." In short, he told them, if a staffer doesn't like gay marriages, they can just use their religion as an excuse to block a Supreme Court ruling. Paxton went further down that path by issuing an opinion telling county clerks that, if they objected to same sex marriage on religious grounds, they didn't have to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Unfortunately for their efforts to install theocracy by the back door, most county clerks have ignored Paxton's opinion. At the same time, the University of Texas is offering benefits to partners of employees in all marriages, not just what the right has dubbed "traditional marriage." Meanwhile, Paxton's opinion placed him on the business end of an ethics complaint. After all, a state attorney general cannot stick such a blatant thumb in the eye of SCOTUS and expect there to be no ramifications.

Their behavior was oddly reminiscent of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick going on a bizarre rant about the Texas Monthly's best and worst legislator list. The biennial institution is part analysis, part roast, with lawmakers glad to be on either end of the spectrum. Hey, it's all good copy, and anything is better than getting harpooned with the dreaded label of furniture, right?

Read more: http://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2015-07-05/texas-republicans-defiant-as-always/

[Gothmog]

1. Abbott is an idiot

This religious freedom crap is a really weak appeal to the tea party base

[DhhD]

2. Sometimes running for a State Office means the candidate has chosen to become an officer of the law

Last edited Tue Jul 7, 2015, 02:57 PM - Edit history (1)

not an officer of a religious church or organization. State offices would have to have a representative of every theology there is, in order to hand out the brotherhood of paperwork forms that each sect would request. The Founding forefathers realized that the separation of church and state, as is also in the Holy Bible, was the way to organize a representative democracy. The United States of America is one Republic, not a confederacy of States and not the Denomination Republic of the United State.

The 1860s documents of secession tell that, states in the mid 1860s, removed themselves from the Union of States, for the reason of preserving Slavery with some states admitting that their ratification of federal documents to become a part of the federal Union of States of America, otherwise know as The United States of America, was not the cause of their separation.

It seems to me that under the present TX AG and TX Governor, the State of Texas has been set up to be a lawless republic for each individual's religious theology. What happens to the rest of the citizens? Must they be in a certain religion to get a driver's licenses or get registered to vote?

Edited to correct 1880s to 1860s.