Ted Cruz is the Only Texas Official Calling to End Sodomy Ban

For 50 years, the state of Texas has had a law banning “homosexual conduct,” and now Ted Cruz is the only statewide elected official to publicly call for overturning the law. Cruz’s spokesman tells The Dallas Morning News, “Consenting adults should be able to do what they wish in their private sexual activity, and government has no business in their bedrooms.” 

The bill, colloquially known as the sodomy ban, which outlaws sexual acts between two individuals of the same gender, is currently unenforceable given the Supreme Courts 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas. Discussion of the bill has come up again, given Justice Clarence Thomas’s comments in his ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade in which he called for the court to overturn Lawrence, Obergefell, and Griswold. 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has stated that he would be open to defending a state law banning homosexuality in order to take the case to the Supreme Court. 

Following these comments, The Dallas Morning News asked Texas’ statewide elected officials whether they thought the state’s ban on “homosexual conduct” should be repealed. Ted Cruz was the only one to answer. This was surprising, given that Cruz recently stated that the Supreme Court was “clearly wrong” to legalize marriage equality and that the court overreached when it ruled that every state must permit same-gender marriage. 

It is unsurprising that the majority of republican lawmakers in the state of Texas have declined to comment on overturning the sodomy ban, especially given that the Texas GOP adopted a platform that calls homosexuality an “abnormal lifestyle choice.” Texas democrats have introduced several bills that would repeal the sodomy ban, but they weren’t allowed to come up for debate. 

While the attitude of Texas republicans, on the whole, isn’t surprising, it does feel like we’ve gone down the rabbit hole, so to speak, to have Ted Cruz be the most reasonable person speaking on the issue.