Texas legislature still contains an antiquated law that labels gay sex as a misdemeanor, and although it hasn’t been enforceable for over 20 years, there is a push to remove this hurtful language from the state’s legal system entirely.
Yes, it’s true—In the year 2024, the legislature of the great state of Texas still contains a ban on “homosexual conduct” or, according to their penal code, “deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex.” While it was ruled to be unconstitutional along with other state laws that banned sodomy between consenting adults in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the language is still present within the legislature while being unenforceable. Although defunct, gay sex is still considered a “misdemeanor” punishable by a fine of up to $500.
This has been a point of reasonable contention within the state government for the past several years. While Texas Democrats have been pushing to repeal the law, especially as of late with the uncertain state of queer rights in this country, the state’s Republican Party platform labels homosexuality as an “abnormal lifestyle choice.” There was an appeal to remove the language in 2023, but it was ultimately struck down by the overwhelming Republican majority within the state legislature.
The fight to remove the language picks up most recently with State Representatives Joe Moody and José Menéndez of the Democratic Party filed bills on the first day they could do so for the upcoming legislative session. These bills not only advocate for removing the criminalization of gay sex from the state’s legal system, but also ask that Texas law no longer requires educational materials distributed within schools to state that homosexuality is “not an acceptable lifestyle,” a controversial law that is currently fully on the books.
Unfortunately, on that same day, bills were also filed against queer rights, containing advocacy for bathroom bans as well as ending legal recognition of trans identities entirely. Texas has been something of a poster child for the Republican party’s effort to revoke queer rights in the United States—most recently, the city of Odessa placed a literal bounty on the heads of trans people using the bathroom that ascribes to their gender identity.
