House Bill 4105, authored by Rep. Cecil Bell (R), didn’t make it to the floor for a vote yesterday, in spite of Texas Republicans prioritizing it over a school funding bill. The “Preservation of Sovereignty and Marriage Act” (saving marriage from “Teh Gayz” and preserving Texas’ sovereignty with respect to its desire to ignore an upcoming US Supreme Court ruling likely striking down gay marriage bans) would have banned state, county and local officials from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Antigay bills such as this may seem like just a mean-spirited, last ditch effort to deny equality to gay and lesbian couples for just a bit longer, but they actually have a more insidious purpose:
Anti-gay bills are a grandstanding move that allows elected Republicans to claim they’re doing what their constituents want, in spite of a survey from more than a year ago that shows that, even in Texas, more people support marriage equality than not. These likely illegal laws that require state officials to refuse to obey a federal judicial decision are just stalling tactics that buy conservatives a few more votes from people hostile to LGBTs.
Bait & switch tactics distract voters from a mostly pro-business, anti-worker agenda. Picking on “The Other” is the same old ploy Republicans have always used: Poor whites were encouraged to vote for Rs against their own economic interests when the Dems ended Jim Crow and segregation. After the issue of marriage equality for same-sex couples is finally put to rest, all Republicans will have left to rile up their base is God, guns, abortion and good ole racism. Good on Democrats everywhere for finally pulling the anti-gay brick out from under the Republican platform!
These divisive tactics are pretty much all the Republicans have any more. Federal law trumps state law, but legal challenges take time. Which means a last minute anti-gay law passed this year could reap votes from homophobes through the next major election. We dodged a bullet yesterday, but the issue is not over, even if SCOTUS declares marriage equality the law of the land next month based our Fourteenth Amendment rights.
The deadline has passed for HB4105 to get a first full-chamber vote, but there’s still a chance of it being revived as an amendment to another bill. If it is, or if other states jump in to pass this kind of mean-spirited legislation, the marriage equality issue could drag out through the 2016 campaign and affect Hillary Clinton’s inevitability in the presidential race.
Keep an eye out in your local legislatures, blue states.