Being A Texas Republican: "An Abnormal Lifestyle Choice"
The Texas GOP has determined that if you're not Texan, Republican, Christian, and heterosexual, you ain't sh*t
I lived in Texas from 1997 to 2007, so I’ve had a long-standing interest in Texas politics, mainly for its entertainment value. The Texas GOP has long been the province of the fundamentalist Far-Right and other religious nut jobs, so the yearly party conventions have long presented a wealth of comic relief.
I ran for Governor of Texas in 2002 as a write-in candidate, because I figured I could do at least as well as Rick Perry. Who wouldn’t have been able to? Perry was a cardboard cut-out with all the personality of creamed okra.
I received 11 write-in votes, and thus ended my political career in the Lone Star State. It was more fun being on the sidelines, anyway. And I could never compete with the Texas GOP for sheer comedic value.
The news of what happened at the party’s 2022 convention in Houston this past weekend is as humorous as it is terrifying. These people firmly believe that God is on their side and that they and ONLY they are the rightful rulers of the world.
Of course, most of the Texas Republicans at their party’s conventions who refer to themselves as “Christians” understand as much about the Gospel of Jesus Christ as I do about the inner workings of a nuclear weapon. They’re big on the Old Testament, which involves a lot of smiting and destroying one’s enemies. Sadly, they ignore the New Testament, in which Jesus preaches about love, tolerance, inclusion, and acceptance, qualities they reject out of hand.
Texas Republicans are also big believers in the 2nd Amendment, or at least the last 14 words of it. That's the part most convenient to their belief that they should be allowed to carry whatever amount of firepower they want wherever they choose.
They’ve chosen to conveniently ignore the first 13 words of the 2nd Amendment because it would invalidate their cherry-picked conviction if they didn't. That they see no conflict in their iron-clad belief is hardly surprising. After all, when God’s on your side, conflicts are for faithless losers and Godless Liberals.
And it was all part of the biggest takeaway from the Texas GOP convention- the Texas GOP is no longer making any pretense of trying to camouflage their Far-right extremism. They’re openly embracing it, and they don’t care who knows about it. Their revised party platform rejects American democracy in favor of one-party rule- which would be a Republican theocracy, of course.
It was part of a litany of alarming behavior one wouldn’t normally have expected from Republicans in the past. Still, the Texas GOP in 2022 is a party badly in need of a healthy dose of Thorazine.
And remedial lessons in the Constitution.
The convention passed a resolution declaring that Joe Biden's election as President of the United States was illegitimate.
Before the convention even began, the Log Cabin Republicans (an LGBTQ group) were barred from attending.
The Texas GOP wants to have its Far-Right religious beliefs enshrined into law (WHAT separation of Church and State?)
The party’s revised platform declares homosexuality “an abnormal lifestyle choice.”
The Texas GOP also urged “lawmakers to enact legislation to abolish abortion by immediately securing the right to life and equal proaction of the laws to all preborn children from the moment of fertilization.”
The platform calls for the abolition of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The party opposes efforts to classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
The platform calls for enforced Christian prayer “being returned to our schools, courthouses, and other government buildings.”
The Texas GOP is asking Texans to vote to secede from the Union.
So, for those of you keeping score at home, the Texas GOP used their 2022 annual convention to go full MAGA…and then some.
With the party’s commitment to God, guns, religious intolerance, and the complete rejection of anything not White, Conservative, Christian, and heterosexual, there’s a question no one seems willing to ask. Perhaps it’s because they fear the answer.
(She’s a witch!! She’s a witch!! Burn her at the stake!!)
With Republicans displaying such a remarkably fierce and inflexible intolerance to anyone they deem unacceptable, how long will it be before they begin solving these “problems” violently? The insane commitment of Texas Republicans to their cherry-picked interpretation of the 2nd Amendment allows these “patriots” to be armed beyond reason. Many of them could be ready to go at a moment’s notice.
Perhaps I’m being alarmist. Or maybe I’m asking reasonable questions given my experience from a decade living in the Lone Star State and the direction the Texas GOP is taking. I’m not someone who immediately leaps to the worst-case scenario; but neither do I believe rational people should ignore the possibility that Texas Republicans consider violence a realistic option.
My decade in Texas taught me one thing I know to be true- the Texas GOP is, if I may speak plainly, f*****g nuts. They have no sense that there are valid belief systems outside their own. They believe that THEIR flavor of God is the One, True, and ONLY faith. All others are false gods worthy only of destruction. To many, “destruction” can mean anything up to and including violence, if necessary.
The possibility of violence has increased exponentially since Donald Trump began campaigning for President in 2015. His racism and “othering” of non-Whites and non-Christians permitted those willing to use violence in pursuit of their agenda to prepare for that eventuality. I believe it’s only a matter of time before race/sexuality/politically-based violence breaks out on a large scale.
Once that genie’s out of the bottle, our democracy may be in mortal peril. I hope I’m wrong, but from what I see, I don’t believe I am. So ultimately, I think it’s not a question of “if” but “when.”
And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it starts in Texas and spreads from there.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
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Let's sell Texas back to Mexico for, say, $2 trillion (less than 2 years of Mexico's GDP.) We'll knock down the border wall between Mexico and Texas, allowing any and all Mexicans to move into their new northern territory, then we use the $2 trillion to build a wall around THE REST of Texas, and enter into trade agreements with Texan producers only through negotiations with Mexico. (Yeah, of course we'll have to grant amnesty to people from Austin. They'll probably only have to spend a mere few weeks in cages while we iron that out.) Naturally, Texas will no longer have 36 members of Congress they will have none. They would also lose their 2 Senate seats. Unless Mexican rule changes everything, based on their newly stated platform, the USA and other countries could deny them entrance into (or remove them from) the United Nations. (Meanwhile, just as a fun side-note, Mexico is set to legalize marijuana, and abortion is legal. But, hey Texas should love this - 78% of Mexicans a Christian!)
Oops. Dash between "Congress" and "they," and "are" (not "a") as the word before the last. Bad proofreading - sorry!