Project Summary:
In 2023, a fifth of the country’s state-level bills impacting the LGBTQ+ community were filed in Texas, according to a Human Rights Campaign analysis. Equality Texas tracked a record 141 such bills this year up from just 12 in 2015. Some policies passed and several others progressed substantially in the most recent legislative session. KXAN’s team of journalists – many LGBTQ+ staff members with unique, developed and inside perspectives providing nuance to our fair, rigorous and balanced reporting standards – produced multimedia stories like this one for the “OutLaw” project, taking an in-depth look at what this trend could mean for Texas’ future.
AUSTIN (KXAN) — For decades, Texas law has continued to contain a provision outlawing “homosexual conduct,” despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas that the measure is unconstitutional. State lawmakers have tried for years to get the measure – enacted in 1973 – removed from statute but have so far been unsuccessful.
An updated KXAN analysis shows at least 61 bills filed to repeal the provision since the early '80s, but none have passed. Forty-five of those followed the Court’s ruling. This legislative session, there are at least six such bills – including HB 1738 by Rep. Venton Jones, D-Dallas, which is set for a hearing before the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence Tuesday.
OutLaw: Criminalizing LGBTQ+ TexansRep. Venton Jones, D-Dallas, will lay out House Bill 1738 before the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee. He filed similar legislation in 2023 which aimed to repeal Texas’ ban on “homosexual conduct.” (Courtesy Office of Rep. Venton Jones)
In 2023, Jones – then a House freshman and the first openly gay state lawmaker in Texas – filed a similar proposal, documented in KXAN’s OutLaw investigation. It passed unanimously out of the same committee then but later stalled, never reaching the House floor for a vote. While that bill progressed further than its predecessors, without its passage the law remains on the books.
Critics of the measure say leaving it in limbo opens the possibility of its misuse by police who do not understand its legal status and lawmakers crafting other policies that could impact the LGBTQ+ community. Still listed in the Texas Penal Code, it contains only a brief notation indicating it is unenforceable due to the Supreme Court’s Lawrence decision – a Houston case highlighted by KXAN. That ruling rendered sodomy laws in more than a dozen states including Texas unconstitutional and unenforceable, reversing the 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick decision which had upheld a Georgia law criminalizing sodomy.
LGBTQ+ advocates in August during 2023 Austin Pride Festival near the Texas State Capitol. (KXAN Photo/Josh Hinkle)
But the decision did not force state lawmakers to remove the measure from their penal codes. Today, Texas, Kansas and Kentucky still list statutes outlawing homosexual sodomy.
Dale Carpenter, a constitutional law professor at Southern Methodist University and author of the book “Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence V. Texas,” previously told KXAN not repealing the laws in those states means they could one day go back into effect, if Lawrence were ever overturned.
“That old law – it just lays there like an unused whip,” he told KXAN. “A prosecutor could potentially pick it up again and use it for enforcement purposes or for other kinds of discriminatory actions.”
LISTEN: Catalyst Podcast On LGBTQ+ IssuesJones’ bill layout Tuesday will mark at least the 15th time in history Texas lawmakers have held a public hearing with witness testimony on such legislation, according to a KXAN analysis. As of 2023, the most consistent group against the legislation was the activist organization Texas Values, which had registered or testified 17 times against eight of the bills – far more than any other group. Texas Values seeks to influence public opinion and the legislative process in support of conservative causes through “effective education, research and issue advocacy,” with the goal of supporting “faith, family and freedom,” according to its website. The group has previously not commented on this topic to KXAN, despite our multiple attempts.
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