Get up, walk the dog – my life is mundane, but because I’m gay Texas Republicans think I’m abnormal

by ARWA MAHDAWI

Demonstrators at the Texas state capitol protest against anti-trans bills in May 2021. PHOTO/Eric Gay/AP

The state party has unveiled a truly frightening official platform that rejects the result of the 2020 election, seeks to make racial discrimination legal and demonises LGBTQ+ people

This morning, I woke up earlier than I wanted to, fed the baby, walked the dog, chatted with my wife and procrastinated over some work. Yawningly mundane, right?

Wrong. According to the Texas Republican party, my same-sex marriage is an “abnormal lifestyle choice”. What’s more, “abnormal” people like me should not have any “special legal entitlements” related to being LGBTQ+. That position is spelled out in section 143 of a far-right platform officially adopted at the Texas Republican party’s recent convention in Houston.

Delegates didn’t stop there. The new platform oozes hatred and is riddled with conspiracy theories. It is vehemently anti-transgender, asserts that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected and demands that the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which banned racial discrimination in elections, be “repealed and not reauthorized”. The mask hasn’t slipped – it has been ripped right off.

While this platform doesn’t carry any legal weight, it signposts the direction in which the Republican party is going. “The platform is largely symbolic, but important as a measure of ideological drift,” a political scientist told the Texas Tribune. It is the latest evidence that the lunatic far-right fringe in the US is getting a lot more loony and a lot less fringe. It is very frightening.

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