Texas scares the sh:)t out of me. They view fact-based education as some sort of act against God. They are currently in possession of a very dangerous weapon of mass destruction code-named Ted Cruz. And now — they are tastelessly taking a firm stance of stupidity against the Supreme Court's historic ruling on the protection of marriage equality.
TexasAttorney GeneralKen Paxton word-vomited on Sunday something about county clerks being able to refuse marriage licenses to same-sex couples if their religious objections prompt them to do so. "The United States Supreme Court again ignored the text and spirit of the Constitution to manufacture a right that simply does not exist," Paxton said in a statement, presumably while googling the Constitution and skimming it before deciding he didn't really care for it. "Texas must speak with one voice against this lawlessness."
Typical melodrama aside, Paxton's words are — bare minimum — factually incorrect. As the Cato Institute pointed out in a sweeping 2013 piece entitled "The Constitutional Case for Marriage Equality," excerpted briefly below, the Constitution actually enforces the opposite of what Paxton proposes:
In writing into the Fourteenth Amendment a requirement of equality under the law and equality of basic rights for all persons, which included the right to marry, the Amendment’s framers ensured that discriminatory state laws would not stand in the way of Americans exercising their right to marry. Laws that discriminate and deny to members of certain groups the right to marry the person of their choosing thus contravene the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Of course, the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause — adopted in 1868 — guarantees the "equal protection of the laws" to everyone. Perhaps Paxton was referencing some altered version of the Constitution from one of his state's bafflingly inaccurate textbooks? Maybe he's mixing up Bible verses with legal text?
Actually, no. He's just an assh:)le.
