Texas lawmaker mocks ‘dudes in dresses getting beat up’
A Republican lawmaker has explained he wants to roll back LGBT rights protections because he doesn’t want to “encourage dudes walking around in dresses”.
Texas state rep. Briscoe Cain made the appalling comments during a discussion on Senate Bill 6, one of several bills filed in Texas during this legislative term that would seek to minimise LGBT rights protections.
At a panel event thrown by the Texas Tribune, Cain explained his reasons for supporting the bill, which is aimed at gutting local LGBT rights ordinances.
He said: “We shouldnāt be penalizing people [who discriminate]… it wasnāt a problem when I was a child.
“Was it a problem when you were a kid? I donāt remember dudes walking around in dresses getting beat up. It wasnāt a thing, and now I think weāre encouraging it.”
The New Civil Rights Movement points out that Cain himself has been on the receiving end of anti-LGBT smears in the past.
During the Republican primary in which he defeated incumbentĀ Wayne Smith, Cain was subject to a third-party flier that alleged “Briscoe Cain is well known to those who frequent Montrose area night clubs and gay bars”.
“Houston voters want to keep men out of women’s locker rooms and restrooms. District 128 voters should keep Briscoe Cain out of men’s restrooms as well.”
One of Cain’s Texas GOP colleagues recentlyĀ compared gay people to termites, claiming homosexuality was created by the Soviet Union to destroy America.
Steven Hotze of Conservative Republicans of Texas warned: “āThe homosexual movement has really infiltratedā¦ think of them like termites.
āThey get into the wood of the house and they eat away at the very moral fabric of the foundation of our country.
āThis is exactly what the Marxist movement was all aboutā¦ If you remember, [Soviet leader] Khrushchev came and said weāre going to get your country one way or another, and the way they want to do it is to destroy the moral fabric and create moral anarchy in our country so that our people no longer live righteous lives but theyāre living lives that are ungodly.
āWhen you do that, you lack moral courage, because you canāt very well stand up and oppose people doing wicked things if youāre participating in the same activities.
āNow youāve got pornographyā¦ itās legal to have pornography on the internet, but we, in some jurisdictions of the country, you canāt stand up and say that homosexuality is wrong or immoral activity, whether itās the promotion of adultery or premarital sex, we canāt say that thatās wrong because thatās hate speech.
āBut itās perfectly legal according to allow pornography to be perpetrated upon our public, and even in our public schools to be taught and shown.ā
