Anti-LGBTQ+ Texas attorney general Ken Paxton’s wife files for divorce on ‘biblical grounds’

Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, who once called the LGBTQ+ community ‘immoral’, is facing a divorce following adultery accusations.

Angela Paxton, the 62-year-old politician’s wife, filed for divorce on Thursday (10 July) over what she described as “recent discoveries.”

The couple’s 38-year marriage is set to end over two years after a state impeachment trial revealed that Ken Paxton engaged in an extramarital affair.

Sticking by her husband through the controversy, as well as decades of legal troubles over accusations of federal and state corruption, Angela Paxton said she chose to file for divorce on “biblical grounds.”

“I believe marriage is a sacred covenant and I have earnestly pursued reconciliation,” she wrote in an X/Twitter post. “But in light of recent discoveries, I do not believe that it honors God or is loving to myself, my children, or Ken to remain in the marriage.

“I move forward with complete confidence that God is always working everything together for the good of those who love Him and who are called according to His purpose,” she continued.

In his own statement on X/Twitter, Ken Paxton asked for “prayers and privacy at this time.”

The notoriously anti-LGBTQ+ attorney general has, in the decade he has held the position, made countless policy decisions and political moves to try and remove the rights of LGBTQ+ people in Texas.

In 2023, Paxton was heavily criticised for trying to access private medical records of trans children both in Texas and in other states, prompting a Seattle-based hospital to sue his office for political overreach.

He made similar moves in 2022 after demanding, and failing, to obtain a list of every trans person in Texas, including personal details, driving license information, and more.

At the same time, Paxton’s office threatened to defund an Austin, Texas school board over its LGBTQ+ curriculum. In an X/Twitter post on the matter, Ken Paxton described the LGBTQ+ community as “sexual propagandists and predators,” while saying LGBTQ+ views are “immoral and illegal.”

During his first year in office in 2015, Paxton was a vocal opponent to Obergefell v Hodges – a Supreme Court decision which codified the right for same-sex couples to marry in the US – saying at the time that it impeded on “rights to free exercise of religion and freedom of speech.”

His office attempted to defend county clerks who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, saying he would “do everything” to prevent same-sex marriage in the state.

His campaign against same-sex relationships continued up to 2022, when he suggested that Texas would reintroduce sodomy laws should the Supreme Curt repeal Lawrence v Texas, which prevented laws criminalising homosexuality in the US.