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 shouldn’t be penalizing people [who discriminate]… it wasn’t a problem when I was a child.
“Was it a problem when you were a kid? I don’t remember dudes walking around in dresses getting beat up. It wasn’t a thing, and now I think we’re 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 incumbent 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 recently compared gay people to termites, claiming homosexuality was created by the Soviet Union to destroy America.
Steven Hotze of Conservative Republicans of Texas warned: ““The homosexual movement has really infiltrated… think of them like termites.
“They get into the wood of the house and they eat away at the very moral fabric of the foundation of our country.
“This is exactly what the Marxist movement was all about… If you remember, [Soviet leader] Khrushchev came and said we’re 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 they’re living lives that are ungodly.
“When you do that, you lack moral courage, because you can’t very well stand up and oppose people doing wicked things if you’re participating in the same activities.
“Now you’ve got pornography… it’s legal to have pornography on the internet, but we, in some jurisdictions of the country, you can’t stand up and say that homosexuality is wrong or immoral activity, whether it’s the promotion of adultery or premarital sex, we can’t say that that’s wrong because that’s hate speech.
“But it’s perfectly legal according to allow pornography to be perpetrated upon our public, and even in our public schools to be taught and shown.”
