Sexual orientation and the State of Texas

I've been a Texan all my life even though I was born in Pennsylvania. I got to Texas before I was 5 so close enough. I find taking pride in something you had no choice in (like the color of your skin or the size of your feet) kind of lame but being from Texas holds a pretty special place in the whole "I'm from " race.

That being said, there are some things about Texas, well more precisely, Texans that really piss me off. Tom DeLay is a good example of a lot of them but two bills before the Texas Legislature illustrate a few more.

The first one was this: Child Protective Servces

This was all about improving child protective services andassessing stiffer penalties for child abuse but, as they will do, this guy, Rep Robert Talton, snuck in a little amendment. It's really hard to find but if you click on the amendments and scroll all the way down till you find amendment 60 and click on the text, you get this little goodie:


Amend CSSB 6, in Article 1 of the bill, by adding the
following appropriately numbered SECTION to that article and
renumbering the subsequent SECTIONS of that article as appropriate:
SECTIONA___.
Subchapter B, Chapter 264, Family Code, is
amended by adding Section 264.1064 to read as follows:
Sec.A264.1064.
FOSTER PARENT DISQUALIFICATION. (a) The
department shall require an applicant who is applying to serve as a
foster parent or a foster parent whose performance is being
evaluated by the department to state whether the applicant or
foster parent is homosexual or bisexual.
(b)If the applicant or foster parent states that the
applicant or foster parent is homosexual or bisexual, the
department may not:
(1)allow the applicant to serve as a foster parent;
(2)place a child with the foster parent; or
(3)allow a child to remain in foster care with the
foster parent.
(c)Notwithstanding an applicant’s or foster parent’s
statement that the applicant or foster parent is not homosexual or
bisexual, if the department determines after a reasonable
investigation that an applicant or a foster parent is homosexual or
bisexual, the department may not:
(1)allow the applicant to serve as a foster parent;
(2)place a child with the foster parent; or
(3)allow a child to remain in foster care with the
foster parent.

So, it seems we have so many qualified foster parents that we can afford to not only deny people who apply to be foster parents based on their sexual orientation but take kids away from anyone who is not totally and 100% committed hetereosexual. This Tarlton guy was quoted as saying that since homosexuality was a learned behavior, kids should not be exposed to it but instead, be free to choose how they want it when they turn 18. More on this after the next piece of legislation.

This one is a little more direct: Same Sex marriage

This one has a lot of steam. Same sex marriage is already illegal in Texas but I guess they felt like one of dem der liberal reactionist judges might find a loophole so they wanted to make sure and be specific about it.

OK, anyone who knows me knows how I feel about this issue but this is a blog and blogs are all about just blathering on so here goes.

First, for most people, sexual orientation is not a choice and which way you swing is not a learned behavior. I don't need a degree in psychology to tell you this, all I have to do is walk down the street. Try it, open your mind (that's the hard part), walk down the street and see who flicks your bic. Next, analyze where your reaction to certain people come from. Did you learn to drool at the hot chica with the big boobs or the buff dude in the tank top or was that reaction instinctual? It doesn't take much to see what I'm talking about.

So, let's say for the sake of argument that it is learned behavior. I'm from Vernon, Texas where the words nigger, faggot, asshole and traitor all bear equal weight. However, I know gay people from Vernon who were gay before they ever left the city limits. Who taught them to be gay? I don't remember any gay classes at school or church, we didn't play gay games on the playground, so how did these people learn to be gay? Of course, people like Senor Tarlton never think these kind of things through.

The problem is that every time he thinks about seeing two people of the same sex walking down the street holding hands it either a) turns him on or b) makes him sick. Either one gets that little crimp in his lip and so, since he happens to be in a position of power, he's gonna make sure he never has to encounter anything like that.

What really chaps my hide is this whole defense of marriage bullshit. No one has ever explained to me how any two people getting married affects any other two married people. Am I suddenly gonna dump my wife of 30 years and go find me a Bruce just because some gay couple gets a marriage license? The whole argument makes about as much sense as marijauna being illegal while 1000s of other intoxicating substances are not.

Anyway, that's my state.