So this morning, while reading some news sites, I was pretty profoundly disappointed--note: not surprised--to find that the Texas GOP have sunk to a new low. Two new lows, really. I don't think things were this bad before the rise of the Tea Party Republicans, who make regular ol' conservatives look like liberals. Now, though, the idiots in Texas politics make me glad that I won't be living in Texas much longer and that I'm not a conservative.
First, they've decided that their party platform doesn't believe in climate change. Never mind the very sound science that supports climate change. They've just decided that it's a scam and they're encouraging constituents to ignore pleas for money when they're connected to initiatives to either slow or study climate change. All I can think is that they don't really understand it and rather than bothering to become educated, they're just sticking their heads in the sand and denying it exists at all. I won't lie, I don't see how denying climate change furthers their party's platform (either in Texas or nationally).
As though the climate change issue wasn't bad enough, their new platform is also supporting so-called "reparative therapy" for gay minors. They say they support it "for those patients seeking healing and wholeness from their homosexual lifestyle." These people actually support sending children to therapy to fix their "homosexual lifestyle." Don't they realize that children are most fragile during their formative years? They don't even have fully-formed brains, yet the Texas GOP supports brainwashing them into believing their "homosexual lifestyle" is wrong. Also, really, children don't have a "homosexual lifestyle," they're children.
They're proposing this ludicrous and potentially damaging "therapy" rather than supporting gay marriage, which has recently won a victory in Texas when a federal judge struck down the ban on same-sex marriage. The only good coming from the platform changes is that some gay conservatives (talk about people who vote against their best interests!!) are working toward getting the language about homosexuality in the party's platform removed. Currently it says that "homosexuality tears at the fabric of society."
I cannot wait to leave this state behind. I'm almost certain I'll never come back or at least not without protest. These people clearly don't live in the real world, where climate change is a very visible thing. They definitely don't see that being against gay marriage is being on the wrong side of history. After all, these are the very people who would have (and did) fight against interracial marriage. It's disgraceful for a political party to be so hateful. Shame on them.
