HOUSTON — The Texas Republican Party adopted a new platform for 2022 at its state convention over the weekend, including a call for the state to officially “recognize that pornography is a public health hazard.”
The assertion is then repeated again in the new platform, as part of an additional call for Texas to recognize “that pornography and pedophilia are public health hazards.” Both calls, including the second one randomly linking pornography with pedophilia, are now official planks of the Texas GOP for the 2022 election. They are included in the platform document as sections 149 and 151 of the subheading “Substance Abuse & Addiction.”
The “Substance Abuse & Addiction” subheading begins with a statement of opposition to the “legalization and decriminalization of illicit natural and/or illegal synthetic drugs,” then declares support for “the exercise of a zero-tolerance policy with maximum penalty for illegal drug manufacturers and distributors,” opposition to “any needle exchange programs,” a call for “faith-based rehabilitation programs” to be considered for inclusion in rehabilitation programs and a plea for Congress to “remove cannabis from the list of Schedule 1 and move to Schedule 2.”
This is followed by section 149: “Pornography Crisis: The State of Texas shall recognize that pornography is a public health hazard.”
Section 150 then calls for a “Ban on Exposing Minors to Pornography Online.”
“We call upon our elected leaders to compel any websites displaying pornographic content in Texas to implement age verification for preventing minors from accessing the content, and to block or punish any such websites that continue to make such material available to minors.”
After the age verification proposal, section 151 redundantly repeats the heading “Pornography Crisis,” and expands that second call to a plea that “the State of Texas shall recognize that pornography and pedophilia are public health hazards.”
The last time the GOP drafted a national official platform, in 2016, it declared porn “a public health crisis.” The GOP shelved that platform after Donald Trump’s nomination and has deliberately refrained from putting its agenda in any formal document ever since, with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) as the main enforcer among his colleagues of the “no platform” stance.
As XBIZ reported, a peer-reviewed study by Boston University researchers published in 2020 concluded that there is no actual "public health crisis" connected to pornography, and that efforts to get legislation passed in several U.S. states are driven by a religious agenda.
The War on Non-Shame-Based Sexual Education
The Republican conventioneers also want Texas to criminalize sex education. The platform demands that the state legislature “pass a law prohibiting the teaching of sex education, sexual health or sexual choice or identity in any public school in any grade whatsoever, or disseminating or permitting the dissemination by any party of any material regarding the same.
“All school districts, individual schools, or charter schools are prohibited from contracting with or making any payment to any third party for material concerning any of the above topics. Until this prohibition goes into effect, sexual education shall only utilize sexual risk avoidance programs and promote abstinence outside of marriage. Before a student may be provided with human sexuality or family planning instruction, the district must obtain the written consent of the student’s parent or guardian,” the platform states.
Section 106, on “Inappropriate and/or Harmful Content,” urges the Texas legislature to pass “legislation that requires Texas schools and libraries to filter inappropriate and/or harmful content, such as pornography, for minors. Operators of adult sex entertainment businesses and venues, adult entertainment of any kind, including Drag Queen Story Hour, shall not be part of educational programming in public schools, libraries or any other taxpayer-funded program for children. We support passage of a law more comprehensive than the Florida law that prohibits instruction in sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools.”
As for “Healthcare in Public Schools,” the Texas Republicans demand that their legislators “shall prohibit reproductive healthcare services, including counseling, referrals and distribution of condoms and contraception through public schools.”
The platform also urges immediate repeal of an "Obscenity Exemption" in the Texas penal code that exempts educational and scientific materials from prosecution for "sale, distribution, or display of harmful material" to minors, as the Texas Republicans maintain that this provision "allows children access to harmful, explicit or pornographic materials under the guise of education."
The War Against LGTBQ+ People
Section 143, simply titled “Homosexuality,” declares that “homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice.”
“We believe,” the Texas Republicans profess, that “there should be no granting of special legal entitlements or creation of special status for homosexual behavior, regardless of state of origin, and we oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values. No one should be granted special legal status based on their LGBTQ+ identification.”
The next section of the Texas GOP platform urges the party to “oppose all efforts to validate transgender identity.”
To read the entire 2022 platform adopted by the Texas Republican Party, click here.
