Thousands of Republican delegates meeting in Houston at the state’s party convention agreed to a resolution that rejects the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and booed a US Senator who helped cobble together a compromise intended to reduce gun violence after more children were murdered in their school.
The GOP resolution calls President Joe Biden an illegitimate pretender, despite dozens of court cases, validated counts and recounts and a complete lack of evidence to support the outlandish notion that election loser Donald Trump was victorious in 2020.
The delegates also called for the repeal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was passed to end discrimination against Black Americans at the polls, as well as for secession.
Separately, a party platform presented to convention delegates labeled homosexuality “an abnormal lifestyle choice.”
According to the Texas Tribune, the platform also advocates for children to learn in school about “the humanity of the preborn child,” promoting new messaging after the state has taken steps to vastly restrict abortion.
Republican delegates also adopted measures calling on legislators to outlaw abortion, defund public schools, take away health care, repeal gun laws, deny voting rights and reject marijuana legalization.
Less than a month after 19 children and two teachers were shot to death at a Texas elementary school, Republican convention delegates adopted a formal “rebuke” of Sen. John Cornyn for engaging in bipartisan gun-control talks.
Attendees also loudly booed him when he gave a convention speech trying to explain his potential legislation.
The rhetoric on gay rights in particular represents a reversal after years of growing comfort within the Republican Party with equal rights for LGBTQ Americans and polls showing large majorities of voters now support same-sex marriage while opposing discrimination.
It comes amid a surge in hate speech and violence directed at LGBTQ people and a new push among staunch conservative circles to attack even the mere mention of sexuality as somehow “grooming” children.
Intraparty divisions were also on display in a video circulated by right-wing personality Alex Stein showing Stein and supporters accosting Rep. Dan Crenshaw in a hotel hallway, calling him a traitor and “eyepatch McCain” — a slur coined by Fox News personality Tucker Carlson.
For months, Crenshaw — who wears an eyepatch because of an injury sustained while serving as a Navy SEAL in Afghanistan — has been heckled as a Republican in Name Only, or RINO, like deceased former senator John McCain.
The Texas Heartbeat Act banned abortions once an ultrasound can detect cardiac activity, around six weeks of pregnancy.