The late and great Molly Ivins referred to the Texas
Legislature as a “box of rocks.” I think she is being charitable. I am using
her turn of phrase because I can’t come up with a more pejorative, but non-vulgar,
description for the body’s latest stupidity.
The Dallas Morning News reports (here)
that budget writers have proposed that “health clinics affiliated with abortion
providers wouldn’t be eligible to participate in the combined federal and
state-funded Breast and Cervical Cancer Screening program, which provides free
screenings and diagnostic tests to low-income and uninsured women in Texas.”
It’s one thing for the Lege to take away the ability of local
governments to control their own destinies. That law, signed by Greg Abbott,
who is a mean-spirited but smarter snake than Rick Perry, was expected because
the oil and gas industry owns the Lege. The industry wanted to end the fracking
bans such as that passed in Denton. After all, when you buy a legislature, you
want it to stay bought. Understandable in our political landscape of corporatist
plutocracy.
But the move against Planned Parenthood and another measure,
one “protecting” against lawsuits those pastors who refuse to officiate at
same-sex weddings (here),
show that the Texas Legislature is now a Christian theocracy. Read this second Dallas
Morning News article and you’ll also see that the Lege is also interfering in
the internal workings of individual denominations.
Is there an over-arching explanation for the Texas
Legislature to act this way? Yes. It’s a reflection of a dumbed down America
and an even worse dumbed down Texas. The most important question of all is
whether this can be reversed before people like Abbott, Dan Patrick, Ted Cruz
and the other theocrats fully control our government.
