Texas AG Paxton Makes Sure Texas Is On the Wrong Side of Same-Sex Marriage History

In 1967, T.W. Bruton of North Carolina was the only state attorney general willing to do what Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and fourteen other state's attorneys general did on Thursday. Bruton filed a friend of the court brief with the Supreme Court urging that it uphold Virginia's prohibition against interracial marriage struck down in Loving v. Virginia. Paxton has joined author Buddy Caldwell of Louisiana and 12 other pals to ask the Supreme Court not to extend marriage rights to the gay community.

Paxton and Caldwell -- joined by the attorneys general of Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina and West Virginia -- assert in their brief that the Roberts court shouldn't legalize same-sex marriage across the United States for a couple of reasons. First, they say, gays do not deserve the same 14th Amendment-based equal protection rights as other Americans and, second, the court legalizing marriage in the backwaters where it isn't currently legal would undermine the tremendous electoral victories won by the same-sex marriage movement in recent years.

"Many Americans believe in a new conception of marriage that would extend to same-sex relationships. Many do not," Caldwell says in his brief.

Those who don't, Caldwell argues, are entitled to respect because they maintain a long-held notion of traditional marriage. In 1664, Maryland became the first colony to criminalize interracial marriage. In 1958, 94 percent of white Americans were against of interracial marriage. Interracial marriage was illegal in Texas from 1837-1967, a 130-year tradition.

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