Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Texas have some protections in state law but may face legal and social challenges not faced by others. Same-sex sexual activity was decriminalized in Texas in 2003 by the Lawrence v. Texas ruling, although the state legislature has not repealed its sodomy laws. On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled bans on same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional in Obergefell v. Hodges.
Texas has a hate crime statute that strengthens penalties for certain crimes motivated by a victim's sexual orientation, although crimes are rarely prosecuted under the statute. The law does not cover gender identity. While some localities in Texas have ordinances that provide a variety of legal protections and benefits to LGBT people, Texas has had no statewide law banning anti-LGBT discrimination. The federal protections against employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, established in 2020 by several landmark cases, apply in Texas.
A majority of Texans support same-sex marriage and anti-discrimination laws for LGBT people.
Laws regarding same-sex sexual activity
Sodomy ban
Until the U. S. Supreme Court in June 2003 declared sodomy laws unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas. Sodomy was a criminal offense in Texas, termed "deviate sexual intercourse". As of 2023, Texas is one of the three states whose dormant sodomy laws only apply to same-sex sexual acts, alongside Kentucky and Kansas. Several bills repealing the sodomy bans were introduced since 2003, but none of them made it past the committee stage.
Romeo and Juliet law
Texas provides an affirmative defense to a person who has engaged in unlawful sexual contact with a child under 17 years of age, if the person is not more than three years older than the child, so long as the person is not of the child's same sex. There has been no published constitutional challenge of this statute since the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, in which the court held that same-sex marriage bans breach the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Texas has been the only state to maintain such a distinction on its books since the Kansas Supreme Court found a similar Kansas statute to be unconstitutional in 2005. During the Legislature's 2013 regular session, House Bill 2403, introduced by Representative Mary González, House Bill 3322, introduced by Representative Coleman, and Senate Bill 1316, introduced by Senator John Whitmire, would have repealed this distinction; however, none of these bills was passed by its chamber of origin.
Recognition of same-sex relationships
Marriage
On June 26, 2015, the United States legalized same-sex marriage nationwide due to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. In September 2015, it was reported that 2,500 same-sex marriage licenses had been issued in the state since June.
History
The first legal challenge to Texas' ban on marriage between two people of the same sex came in 1972 when Travis Co Attorney Ned Granger requested an opinion from Attorney General Crawford Martin on the legality of issuing such licenses. Martin issued an opinion that, despite the lack of a specific prohibition against same-sex marriage in statute, it was not legally permitted. In 1973, the Texas Family Code was amended by House Bill 103 to explicitly state that a marriage license may only be issued to a man and a woman. HB 103 became effective on January 1, 1974.
In 1997, Texas banned the issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Additional legislation in 2003 forbade the recognition of any same-sex marriages or civil unions. In 2005, voters approved a referendum that added those restrictions to the Constitution of Texas.
On February 26, 2014, Judge Orlando Luis Garcia, of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, found that Texas's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. On April 23, 2014, Judge Barbara Nellermoe, of the 45th Judicial District Court of Bexar County, found that Texas's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. Both cases were appealed by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.
In February 2015, two state judges in Travis County held the state's ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. One ordered the recognition of a common-law marriage between two women and the other order the county clerk to issue a marriage license to two women. They obtained their license and wed before Attorney General Ken Paxton obtained stays from the Texas Supreme Court and asked that court to void the marriage license.