This week in Texas politics: 63 Republicans have signed onto an amicus brief supporting the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, arguing that marriage equality will lead to the legalization of polygamy, incest and pedophilia.

“The district court broadened the definition of the ‘existing right to marry’ as one that includes the right of people to ‘select the partners of their choosing’ for marriage, without regard to sex,” the brief contends. “If the right to select ‘partners of their choosing’ is the criterion used to invoke marriage as a fundamental right, then marriage restrictions on age, polygamy, and consanguinity are also ripe for challenge.” …

“Another ground cited by supporters of Texas’s marriage laws and subsequently dismissed by the district court is that recognition of same-sex marriage ‘could lead to the recognition of bigamy, incest, pedophilia, and group marriage,’” the brief continued. “As already discussed in this brief, restrictions on marriage relating to these moral considerations remain valid. Thus, the goal of actively trying to prevent those practices from becoming valid is entirely rational public policy.”

While the Republican lawmakers concede that “recognition of pedophilia or other morally reprehensible actions” may not actually be the “logical next step” following marriage equality, they maintain that legislators enacted Texas’ marriage laws “with the intention of supporting marriage arrangements that they believe support valid goals related to those concerns.”

Texas has one of the highest percentages of people without health insurance in the country. Education rates are lagging, with fewer people holding high school diplomas and college degrees than in most of the country. It has the sixth highest poverty rate of the United States + DC.

And yet THIS is what these politicians are worried about. Cool.

Eleven Republican senators have introduced a bill that would allow anti-gay churches and religious nonprofits to maintain their tax-exempt status, giving them a way to legally discriminate against LGBT people.

The Marriage and Religious Freedom Act would prohibit federal agencies from being able to take away religious groups’ tax-exempt status, even though organizations that demonstrate clear discrimination should not have that privilege. The senators who introduced the bill say it was motivated by an attack on religious liberty. Siiiiigh.

The threat to which Lee refers to isn’t just “potential” at this point in time, it’s entirely hypothetical. President Obama has promised to respect the rights of churches and religious-based nonprofits to deny service or refuse to recognize marriages that go against their religious doctrine. Every state that has enacted marriage equality legislation has done so with strong religious exemptions protecting the rights of faith-based institutions to do the same. And the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution features a fundamental and oft-reaffirmed protection of religious liberty in its restriction that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” …

According to Zack Ford’s analysis of the House legislation at ThinkProgress, the bill could make it legal for any individual person with a religious-based opposition to same-sex marriage to deny service to a married couple, and could easily extend to federal workers, businesses, and even federally-funded programs like homeless shelters and substance abuse clinics. 

Let’s talk about how frightening this is, please. Let’s talk about how a group of scared, silly men are so committed to their immovably homophobic religious beliefs (read: their beliefs that gay people are icky), they’d prefer to shut out, humiliate and perhaps even endanger LGBT people than try to accept the diversity of the world around them. And all to protect their “religious liberty” (read: their levels of comfort). Let’s start talking about this and never stop. 

Air Force Major General Patricia Rose became the highest-ranking openly gay officer in the military when she was promoted on May 31. 

According to OutServe-SLDN, Rose’s wife, retired Naval Officer Julie Roth, pinned her wife’s second star at a small ceremony led by Rose’s direct supervisor, General Janet Wolfenbarger, the Air Force’s first female four-star general.

Rose, a reservist, is the Mobilization Assistant to the Commander, Air Force Materiel Command, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. She has served in both aircraft maintenance and transportation in seven different commands as a logistician. Her reserve assignments include command of the 36th Aerial Port Squadron at McChord AFB, Washington.