Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott gave a concise response to any potential U.N. involvement in state affairs, advising it to mind its own business rather than meddle with the Lone Star State on LGBTQ issues.
"The U.N. can go pound sand," Abbott posted Sunday on X, after a Texas advocacy group accused him and other state officials of infringing on the rights of LGBTQ Texans through legislative and administrative actions.
In January, Equality Texas sent a letter to 17 U.N. experts and working groups detailing seven pieces of recent legislation the group is troubled by.
"Taken individually, the seven pieces of legislation discussed in this submission will disrupt the lives of LGBTQIA+ people of various ages and backgrounds," the letter stated. "Put together, the Bills are a systemic attack on the fundamental rights, dignities, and identities of LGBTQIA+ persons that opens the gates for discrimination by both public and private actors."
The bills in question range from allowing schools to use religious chaplains for counseling purposes, banning public universities from having diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and allowing schools to restrict access to some LBGTQ books by labeling them as "sexually explicit."
"If we go back to 2019, we had less than 20 anti-LGBTQ bills filed in this state," Ricardo Martinez, CEO of Equality Texas, told KXAS-TV in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. "We meet every two years, and by 2021, there were 76 anti-LGBTQ bills that were filed; that's almost four times as many as in 2019."
The letter requests the U.N. work with the U.S. government because the U.S. has "not adopted a proper response to the systemic attack on LGBTQIA+ persons living in the state of Texas."
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