Texas Lt. Gov. Patrick Refuses to Bow to Obama’s Extortion: We’ll Give Up Federal Funds Over LGBT Policy

by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton | May 13, 2016 4:28 pm

Good for Texas Lt. Gov. Patrick![1] He will not bow to Obama’s extortion over ‘gender fluid’ bathrooms in schools and the great state of Texas has told Obama he can stuff it. This makes me deliriously happy. Earlier today, Obama declared an edict that gender neutral bathrooms would be the law of the land across the US. Any public school who does not comply will be open to lawsuits and the withholding of federal funds. Texans don’t cotton to threats and bullying. I hope other states follow suit. What Obama did is unconstitutional, immoral, unethical and unconscionable.

[2]

Texas’ lieutenant governor said Friday that the state is prepared to forfeit billions of federal dollars in public school funding in defiance of an Obama administration directive requiring schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their chosen gender identity.

The new directive is expected to worsen tensions between Republican-led statehouses and the federal government over divisive social issues. It clarifies expectations for districts receiving federal school funds, which Texas’ powerful Republican lieutenant governor argues the state’s 5.2 million public school students can now do without.

“We will not be blackmailed by the president’s 30 pieces of silver,” Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said. “The people of Texas and the Legislature will find a way to find as much of that money as we can if we are forced to.”

Patrick said Texas currently receives about $10 billion in federal education funding. He didn’t say how that money would be replaced and his remarks on Friday came only moments after more than half the state’s 1,200 school districts lost a major lawsuit that claimed Texas unconstitutionally underfunds public schools. But trust me when I say Texas will find a way. That secession thing is looking better and better. Texas’ attorney general suggested that the guidelines would result in “yet another legal fight” over transgender bathroom access. US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said “there is no room in our schools for discrimination” and was sending the directive Friday to school districts. Some told her not to bother. “When I get that letter I’ll throw it away,” Rodney Cavness, the superintendent of the small Port Neches-Groves school district in southeastern Texas, told Beaumont television station KFDM. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has staunchly rejected issues over gay and transgender rights that the Obama administration has cast in terms of civil rights. Patrick responded to Friday’s directive at the Texas Republican Party Convention, where delegates this week are considering a new state party platform that says “homosexuality must not be accepted as an acceptable alternative lifestyle.” Tell me Texas isn’t the only sane place left in the US? Georgia says it will comply because they can’t afford not to get $3 million in funding a year. How cheaply some states will sell out their principles. Not so in the Lone Star state.