The latest is the conflict between the city of San Antonio - which recently passed an ordinance adding lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people to the city's non-discrimination code. - and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who has stated that he might sue the city based on his belief that the law is an unconstitutional violation the rights of speech and religion.
It is often suggested that the major cities in the state of Texas are more liberal than the state as a whole. The fact that they tend to be more tolerant of alternative lifestyles is evidence. Abbott is running for governor, so its safe to assume that anything he does as attorney general is done with an eye towards the governor's mansion. Will a specific activity help enhance his support among the groups he is hoping to back his campaign? Those groups do not necessarily have the same pull in the major cities.
The NYT provides some detail for the conflict. most of it seems tied into the politics surrounding next year's statewide elections than the substance of the ordinance:
All of the major statewide elected positions are open contests in the Republican primary. And while voters do not head to the polls until March, many Republicans seeking statewide office have seized on San Antonio’s ordinance in what some see as a way to appeal to the grass-roots conservatives who make up the bulk of the electorate in the party’s Texas primaries.
“It is Republican statewide candidates signaling their base that they are true and trustworthy conservatives,” said Calvin Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “When you’re running for statewide office, you don’t control what the San Antonio mayor and Council do. So all you’re really doing is taking an ideological position that you then project toward the Republican primary electorate, so that they can see that you’re a social conservative and you are manning the ramparts against undesirable social change.”For background on local non discrimination ordinances across the nation click here.
