Republican Ken Paxton, the Attorney General of Texas since 2015, is currently embroiled in a scandal involving an extramarital affair… Which is quite a revelation given how Paxton has used his office to promote Christianity at every turn.
This is a guy who said that government workers who are Christian should be allowed to discriminate against gay people. He defended “In God We Trust” stickers on cop cars and ambulances… and defended a sheriff who put literal crosses on his government vehicles. (That sheriff eventually paid a hefty price in a legal settlement.) He also defended courthouses with Christian crosses in the windows.
He appointed an assistant and chief of staff who previously worked for Christian groups fighting church/state separation. He urged the Supreme Court to take up a case that could have permitted stand-alone Ten Commandments monuments on government property. (They did not take up the case.) He even argued that students “cannot unilaterally refuse” to say the Pledge of Allegiance in school.
The point is that he’s a Christian Nationalist who has used his elected office to promote his faith.
We learned last month that Paxton’s top aides had accused him of bribery, abuse of office, and several other federal crimes.
Now that scandal is getting even more twisted, according to the Associated Press:
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had an extramarital affair with a woman whom he later recommended for a job with the wealthy donor now at the center of criminal allegations against him, according to two people who said Paxton told them about the relationship.
…
Austin developer Nate Paul said in a deposition this week that Paxton recommended the woman for her job with Paul’s real estate company, according to a transcript of his deposition obtained by the AP.
Whether anything illegal happened here is a question that will be resolved in the courts, but the affair itself is yet another example of a Christian hypocrite who happens to be a Republican leader. It happens all the time, as his Michigan counterpart noted in a tweet:
If you oppose same-sex marriage and LGBTQ rights as much as AG Paxton does, there’s a 90% chance you are cheating on your wife or have an account with Grindr.
AP sources: Texas AG’s affair tied to criminal allegations https://t.co/16cU51IgHL
— Dana Nessel (@dananessel) November 6, 2020
90% is downright generous. The louder they talk about the sanctity of marriage and condemn LGBTQ people for ruining families, the more likely they are to have a shady private life.
Can we just call that the Falwell Doctrine? Given how often it occurs, it deserves a specific name.
(via Joe. My. God. Portions of this article were published earlier)