GOP Activist Prays For Pro-LGBTQ Texas Legislators And Staffs To 'Rot And Be Blown Away'

Texas GOP governor Greg Abbott has called a special session of the Texas legislature for July 18, and, though he put a number of things on the agenda that weren’t completed during the regular session, don’t be fooled: the main reason this session was called was to pass a bill discriminating against transgender students. GOP Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the state senator who is obsessed with passing such a bill and is pulling all the strings, worked with colleagues to hold a must-pass Texas Medical Board bill hostage until they got the special session.

Among the close allies joining Patrick in the fight for the anti-trans bill ― one that would force all school districts to restrict bathroom use, with no opting out ― is Steven Hotze, an evangelical Christian, Houston radio host and prominent Republican activist, who, while awaiting the governor’s decision, has posted a number of incendiary, and grotesque columns on the website he publishes, Conservative Republicans of Texas News. There, Hotze, who last November compared gays to “termites,” posted an “imprecatory prayer,” which, as columnist Steven Herman at the Austin Statesman-American notes, is known in evangelical circles as a invocation of evil, or a curse, on one’s enemies.