SAN ANTONIO — Delegates at the Texas Republican Party convention voted on a party platform Saturday that proposes dozens of policy goals, including requiring the Bible to be taught at public schools and restricting access to abortion medication.
Other platform planks called for refusing to issue birth certificates for children born to undocumented parents in Texas, banning transgender teachers in public schools and abolishing property taxes.
Convention delegates are often drawn from the ranks of party activists who tend to be strongly conservative, and the platform reflected that on major political battlegrounds involving education, immigration and health care.
“This is a conservative activist wish list more than it is a real legislative agenda,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston, adding that while some policy goals might seem far-fetched, they have the potential to become law.
Convention delegates voted on each individual platform plank Saturday afternoon as the Texas GOP’s biennial convention drew to a close. Votes were being tabulated, with the official platform expected to be released Wednesday.
Once routinely ignored after the party convention gaveled to a close, the GOP platform has been used in recent years to pressure lawmakers and punish those who fail to conform during the primaries.
“I don’t think you can count on all these things becoming law anytime soon, but certainly some of them will with enough time,” Rottinghaus said.
The platform contains almost 250 planks, or policy goals. Delegates debated the contents of the 50-page document late into Friday after a protracted election for party leadership delayed business.
The proposed platform seeks a more prominent role for Christianity in public schools by requiring “instruction on the Bible, servant leadership, and Christian self-governance.”
The platform also suggests Texas law be clarified to allow school chaplains, who were approved to serve as counselors in the 2023 legislative session, to provide Christian counseling to students with parent’s discretion. A proposed curriculum change would require the teaching of documents frequently cited by conservatives who argue against the separation of church and state.
Platform authors also called for laws stricter than one adopted in Florida to outlaw discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity for certain age groups in public schools.
It would also ban transgender people from teaching in public schools. The party has become more focused on LGBTQ issues in recent years, including a requirement that public school athletes compete in sports aligned with their “biological sex.” The party also passed a law intended to prohibit drag shows in front of children that was ruled unconstitutional in federal court.
On immigration, the platform proposed eliminating public education for undocumented immigrants and creating a state border patrol.
The platform proposes prohibiting abortion-inducing drugs from being mailed to Texans and clarifies the party’s stance on medical exceptions to abortions by declaring “the mother’s life remains the primary consideration in providing emergency care exceptions.”
The Texas Medical Board is in the process of codifying the medical exception to Texas’ near-total ban on abortion. The board faced criticism this week after several doctors decried proposed rules as vague and unhelpful.
The platform also seeks to expand curriculum requirements to teach students that life begins at fertilization, witness a live ultrasound and view, for high schoolers, anti-abortion videos.
A committee considered a proposal to refer to embryos as “children” and ask lawmakers to classify the intentional destruction of an embryo during in vitro fertilization as a homicide. That proposal was narrowly defeated Wednesday.
Delegates showed strong support for sending taxpayer money usually reserved for public schools to parents, who could spend it on private schools or home schooling. The new platform no longer says the money should be given to families with “no strings attached.”
Education funding was a major focus of the platform, which advocates eliminating within 12 years the “Robin Hood” system that sends some property tax money from property-rich school districts to poorer districts.
Delegates also proposed eliminating personal property taxes, adding that to a plank that called for eliminating estate taxes and business taxes.
