Texas Republicans — including lieutenant governor candidate Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton, who is running for attorney general — have signed on to a “friend of the court” brief claiming that the state’s desire to ban same-sex marriage is in line with similar bans on bigamy, incest, pedophilia, and polygamy, The Dallas Morning News reports.

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Patrick and Paxton are just two of the 61 Republican lawmakers who signed on to the Texas Conservative Coalition’s brief in support of the state’s ban, which is currently being argued in the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. State Attorney General Greg Abbott argued that marriage is an issue best handled by the states, which is the only argument he can make before the higher court — as of now, no circuit court has upheld a state ban on same-sex marriage.

The “friend of the court” brief argued that “restrictions on marriage relating to these moral considerations remain valid. Thus, the goal of actively trying to prevent those practices from becoming valid is entirely rational public policy.”

But Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa sees it as pandering to an increasingly vocal minority within the Republican Party. “This brief makes their intentions clear: rather than working towards equality and fairness, Patrick and Paxton want to marginalize, discriminate and spread antiquated ideas,” he told The Morning News. “Texans deserves leaders who know that love is love, and that it’s time to end the Republican culture of discrimination across our state.”

The brief argued that supporting the same-sex marriage ban does not amount to discrimination, because the laws behind the ban “apply equally to everyone. They were not enacted to ‘disparage and injure,’ anyone. Nor were they enacted out of ‘animosity against homosexuals.’ To the contrary, the laws were enacted with a desire to elevate the state’s legal recognition of marriage to a level that society has celebrated throughout history.”

[Image via AFP]