The Texas Tribune reports:
Prominent anti-LGBTQ+ attorney and former Harris County GOP chair Jared Woodfill is running for the Texas House and to replace House Speaker Dade Phelan. Woodfill announced his candidacy for House District 138 this week, touting his legal challenges to COVID-19 mandates and LGBTQ+ legislation.
In 2015, he and well-known Houston GOP powerbroker and anti-gay activist Dr. Steven Hotze played key roles in the defeat of an ordinance that would have extended equal rights protections to LGBTQ+ Houstonians, during which they compared gay people to Nazis and helped popularize “groomer” rhetoric.
Woodfill is also representing Hotze in a criminal investigation stemming from a 2020 incident in which a private investigator, allegedly acting at Hotze’s behest, held at gunpoint an air-conditioning repairman who he believed was transporting fake ballots
Read the full article.
In March 2023, Woodfill testified that he knew about reports that a prominent Baptist leader had molested teenage boys but said nothing. House Speaker Mike Johnson had a brief stint as CEO of a never-opened law school that was to be named for that Baptist leader.
Woodfill appeared on JMG in March 2020 when he represented local anti-LGBTQ pastors in their ultimately failed lawsuit to overturn Texas lockdown rules.
Before that we heard from him in February 2019 when he finally lost his years-long legal battle to stop Houston from providing spousal benefits to LGBTQ city employees.
Prominent anti-LGBTQ+ attorney and former Harris County GOP chair Jared Woodfill is running for the Texas House. https://t.co/9xlQGy4yWg
— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) November 17, 2023
🧵🧵For years, Jared Woodfill has led extreme anti-gay campaigns in Texas, comparing LGBTQ people to child molesters.
And for years, he’s known of child sex abuse claims against his longtime law partner and Southern Baptist leader Paul Pressler.https://t.co/YYTvtLASqm
— Robert Downen (@RobertDownen_) March 27, 2023
New House Speaker Mike Johnson previously led a never-opened law school named after Paul Pressler, the Southern Baptist leader and Texas Appeals Court judge who has now been accused of molesting numerous teen boys and soliciting young men for sex.https://t.co/DI7Ucqd3Kz
— Robert Downen (@RobertDownen_) October 26, 2023
