Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Texas Speaker Vows To Fight GOP On Anti-Transgender Bathroom Bill

The moderate brand of Texas Republican politics practiced by Joe Straus, the Jewish speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, may be on the line as a 30-day special legislative session begins Tuesday.

The main event is Texas’ version of the bathroom bill, which could restrict transgender people to using bathrooms for the gender assigned to them at birth in schools and government-owned buildings.

Straus, whom the New York Times called “the public face of the opposition to the bathroom bill,” is one of the last remaining high-profile Texas politicians taking a stand against far-right wing conservatism.

“I’m not embarrassed to say that I know how to govern without being an extremist,” Straus told the Times.

Straus, born to a major Jewish family in Texas, has been elected speaker five times. In 2010, emails circulated among Texas Republican Committee suggesting that Straus be replaced as speaker because he was not Christian. Straus’ opponents in the fight against the bathroom bill are also largely religious Christians.

“Too many of our state leaders spend too much of their focus and attention on divisive social issues,” Straus said. “You can count me out.”

Contact Ari Feldman at [email protected] or on Twitter @aefeldman.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.