Texas lawmakers voted Thursday to repeal the state’s longstanding ban on gay sex, sending legislation to do so to the state Senate in a historic and bipartisan vote.

Texas’s defunct ban on “homosexual conduct,” defined in the state’s penal code as “deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex,” has not been enforceable since 2003, when the Supreme Court ruled it and other state laws criminalizing sodomy between consenting adults were unconstitutional.

But language classifying gay sex as a Class C misdemeanor, while unenforceable, remains enshrined in Texas law.

Democrats in the state Legislature, which meets only in odd-numbered years, have pushed to repeal the ban for years but have struggled to secure sufficient bipartisan support.

Republicans hold majorities in the state House and Senate and had never brought the proposal up for a vote before 2023.........

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