Venton Jones celebrated his marriage to Gregory Scott Jr. this summer. This week, the gay Texas lawmaker returned to another deeply personal subject: removing the state’s unconstitutional ban on same-sex intimacy from its law books.
Jones filed House Bill 653 on November 9 for the 2027 legislative session.
The official legislative record lists its latest action as filed. It has not been passed.
Unenforceable, but still there
Texas Penal Code Section 21.06 still contains an offense labelled homosexual conduct, targeting certain sexual activity between people of the same sex.
The state’s published Penal Code notes that the provision was declared unconstitutional in Lawrence v. Texas, the landmark 2003 Supreme Court decision.
That means this repeal effort would remove an unenforceable provision. It would not newly legalise private, consensual intimacy between adults.
The difference is essential to understanding the story. Constitutional protection already exists; the outdated criminal language remains.
A proposal with limits
The introduced text of HB 653 would repeal Section 21.06 and remove references to it as a criminal offense from two education-related sections of the Health and Safety Code.
However, it would leave wording describing homosexual conduct as an unacceptable lifestyle, alongside another provision presenting homosexuality as unacceptable to the general public.
Repealing the criminal provision would therefore leave other stigmatising language unresolved.
An earlier repeal effort, HB 1738, passed the Texas House in 2025 but stalled before becoming law. The new filing begins another attempt, rather than announcing a finished victory.
The husband behind the headlines
Jones’s personal life offers a warmer connection to the policy debate.
In January 2025, immediately after being sworn in for his second term, he proposed to Gregory on the Texas House floor, as The Texas Newsroom reported.
In August 2026, the couple married. Dallas Weekly published Jones’s announcement, in which he connected their celebration with his commitment to protecting families across Texas.
There is a powerful contrast between those public moments of joy and the words still sitting in the state’s criminal code.
For gay Texans, this is about more than tidying up a statute. It is also about how the state describes their lives.
Jones and Gregory have celebrated a new chapter together. Whether Texas lawmakers will finally remove this old provision remains a question for the next session.
📷 @ventonjones