page_title: Rick Perry
section_title: LGBT rights
hierarchical_section_title: Rick Perry / Governor of Texas / LGBT rights
caption_attribution_description: English: Rick Perry speaking at CPAC 2015 in Washington, DC.
context_page_description: James Richard "Rick" Perry is an American politician who served as the 14th United States Secretary of Energy from 2017 to 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as the 47th Governor of Texas from 2000 to 2015, having been elected Lieutenant Governor of Texas in 1998 and later assuming the office from George W. Bush.
  Perry also ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for President of the United States in 2012 and 2016. President Donald Trump nominated him as Secretary of Energy; he was confirmed by the United States Senate in a 62–37 vote on March 2, 2017. On October 17, 2019, Perry reported to President Trump that he intended to resign as Secretary of Energy at the end of the year. He left office on December 1, 2019.
context_section_description: In 2002, Perry described the Texas same-sex anti-sodomy law as "appropriate". The following year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the statute in Lawrence v. Texas, determining that it violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
  In his 2010 book, Perry referenced the Lawrence decision, writing "Texans have a different view of the world than do the nine oligarchs in robes." In 2011, Perry admitted that he did not know about the Lawrence decision; when told that the Supreme Court case had struck down Texas's anti-sodomy law, Perry said: "I'm not taking the bar exam [...]I don't know what a lot of legal cases [...] My position on traditional marriage is clear [...] I don't need a federal law case to explain it to me."
  Perry supported Texas Proposition 2 in 2005, a ballot proposition that amended the Texas constitution by defining marriage as "only a union between a man and a woman" and prohibiting the state from creating or recognizing "any legal status identical or similar to marriage" (such as civil unions).
  In 2011, after New York legalized same-sex marriage, Perry said it was their right to do so under the principle of states' rights in the Tenth Amendment. A spokesman later reiterated Perry's support for a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, saying that position was not inconsistent, since an amendment would require ratification by three-fourths of the states.
  After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015 that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by the Constitution, Perry condemned the decision, saying: "I'm a firm believer in traditional marriage, and I also believe the 10th Amendment leaves it to each state to decide this issue."
  In his first book, On My Honor, published in 2008, Perry drew a parallel between homosexuality and alcoholism, writing that he is "no expert on the 'nature versus nurture' debate" but gays should simply choose abstinence.
  During the 2012 presidential campaign, he criticized the repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy for the U.S. military. Perry said using foreign aid as a policy tool against foreign countries that violate the human rights of homosexuals was "not in America's interests" and was part of a "war on traditional American values".
  Perry, an Eagle Scout, has called on the Boy Scouts to continue their ban on homosexuality and blamed America for not living up to the ideals of the Scouts.
caption: Perry speaking at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland
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