State Rep. Bryan Slaton with his wife and son in a screen cap taken from his campaign website, BryanSlaton.com.
UPDATE: Right-wing state Rep. Brian Slaton has resigned his seat in the Texas House rather than wait for his colleagues to vote on whether or not he should be expelled. His decision comes just two days after the House General Investigative Committee recommended that he be expelled from the Legislature for having an inappropriate relationship with a 19-year-old female intern.
With her resignation, Gov. Greg Abbott will have to call a special election to replace Slaton as House District 2 representative, but that election cannot take place before the legislative session ends on Memorial Day, treports the Texas Tribune.
ORIGINAL POST: The Texas House General Investigative Committee is recommending that state Rep. Bryan Slaton, the Republican who helped start the wave of anti-drag queen bills introduced in Texas for drag queens to manufacture children, be ousted from the legislature for having an inappropriate relationship with an Intern of the house under the age of 21, according to a breaking news story from The Texas Tribune.
The recommendation comes after a Capitol staffer filed a complaint in April alleging that Slaton, a 45-year-old married former youth pastor, had invited a young woman on his staff to his Austin condo at the last minute on a Friday night in March, and provided her with alcohol and then had sex with her.
(Provide alcohol to some minors of legal drinking age it’s a crime in Texason purpose.)
Republican Rep. Andrew Murr, chairman of the House General Investigative Committee, said “ousting Slaton was necessary to protect the ‘dignity and integrity'” of the Legislature, the Tribune reports.
Slaton has declined to comment, but after the complaint was filed last month, his attorney issued a statement calling the allegations “outrageous” and “false.”
Slaton, who is from Mineola, Texas, and is in his second term representing the 2nd District, announced in June 2022 that he intended to introduce a bill in the 87th Texas Legislature (the current session) to ban minors from attending any type of drag show. He made the announcement after a right-wing group calling itself Protect Texas Children showed up in Oak Lawn on June 4 to harass families attending a family drag show that was held in the early hours of afternoon at the Cedar Springs bar Mr. mister
The show, held as part of Dallas Pride weekend festivities, took place before the bar opened for normal business. Slaton stated in a press release: “The events of this past weekend were horrifying and show a disturbing trend in which perverted adults are obsessed with sexualizing young children.”
Slaton’s horror at children watching a drag show came 12 days after a gunman carrying an assault-style semi-automatic handgun killed 19 fourth graders and two fourth grade teachers in Uvalde, Texas. The same week he declared drag queens a danger to children, Slaton he told the Greenville Herald-Banner didn’t “think we know enough now” about the Uvalde mass killing for Gov. Greg Abbott to call a special session to address gun laws and that “I haven’t heard anything so far that makes me think we need to change the laws of weapons”.
(At the time, we already knew that an 18-year-old with a history of mental health problems was able to legally purchase two high-powered assault rifles and that he had used one to murder 19 children and two adults. We also knew that 223 people had been killed in mass shootings in the US in 2022 at the time of the Uvalde massacre, according to the Archive of armed violence.)
Slaton is married with one child. He works for his cousin’s financial services company in Royse City. He holds a dual degree in youth ministry/speech communications from Ouchita Baptist University and a Master of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He spent 13 years as Minister of Youth and Family, according to his profile on the Texas House website.
On his campaign websiteSlaton describes himself as a “bold and courageous Christian conservative” and pledges to “resist the abuses of government, the constant excess and burden it places on the taxpayer” and to “advance liberty and our of life against the establishment in Austin.”
—Tammy Nash
