A Texas state legislator has asked Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to rule that citizens of the state may nullify marriage equality.

According to a report in Jezebel, Texas state Rep. James White wrote to Paxton asking for his opinion on a legal gambit to evade the US Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges legalizing marriage equality.

Paxton, a long-time enemy of LGBTQ rights, has apparently not responded to White's letter.

White notes that the high court decision contradicts existing Texas state law that still bars same-sex marriage. A federal court ruling trumps state law, White admits, and the state of Texas is now bound to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. But, White asks, must private citizens also recognize same-sex marriages?

In other words, could Texas business owners simply ignore federal law and refuse to accommodate same-sex couples?

"The fact that a federal district court has enjoined state officials from enforcing the Texas marriage laws in no way affects the existence or validity of those laws with regard to private parties, who are not even bound by the Fourteenth Amendment – let alone the Supreme Court's purported interpretations of it," White wrote in his letter to Paxton.

Should Paxton agree with White's argument, that would open the door for private citizens to nullify federal laws protecting LGBTQ people simply by refusing to obey them.

In essence, White uses the same argument as lawyer Jonathan Mitchell, the architect of Texas' stringent anti-choice law. That law rewards private citizens for hunting down and suing abortion providers and women seeking their assistance.

The idea behind the law being that only government agencies are barred from restricting abortion – or same-sex marriage – but private citizens can take any action they like, based on their own religious or moral convictions.

The anti-choice law is already headed to the US Supreme Court to test its constitutionality. Mitchell himself has argued in a similar case from Mississippi that both Obergefell and Lawrence v. Texas, which invalidated anti-Gay sodomy laws in 2003, were incorrectly decided by the high court.