Comment by eropple

This is speculation, but like most parts of the U.S., I'd suggest that maybe it's more an urban/rural split than anything else. Texas has its pockets of reasonableness and progressivism (and outside of Austin, too--I quite like San Antonio, Dallas is fine, and while Houston is best described as a highway in a swamp a million lanes wide that you merge across to get anywhere, it's a very tolerant community with a gay woman as mayor from 2010 to 2016, when she was term-limited). When you get out of where the money and the people is, it may be different (never been), but the urban areas aren't much different from any other urban area in that regard.