I'm using the Slick2D library in order to render text to the screen but in order to render gl shapes like Rect, I need to first disable GL_TEXTURE_2D. I'm just curious as to why that is needed. Why does GL_TEXTURE_2D disable the rendering of shapes?
The way OpenGL works is basically one large, global state machine. When you bind a texture, every triangle you draw afterwards will use that texture.
The issue here is that the text drawing doesn't unbind it's texture afterwards, so the shapes you draw afterwards will be using that texture instead of no texture. The reason why you think it's "disabling" rendering is because the texture is made up of characters with everything else being transparent. What you're seeing is OpenGL drawing your shape with opacity at 0.
What happens when you disable GL_TEXTURE_2D is that the texture gets unbound and you draw regularly without a texture.