Thread: Homosexual Sympathizers Infiltrate GOP Platform Committee

by Matt BaumeApr 4, 2016 at 12:41 pm

Homosexual Sympathizers Infiltrate GOP Platform Committee; Republicans & Queers Equally Aghast

As if Republicans don't have enough to fight about already, a bunch of rich gays/allies are poking their rainbow noses into the party platform, trying to get the party to be ever-so-slightly less dreadful. Will they be successful? Not if a bunch of bigots have anything to say about it!

Right now the GOP seems a bit like an old sweater that got pulled out of a trunk only to find that over the decades moths have eaten huge holes in it, and it's starting to unravel. Pick at one strand and a whole sleeve falls off.

It's a little unclear exactly how far these shadowy queer activists are trying to push the party — all we have to go on is a report from Politico that the "American Unity Fund" has been dispatching lobbyists to nudge convention delegates about gay marriage. The American Unity Fund was set up a few years ago to try to drag Republicans, kicking and screaming, into the current century on LGBT equality. Also on their agenda is slowly pushing an enormous boulder up a hill for all of eternity.

American Unity staffers, according to Politico, have been liquoring up various Republican party officials and preparing for the Republican National Committee meeting later this spring in Florida. They have a whole campaign apparatus in place to steer Republicans toward ... what, exactly? That's unclear. Something-something-something pro-gay-marriage.

"We need to be inclusive," said a spokeswoman. Inclusive?

That's sissy stuff, and Tony Perkins won't stand for it. Perkins runs the Family Research Council — basically a nonprofit that exists to try scare people about anything that's not good for straight white Christian men — and he also sits on the GOP's platform committee.

That probably explains why the last platform, drafted in 2012, was crazily anti-queer. It called for amending the U.S. Constitution to ban marriage for same-sex couples. I wrote a whole book about marriage equality that included a section on the brave organizers who fought back against this terrible idea in the '90s, and the fact that Republicans are still pushing it 20 years later is just mind-boggling.

In any case, the American Unity Fund is tracking every single one of the 112 slots for Platform Committee members, nudging the more socially-progressive candidates to run for a position. A big component of their pitch is that the party has to accept that gays can get married if they want to be relevant in the future.

Pushing back just as hard though is Phyllis Schlafly, a 91-year-old who's spent nearly a century making life miserable for anyone she doesn't approve of. (She says gay marriage violates her free speech, feminism is destructive, the usual villainous blah-blah.)

Phyllis has her talons deep in the party, and she's a pretty perfect symbol of the GOP: hailing from a bygone era, steadfastly opposed to progress, and with any luck not likely to be bothering us much longer.

Homosexual Sympathizers Infiltrate GOP Platform Committee; Republicans & Queers Equally Aghast - Slog - The Stranger

I support gay rights including gay marriage. I understand people who find it odd, weird and icky. I don't disagree with that. There's really no way for heterosexuals to understand homosexuality, but after thinking about this issue for years, I don't think it's fair to gays to prevent them from the happiness and security that marriage brings to a relationship.

If you are gay, you are trapped as what you are and how you feel because of who you are. Gay marriage involves government, states for the most part, and all it does is afford gay couples the legal and financial protections afforded any couple who have married. There is no reason if both consenting adults and US citizens to be denied these same protections under the law regarding property, bigamy, divorce and spousal rights in medical and other important aspects of one's life as anyone else.

To deny gay couples the right to marry puts them at risk without legal protections, without spouse medical rights, and without the joy and happiness that being married brings to one's life. To condemn a portion of our population to that type of loneliness, incompleteness and risk in their legal, financial and medical issues is of no benefit to anyone and is very harmful to many.

People have to remember that gay people are not islands. They are part of large families. They are someone's child, someone's brother or sister, someone's grandchild, someone's aunt, uncle or cousin. They are also part of large work forces with many associates, colleagues and friends. The gay community isn't an alien who doesn't belong here, they are part of our society, citizenship, families, churches, schools, and work places with every right to be here. Gay people are part of US and they deserve the same opportunities, privileges and protections as any of us.

That's the reason the US Supreme Court Ruling was decided the way it was. The US Supreme Court doesn't protect just the majority or just a religion or just the traditional. The US Supreme Court has the duty to protect all of our citizens.

As Republicans, we're supposed to be for civil rights, equal rights, women's rights and worker rights. These were the foundations of our party when it was founded to end slavery and discrimination. Because of certain policies in our platform against women and gays, we are not recognized for that any more. We need to change that. We need a unified party so we can have a unified nation so we can unite to fix our country. There isn't much time to save our nation and fighting over whether a baker has to serve a wedding cake to a gay couple and discriminate against them based on the baker's purported religious beliefs just doesn't make any sense to me. Refusing to make a wedding cake for a gay couple is not religious liberty, it's discrimination.

I'm a Republican from a family of Republicans who have been Republicans since there were Republicans. I'm also a Southern Baptist. But before I'm any of those, I'm an American who wants and wishes the best of life and happiness for all my fellow citizens. I believe marriage under the law is a good thing for people, including gay people, because being alone usually isn't.