A reader alerts me to a plank in the platform of the Montana GOP similar to language recently adopted by Republicans in the Lone Star State:
We support the clear will of the people of Montana expressed by legislation to keep homosexual acts illegal.
At least Montana Republicans avoided the detailed attack on the “practice of homosexuality” contained in the Texas platform. That said, the inclusion of this plank — as of that in Texas — is both troubling and counterproductive and strikes at the heart of the basic Republican principle of freedom.
We’re not asking anyone to embrace what social conservatives call our “lifestyle,” we’re asking instead that they leave us alone to control our own lives, using our God-given liberty to engage in the pursuit of happiness in the manner which, we believe, best corresponds with our nature as individuals.
When social conservatives press the GOP to include such passages in their party platforms, they allow the media (and their allies in the Democratic Party) to turn the focus from the small government policies most state parties are coming to embrace and instead to portray the party as an institution seeking to regulate every aspect of our private lives. And this even as reader darkeyedresolve, himself a former Democrat, put it in a private communication (which I quote with his permission), ” party platforms are pretty much rewards to activists”.
He noted further that “only the most passionate people are going to have time to take out of their lives to go to a convention and then sit around and vote on a platform.” He hadn’t “heard of one prominent Texas Republican attached to it.”
The left dwells on these planks because it fits their narrative of an intolerant GOP. They may well give more ink to such issues even as Republican legislators devote more time to opposing the Democrat’s big-government legislative initiatives and proposing small government reforms.
That said, reprehensible as these planks are, they are isolated occurrences. Most Republicans have reached a kind of modus vivendi with the increasing social acceptance of homosexuality in American society and basically ignoring gay issues. Importantly, such planks don’t mean much in terms of actual legislation at the state level. To be sure, we are seeing a handful of states banning gay adoption and preventing the state from granting benefits to same-sex partners of state employees, but they’re not barring private companies from doing so nor are they preventing them from treating their gay employees fairly. Nor are states doing anything to prevent us from living our lives openly.
Still, this legislation shows that we gay Republicans have work to do in convincing our party that gay people can live moral and socially productive lives.
If you’re in Montana or Texas, I encourage you to write the party and tell them how such proposals tear at the heart of the Republican message of liberty so eloquently articulated by Abraham Lincoln in the Nineteenth Century and Ronald Reagan in the Twentieth.
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Have reaching? Are reaching or have reached?
haypage, “have reached.” Thanks for catching that. Since fixed.
Quite so, Daniel.
The so called party platform is not always what a party stands for. Sometimes one plank has been inserted by a person that has an ‘axe to grind’ item. He or she does not care if it hurts the party at election time.
Why do we let something like that happen? Dan. you are right. We have done our work at the convention. We are tired and have gone home. .
That’s too neat and dismissive, Dan. If the platforms called for re-institution of segregation or say perhaps immigration laws the Know Nothings dreamed of to limit the numbers of pesky Catholics, somehow I think you’d be saying something entirely different. You are undoubtedly right that these platforms are nothing more than sops to party activists, but the whole party is identified with the platform it adopts like it or not. Calls for bringing back laws to criminalize gays may make some socons smile but isn’t about to attract many independents who know of this. Every Republican running for office in Montana, Texas and anywhere else their state GOP had adopted similar language should be questioned thoroughlly about their stand on this. I will not vote for any politician who supports it no matter what the stakes are in the election.
This sort of language in a party platform is stupid… I suspect we could find equally asinine planks in a Democrat platform.
If the GOP is smart (hope drains away), it will stay away from fringe issues – most people really don’t care about sodomy laws.
Its Pyhrric victories at best, you turn off as maybe people as you might energize to come vote for you.
And most people don’t even know the party’s platforms, campaigns are more about the candidate and the major issue or issue of the time.
I don’t want my Government intruding into my personal, sexual activities. I am an adult now and I can think for myself. I am not hurting anyone so why should I be imprisoned or even sentenced to death…for being in a romantic and sexual relationship with someone of the same gender? Tsk, tsk! America isn’t a theocratic Iran or some other radical Islamist regime. If its private and consensual activities between adults, so what? I am attracted to the male gender and I am male myself. I see a handsome man and want to date him, so what? The Texas and Montana State GOPs is embracing a left-wing (fascist) ideology against homosexuals, something the Democrat-pandering Klu Klux Klan and Democrat-pandering Radical Islamists would like *sigh…*
American and Israeli soldiers are fighting for my FREEDOM as an American citizen. And if I end up in a loving-mutual relationship with one of those American or Israeli soldiers…so what? Let me be ^__^
I am beginning to think that some or most “social conservatives” have a socialist theocratic political agenda. The Republican Party needs to focus deeply on upholding the U.S. Constitution. And marginalize the ideas of “socia-list conservatives.”
Both Democrats and Republicans need to speak up.
Are they insane? …Drive-away one of the major untapped pockets of support is just stupid. Just as the anti-Hispanic undercurrent that exists within the “legal/illegal”, seal-the-border whining.
This is a press release issued by the Dallas chapter of Log Cabin Republicans. This was issued onthe heels of another press release from the Republican Liberty Caucus in support of our position. While the platform has vehement language, we find our legislators tell us they have not read the platform. Having worked on the Platform committee at the Senate District level and having attempted to remove the offensive passages, I KNOW this to be true…it’s the activists’ biggest complaint…that candidates don’t read and don’t govern by the platform. As most candidates are recruited and funded outside the party structure, they do not have a dog in the hunt fighting against gay aspirations. The platform is created by a tiny number of activists who make the party look very bad. We are asking candidates for office to publicly distance themselves from the platform.
The good people of Montana and Texas can be all for sodomy law revival as much as they want. Those laws won’t be worth the paper they’re printed on. Per Lawrence vs. Texas (June 26, 2003), any such law would instantly be void and unenforceable. A REPUBLICAN SCOTUS rendered that historic and wise decision.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!?! Why the hell is that the case, but liberals are NEVER identified with their bigotry and homophobia? The liberals handed down bigotry in the form of federal laws and NOBODY gives a fuck about that. Here, local parties put this crap in their platform and liberals have that fucking audacity to clutch their pearls and heave a gasp.
The left is based on institutional hatred and bigotry and far too many people are like the king on The Princess Bride (paraphrased) “Isn’t that nice.”.
As I said, bigotry on paper is one thing. I’m far more concerned about the blatant bigotry on full display by the liberal left.
Yes, it is a TINY number of activists, and they do make the party look bad.
Dan, Your post is right on the money except you I think you betray your ignorance of and animus towards social conservatives with your broad-brush stereotypes.
“Social conservatives” didn’t pass this platform. A minority group of activists did.
The very same way Ron Paul whackos dominated many Republican caucuses a few years back, even though rank and file Republicans had no intention of supporting him.
The vast majority of social conservatives I know believe homosexuality is wrong, but that it is not the governments place to prohibit it between consenting adults.
Which is very different from what your post claims.
Indeed, I agree with AE.
I think the ‘So-cons’ can be divided into two groups. The first is that group that Seena-anna belongs to. The second is ‘conservative means ‘leave us the hell alone” group I consider myself part of.
Unfortunately the so-cons knuckle-draggers (as opposed to the leave me be types) are always better organized than the fiscal conservative social libertarians. They are itching to exploit any chaos to put for this sort of idiotic stuff.
And they end up hurting the Republican Party every time, but never seem to get it a clue.
Great post, BDB. Glad you took the time to address this.
I find your “Nor are states doing anything to prevent us from living our lives openly” a rather desperate attempt at finding the bright side (put another way, one could say, “despite legal discrimination in matters of housing, employment, family law and military service, at least they don’t arrest us for existing!”), but you go to blog with the party you have, etc. Anyway, snark off: glad you had the courage to tackle this.
@Jim Michaud: Yes, gay rights groups (routinely called “The Gay Left” on this blog) went around the ballot box and legislative process and found activist judges who were willing to view the Constitution as a living document and expand rights for American citizens, rights that the Founders never anticipated or considered when they first wrote. Glad you approve.
Torrentprime, given your behavior here, the reason you are discriminated against in matters of housing, employment, family law and military service has less to do with your homosexuality than it does the fact that you are an irresponsible, lying ass.
You don’t get that basic concept. Gays and lesbians like yourself sexually harass your coworkers, demand sex from people as the price of employment, and discriminate against those who won’t or can’t give you sexual pleasure, and yet you go to the national media screaming about how it’s “homophobia and sexism” when you’re called out on it.
Now we have the hilarious example of you desperately spinning to explain why simply enforcing immigration laws is “homophobic”.
You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. You’re simply using your sexual orientation as an excuse for idiotic behavior.
THAT is why these platforms exist. And that is why I frankly can’t blame people for writing them, because when the gay and lesbian community has a history of openly endorsing abolishment of age-of-consent laws and supporting pedophile groups, its private conduct BECOMES public business.
As isolated occurrences as they may be, the left can and will magnify them to paint the entire GOP as intolerant and homophobic. Every June I like to watch my gay themed movies and recorded programs. The other night, viewing the PBS special After Stonewall I was struck by the fact that some of those interviewed said they had been Republican or conservatives. I wondered if the Party had been more tolerant would they have remained and how much would they have contributed to securing for gays and lesbians our civil rights (not special) and making the Republican Party a viable option for many more in the gay community.
As a registered Republican (albeit not in Texas or Montana), I am not happy about these state party planks in the platform. I am a Republican because the Republican party comes closest (between the 2 major parties) to advocating liberty and freedom.
I am always of the opinion that we should be careful of the powers we give the state (government).
Shoot, I’d be afraid of giving back to the state the ability to outlaw sodomy, next thing you know, they may outlaw heterosexual behavior and that scares me, being a non-gay in the village. 🙂
Why would anybody want to take a Statist tyranny just for a pat on the head?