Pro-LGBT Republicans circulate petition to force floor debate

The Republican Party, as it prepares for its convention next week has checked off item No. 1 on its housekeeping list – drafting a party platform. And the same committee voted down her suggestions on Tuesday to acknowledge the murders of LGBT people in the Middle East and in Orlando, where the deadliest shooting in US history occurred at a gay club exactly one month before.

They declared victory after stopping attempts to soften GOP opposition to same-sex marriages and also thwarted efforts to include references to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals.

“It was including any specific groups”, Rutledge says.

“It continues to cleave the party because it is, to these social conservatives on the fringe right, something of a courageous new world to them, even though much of the rest of America has moved on”, said Gregory T. Angelo, president of the Log Cabin Republicans, which will be present at the convention next week.

“We’re going to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland and build a literal wall around the Republican National Convention”, Tania Unzueta, an undocumented community organizer with Mijente, said in a recorded message on the fundraising website, Indiegogo.

Washington State Republican Chairman Susan Hutchison is not on the platform committee, but she knows how it works. In reaction to the Obama Administration advising schools that students must be able to use the facilities that align with their gender identity, the platform states that the “edict regarding restrooms, locker rooms and other facilities is at once illegal, ominous and ignores privacy issues”.

GOP platform committee members also handled various housekeeping items, changing words like “should” and “watch”, and calling for “parallel construction” in a sentence. Senior RNC officials were involved in excising the language, according to the delegate who offered the amendment to cut it.

And of course, even on that single issue, no one could say Trump is better than Hillary Clinton – who supports marriage equality while Trump does not.

The platform draft argues that same-sex couples should not be allowed to adopt children. Only around 30 of 112 amassed platform delegates were willing to vote in favor of Hoff’s amendment, and fewer were in favor of removing a call for a Constitutional ban on same sex marriage from the party platform.

“This is another a poke in the eye to the gay community”, Ann Dickerson, a delegate from NY, said during debate about a provision touting the advantages of children raised in a traditional two-parent household.

By comparison, the final draft of the Democratic platform, which is expected to be finished by Wednesday but still must be approved at the convention in Philadelphia, will contain paragraphs of LGBT-supportive language.

“Every four years the nominees make it clear that they don’t speak for the platform”, he said. Three other delegates who had signed on quickly told the press they would also be pulling out and had been misled on what they were supporting.

The platform calls for Supreme Court vacancies to be filled with “committed judicial conservatives, like the late Justice Antonin Scalia, so that the Court can begin to reverse the long line of liberal decisions – from Roe to Obergefell to the Obamacare cases”. In an election year when Democrats are criticizing their opponents as divisive, it’s likely that they’ll keep emphasizing how wide their arms are open to voters who care about LGBT rights.