Log Cabin Republicans are Gay and Lesbian folks who identify as Republican. Quite the oxymoron.
Log Cabin Republicans of Houston were forbidden to have a booth at the recent Texas Republican Party Convention where the Republican Party Platform was being developed.
How they expect to expand their tent inside the Republican Party tent — when the Republican Party in Texas won’t even allow them a booth — is a mystery.
No more a mystery than why LGB people would join the Republican party in the first place. Especially today’s aggressive/regressive/repressive version.
The current trend in the Republican Party’s right-wing — which is the wing that has hijacked the cockpit and thinks it’s steering a time machine— is loudly proclaiming that homosexuality and transgender are abnormal lifestyle choices and are immoral. Those are their actual words.
In addition to proclaiming LGBTQ people as abnormal, the platform calls for denial of “special legal entitlements” which includes no protection under the law for being discriminated against in housing, employment, healthcare or services.
These will be — if implemented by the Texas State Legislature — Jim Crow laws for LGBTQ people.
The original Jim Crow laws were implemented in the South shortly after slaves were freed. The laws were in response to the influx of free Black people becoming elected officials. The laws took away rights of home and business ownership by freed Black people. It allowed for White only access to services, transportation, and even drinking fountains. It eliminated protective laws against discrimination of Black people.
Jim Crow laws were explicitly designed to subjugate and discriminate against freed Black people.
The current Texas Republican Party Platform is designed to enact laws to do the same to LBGTQ people. It blatantly takes away legal protection from discrimination, just as Jim Crow laws did.
The Texas Legislature is not required to adopt everything in the platform and make it into law. Fortunately, we have Democrats and Independents in the Legislature. However, the majority are Republicans who will be committed to making the platform into laws.
They meet every two years. The next one is January 2023.
So we have some time to lobby our representatives to ask them to actually represent all the people of Texas, including LBGTQ people.
We have time to protest, write letters, send emails and make phone calls to representatives to demand the discriminatory language of the platform be excised and never made into law.
If we don’t cut off the head of this snake, all the progress LBGTQ people have made will be destroyed as completely as the freed Black peoples’ rights and progress were erased.
It’s time for Log Cabin Republicans to see the actual writing on the wall — and in the Republican Party platform.
It isn’t really a case of lying down with dogs and getting up with fleas. That’s an insult to dogs.
For the Log Cabin Republicans, this is the story of picking up a snake and being surprised when it bites you. You knew the Republican Party was a snake when you picked it up.
You can help by calling representatives and senators and the governor in Texas and stating your opposition to the Republican Party platform. They are required to keep a tally of calls and opinions of constituents. Let them know now, before the next legislature session, that you want equal rights for LBGTQ people. Period.
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This post was previously published on An Injustice!
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