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No move to the middle by GOP on LGBT issues
| CNN | - |
Cleveland
(CNN) Republicans working this week efforts to hammer out a platform
representing the heart of the GOP kept coming back to one topic: LGBT
issues.
No move to the middle by GOP on LGBT issues
Story highlights
- Both sides blamed the other for bringing the party to this point
- After the group revealed they planned to file a minority report to take it to the floor, the plan collapsed
Cleveland (CNN)Republicans
working this week efforts to hammer out a platform representing the
heart of the GOP kept coming back to one topic: LGBT issues.
Through
hours of debate on topics ranging from federal lands to immigration to
the economy to family values, a handful of delegates gathered for
Platform Committee meetings ahead of next week's Republican National
Convention repeatedly challenged their peers to moderate provisions
affecting gay and lesbian Americans.
They
were for the most part rebuffed by the 112-member panel, which approved
a GOP platform that opposes same-sex marriage rights, supports efforts
to restrict bathrooms to individuals' birth gender and protects
businesses who refuse services to individuals based on religious
objections to gay marriage.
The
two days of nationally broadcast, uncomfortable votes exposed a deep
divide in the Republican Party over its staunch social conservatism,
culminating in a dramatic effort to force the issue on the convention
floor and counter cries of deceit.
At
the heart of the effort was a group of delegates working with American
Unity Fund, a pro-LGBT Republican advocacy group funded by billionaire
Republican Paul Singer.
After
failing repeatedly in their efforts, the group was buoyed by the number
of delegates who voted in their favor, including about 20 delegates
raising their hands in support of a proposal from D.C. delegate Rachel
Hoff to revamp the party's position on marriage to broaden the language
to include "diverse" views on marriage and support the "strength of all
families" While raising the amendment, Hoff also emotionally made public
to her peers that she was gay.
New
York delegate Annie Dickerson said the GOP Platform Committee has been
resisting an obvious trend in the country toward gay rights, calling
same-sex marriage "settled law," saying it is only a matter of time
before federal nondiscrimination statutes protecting LGBT rights are
enacted.
"This is going in only
one direction, so that the platform committee of the GOP hasn't caught
up with it yet is unfortunate," Dickerson told CNN. "I think in 20 years
we'll look at this as an unfortunate blot in the history of the
Republican Party that there wasn't an embrace for our brothers and
sisters."
Encouraged, the group
began a whip operation to gather signatures on a proposal to send an
alternative platform to the floor, linking up with an unrelated effort
by Utah delegate Boyd Matheson to streamline the platform down to less
than 1,200 words, essentially removing language specific to a host of
policy issues including gay marriage.
But after the group revealed
they had 37 signatures and planned to file a minority report to take it
to the floor, the plan collapsed, with RNC staff late Tuesday bringing
out Matheson to deliver a short statement rebuking the report he had
signed and in part written, asking other delegates to abandon the effort
as well.
"That effort has been
hijacked at the last stages tonight by those who may use it for divisive
purposes or for an agenda," Matheson said. "I am officially taking my
name off of those because this is becoming a divisive exercise, and I
refuse to be part of that."
As
reporters shouted questions at Matheson about his change of heart, RNC
staffers ushered him out of the room and cut off his attempts to
respond.
Two delegates who had signed on to the effort said they did so under false pretenses.
"There
is an organization trying to inject divisiveness into our Platform
Committee," Iowa delegate Ben Barringer said. "In the process of that, I
was misled about a document ... and I signed the document under false
pretenses (while) being lied to."
"This
just leaves a bad taste in my mouth, the whole thing," said Maryland
delegate Ben Marchi, who also decried the group behind it, especially
Singer.
"That's filth, those type of
tactics, are just filth," Marchi said of what he labeled deception. "I
guess this guy, the money guy, who spent $6 million on this thing ... if
that in fact is true, that guy just did way more harm to his cause than
if he had not done that."
Hoff,
however, called assertions that her group was manufacturing a problem in
the party "simply untrue," saying that the base of the Republican Party
actually supports the GOP being more friendly to gay and lesbian
Americans.
She said it was especially damaging the party
with young people to be fighting so stridently to maintain what she
called "very hurtful, very mean-spirited" language including declaring
families without a married mother and father to be damaging to society
and to children.
"It threatens our
party because we're a party of principle, we're a party of freedom,
liberty and equality and ... we're not in line with our own conservative
principles," Hoff told CNN. "But I also think it threatens the party on
a political level, where on a demographic basis, what future will our
party have if we are so out of touch with young Americans in
particular?"
Just
as pro-LGBT amendments continued to be raised at the meeting, social
conservatives continued to promote traditional marriage.
Hoff
offered an amendment Tuesday morning to call out terrorists for
targeting gay people, which was defeated, begging her colleagues: "Can
you not at the very least stand up for the right for us not to be
killed?"
Later, as delegates
supported an amendment to insert language reiterating opposition to the
Supreme Court's ruling that gay marriage is constitutionally protected,
Dickerson said: "Has a dead horse been beaten enough yet?"
Dickerson told CNN the staunch opposition from the social conservatives making up the Platform Committee was based in fear.
"It's
just redundancy on top of redundancy," Dickerson said. "They were
fearful of us being here, fearful of it being brought up, fearful that
gays are coming into having full rights to heterosexuals. I think it's
scary to some, and when you're afraid, you repeat yourself."
Though
they lost their amendment fights, Hoff pointed to fewer anti-LGBT
elements in the overall platform -- it no longer calls for a
constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman,
for instance -- and favorable language on employment nondiscrimination.
But with the meetings held for all to see, the process also produced plenty of awkward moments.
A
remark from Dickerson about returning to the "21st century" prompted
22-year-old Virginia delegate Tommy Valentine to fire back.
"I
really don't appreciate the lady from New York implying the rest of us
are bigots because we don't agree with their view," Valentine said.
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