Gay rights: The GOP embraces homophobia

For the Republican Party, “it’s open season on LGBTQ Americans,” said Dana Milbank in The Washington Post. The backlash against transgender rights embraced by many in the GOP has now expanded into all-out hostility toward gay people. House Republicans last week turned the “normally sleepy markup” of an appropriations bill into “a vehicle for overt bigotry.” GOP lawmakers combed through more than 2,600 earmarks before issuing an amendment that eliminated “precisely three”— all for projects that provide housing and assistance to vulnerable members of the LGBTQ community. Adding insult to injury, the amendment included a provision that will ban Pride flags at funded facilities. Cheering the anti-gay amendment, Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) claimed without evidence that the targeted programs “groom young children.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has also embraced the “smear that all LGBTQ people are pedophiles,” said Tori Otten in The New Republic. When a protester waved a Pride flag at a campaign event last week, DeSantis yelled, “We don’t want you indoctrinating our children!” DeSantis’ entire pitch for the Republican presidential nomination is that he’s more homophobic than his rivals. On the trail, he touts the “extreme laws” he signed in Florida, such as the purging of LGBTQ-friendly books from school libraries. His campaign even released an ad slamming rival Donald Trump for supporting LGBTQ Americans as president. DeSantis’ campaign is struggling, but the GOP’s push against gay and trans rights “may be making headway in the public debate,” said Joseph Zeballos-Roig in Semafor. Polling shows that clear majorities of Americans oppose gender-related medical care for trans teens. And a Gallup survey found that the share of Republicans who consider same-sex relationships morally acceptable has dropped from 56 percent to 41 percent over the past year—erasing the gains made since the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide in 2015.

As a gay woman and a lifelong conservative, I can say that Republican attacks on the LGBTQ community “are not only morally wrong but politically misguided,” said Yvonne Dean-Bailey in The Daily Beast. Recent polling shows that 71 percent of Americans think same-sex marriage should be legal. To win the White House, Republicans will need to welcome “diverse perspectives and voices,” people exactly like me. But I can’t vote for a party that says, “If you are gay, you are not allowed to be a part of the conservative movement.”