TEXAS REPUBLICANS OK RESOLUTION CALLING 2020 ELECTION INVALID

Party introduces platform that pushes anti-gay rhetoric

Thousands of Republican activists meeting in Houston this weekend for the state’s party convention agreed to a resolution that rejects the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and refers to Joe Biden as an illegitimate president.

The delegates also called for the repeal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was passed to end discrimination against Black Americans at the polls.

Separately, a party platform presented to convention delegates labeled homosexuality “an abnormal lifestyle choice.” According to the Texas Tribune, the platform also advocates for children to learn in school about “the humanity of the preborn child,” promoting new messaging after the state has taken steps to vastly restrict abortion.

And less than a month after 19 children and two teachers were shot to death at a Texas elementary school, convention delegates adopted a formal “rebuke” of Republican Sen. John Cornyn for engaging in bipartisan gun control talks. Attendees also loudly booed him when he gave a convention speech Friday when he tried to explain potential legislation.

The convention resolutions and platform carry no force of law but are intended to serve as a mission statement for GOP activities in the state for the next two years. It also offers a window into how the Republican grass roots have been edging further to the right and how the rejection of Biden’s 2020 election victory has become a key principle for the party.

The rhetoric on gay rights in particular represents a reversal after years of growing comfort within the Republican Party with equal rights for gay Americans and polls showing large majorities of voters now support same-sex marriage while opposing discrimination.

It comes amid a surge in hate speech and violence directed at LGBTQ people and a new push among staunch conservative circles to attack even the mere mention of sexuality as somehow “grooming” children.

The Texas Tribune reported that party delegates rejected an effort to soften the language on homosexuality from a delegate who said it would not help the party.

Votes from the more than 5,000 delegates in attendance on whether to formally accept the language into the platform have not yet been tallied, but party chairman James Wesolek said planks presented to delegates are generally accepted.

The party also blocked the Log Cabin Republicans, a long-standing group representing gay Republicans, from having a booth at the convention, a decision that drew a rebuke from Donald Trump Jr., who said in a statement to Breitbart that it amounted to “canceling a group of gay conservatives who are standing in the breach with us.”

Meanwhile, the party adopted a resolution declaring that the 2020 election violated the U.S. Constitution and that “substantial election fraud in key metropolitan areas significantly affected the results.”

“We reject the certified results of the 2020 Presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States,” the resolution continued.

The move came days after the House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 outlined evidence showing that top campaign aides to Donald Trump and other members of his inner circle repeatedly told the former president that claims of fraud were false.