Gay Republican group drops advocacy for transgender rights
Log Cabin Republicans, which aims to build a "more inclusive" GOP party, will no longer advocate for transgender rights and instead concentrate solely on issues of sexual orientation and conservative values.
Ross Hemminger, president of the nation's largest organization for gay conservatives and straight allies, announced the policy shift in a column published Thursday in Townhall, writing that the group was founded in 1977 for gay Americans who believe in limited government, individual liberty, and equality while seeking a voice among Republicans.
"From the start, Log Cabin Republicans grounded its advocacy in constitutional principles — equal protection, limited government, and individual freedom," Hemminger wrote.
The group's board of directors voted to advocate for transgender rights in 2015, officially adding the "T" to the now widely used LGBT acronym due to the belief that all adults should be allowed to "pursue their own happiness" without government interference if it doesn't impede on the rights of others, Hemminger wrote.
"At the time, we did not believe that we would find ourselves where we are today," Hemminger's column continued. "The transgender movement has ceased focusing on adults at all — nearly all of their efforts and those of their aligned special interest groups focus on minors. They push schools to teach radical gender ideology; they want biological men in women’s sports regardless of the consequences; perhaps most offensively, they support gender reassignment treatments for minors, often without the knowledge or consent of the parents, knowing full well these treatments are mostly irreversible."
Hemminger said the "new era of gender identity politics" doesn't align with the group's mission.
"Gay men and women are losing public support across the country, and support for gay marriage and other once-widely accepted rights is eroding," Hemminger's column continued. "Why? Because many voters today weren’t alive or cognizant of the politics of gay marriage winding its way through the courts and gaining ground in public opinion. Their view of the gay community is based on today’s radical transgender activists with their unnecessary and discomfiting focus on America's youth."
The group's board of directors voted to refine its national advocacy focus after "significant discussion" with members and will now focus specifically on issues pertaining to sexual orientation and conservative values, Hemminger said.
"In other words, we are an LGB advocacy organization, as our founders envisioned and our moral center calls us to be," Hemminger wrote. "This decision does not change who can belong to Log Cabin Republicans. Membership remains open to all conservatives. We welcome all of our allies in this mission and as participants in our organization. Our chapters will continue to welcome all allies and will operate in ways that best serve their membership. This decision reaffirms our core mission."
Hemminger said the move toward "returning to our roots" exemplifies the group's disciplined advocacy throughout its history.
"We were founded on principle, and we move forward with clarity, strength, and the confidence that conservative values — properly applied — protect the liberty of every American," the column concluded.
The group is refocusing its mission as the Trump administration continues to roll back transgender rights, including by seeking to remove federal funding for gender-affirming care for minors and mandate that all passports must reflect sex assigned at birth.
The Human Rights Campaign announced Thursday that the LGBTQ+ community is now more influential than ever before, with a record 12 percent of U.S. adults, or roughly 25.6 million people, identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or gender diverse.
"LGBTQ+ Americans are everywhere," HRC president Kelley Robinson said in a statement. "There are 25 million of us across the country, and we now have critical mass in almost every state in the nation. We’re not a niche constituency, and no campaign, brand, or employer can afford to treat us like one."
HRC officials, meanwhile, condemned Thursday's announcement by the Log Cabin Republicans.
"It's news to us that they ever pretended to care about the T," HRC spokesperson Delphine Luneau told LGBTQ Nation in a statement. "Splitting up the LGBTQ+ community and pitting us against each other is exactly what anti-equality forces want to see happen. Sacrificing one part of a community in the false hope that it will somehow protect the rest of it has never worked throughout history, and it’s a tactic that should be rejected again today. Meanwhile, support for transgender people among the broader LGBTQ+ population is overwhelmingly strong, because the vast majority of us understand that all our freedoms are intertwined."
Jordan Willow Evans, the first openly transgender Republican elected official, said her relationship with the GOP has been strained amid Trump's anti-trans crusade.
"I’ve only lived so much life, but most of that adult life was spent as a Republican trying to push what I was always told were Republican principles," Evans told MS NOW on Friday. "And now, still believing all those principles, I find myself at odds with a lot of people I thought I understood."
One Log Cabin Republican told Newsweek last year he didn't see the Trump administration as "anti-trans" despite that criticism by the transgender community and allies. Chairman Daniel Innis, who is also a GOP state senator in New Hampshire, said he instead saw Trump's actions as a "sentiment of protecting girls" in sports and other issues.
"I think we've got to be reasonable and say, you have every right to exist," Innis previously told Newsweek. "You have every right to pursue what you perceive to be the best solution for you, but that doesn't mean you could trample on the rights of others. And I think that's what the president is trying to get at."