I have long had nothing but contempt for Log Cabin Republicans. But after reading LCR President Charles Moran’s opinion piece in Newsweek, my immediate response was, “Oh, fuck off.”
The Trump Administration was one of the most anti-LGBTQ+ administrations in history. Everyone from his Secretary of Education (Betsy Devos) to his Secretary of Health and Human Services (Alex Azar) were open opponents to LGBTQ+ equality. Trump appointed Supreme Court justices who were all too happy to overturn Roe v. Wade and will no doubt overturn 2015’s marriage equality ruling as soon as they get the chance.
And yet Moran warns that we shouldn’t “be fooled by Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s attempt to reinvent themselves as moderate, pro-family, ‘not weird’ Democrats who simply stand for LGBT equality.”
The Harris-Walz ticket is the most pro-LGBTQ+ ticket probably ever. What, are they just TOO supportive of LGBTQ+ people?
Um, yes. According to Moran.
“Their agenda goes far beyond what our community has sought for decades, which is equality for LGBT Americans under the law,” Moran writes. “In reality, Harris and Walz are crusaders for a small but powerful cabal of the LGBT Left which wants to erase the concept of biological sex from society, expose young children to overtly sexualized and ideological content, and strip parents of their rights to make critical decisions about their children.”
Oh FFS. This kind of rhetoric, completely divorced from reality, is what I expect from the anti-LGBTQ+ right. Hearing it from a fellow gay is particularly disgusting.
If you’re not familiar with LCR, let me enlighten you. They’re predominantly rich, cisgender white men who are willing to embrace people who hate them in exchange for policies that benefit the wealthy. They don’t reflect the majority of LGBTQ+ voters or support what is in the best interest of LGBTQ+ people in this country.
Moran continues, “To this radical sect, electing a Harris-Walz administration would be a crowning achievement. Make no mistake: If Harris wins in November, this wing of the LGBT Left wouldn’t just have a seat at the table. It’d be sitting at the head, free to quietly execute its agenda throughout the federal bureaucracy and the regulatory state with a stamp of approval from the Oval Office.”
Got it? If Harris wins, the gays are taking over. Based on no evidence other than right-wing fever dreams.
Of course, if Trump wins, the anti-LGBTQ+ right will, literally, take over. Based on Project 2025.
In a time of rampant anti-LGBTQ+ hate, especially for transgender people, LCR is saying, “Actually, the problem is transgender people existing and wanting to be treated with basic human dignity, not the people who want to legislate transgender people and queerness out of existence.”
Moran’s biggest issue is that of transgender youth, something that the right has decided is the biggest issue facing the nation. There’s a lot of talk, including by Moran, about children getting all kinds of gender-affirming surgery. You’ll remember that Trump himself said that children go to school and then come home a few days later having undergone such surgery — a thing that absolutely does not and is not happening. Children are not being operated on willy-nilly in service of “a small but powerful cabal of the LGBT Left.”
What’s lost in the “debate” over transgender youth (or adults for that matter) is the fact that we’re not talking about abstractions. We’re talking about very real people and their very real lives. Transgender young people are being being used as scapegoats by Republicans across the country who are passing laws that negatively impact their lives and their families’ lives. And it’s driving up suicide rates.
Furthermore, Moran talks about how Harris and Walz are opposed to “efforts to keep gender identity ‘lessons’ out of young children’s classrooms, keep overly sexualized content out of school libraries, and keep parents involved with the education of their children.” He goes on to praise Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. A law that mandates the erasure of LGBTQ+ people and content from public schools, as if LGBTQ+ students and parents don’t exist. As a lesbian parent, how are such laws not an infringement on my rights?
Moran also talks about trans athletes and how we need to protect girls sports and wants us to somehow believe that the party that has banned abortion in state after state and wants to ban abortion nationwide is somehow the party that gives a shit about girls and women.
LCR is a fringe group of people who care only about themselves. Their support of Trump makes a sick sort of sense.