Erika Lentosh attends the annual Las Vegas PRIDE Parade, downtown, Friday, Oct. 8, 2021.
Thursday, July 28, 2022 | 2 a.m.
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Last week, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told CNN that a vote on a bill to codify and protect same-sex marriage was a “stupid waste of time.” He was likely unaware as the elevator doors opened that Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., the first openly gay person elected to the Senate, was inside the elevator.
It’s nothing Baldwin hasn’t heard before. She shares a Senate delegation with Republican Ron Johnson, who has voted in favor of employment discrimination and the right of employers to fire employees for no other reason than being gay. He also voted for the rights of state-funded child care service providers to discriminate against LGBTQ homeless and runaway youths. And who called the AIDS epidemic “overhyped” and refused to acknowledge that the Pulse Nightclub shooting was a hate crime targeting LGBTQ people.
For his part, Johnson called the legislation to codify same-sex marriage “unnecessary” because the issue of same-sex marriage is “settled.”
Forget that conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch used that exact word, “settled,” at his confirmation hearing when describing his beliefs about the right to abortion, only to vote to overturn the right five years later.
The day before Rubio’s embarrassing elevator pitch, another GOP colleague, Ted Cruz of Texas, publicly stated that the Supreme Court was “clearly wrong” about its 2015 ruling affirming a constitutional right to marry an adult same-sex partner.
Meanwhile, gay Republicans who have fought for decades to gain acceptance within the Texas GOP told The Texas Tribune last week that progress was excruciatingly slow. Four years after they convinced GOP leaders to remove language from the official party platform declaring homosexuality to be an “abnormal lifestyle choice,” the language was reinstated this year.
“I do not believe that we made any progress. In fact, I think the party got worse,” said Dale Carpenter, former president of the Texas Log Cabin Republicans.
Pardon the pun, but the GOP can’t seem to get its messaging straight on LGBTQ people.
But even if they could, talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words. And right now, the GOP has declared war on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people.
The Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade had far-reaching implications. The ruling was based upon a specific religiously based, activist interpretation of the Constitution that calls into question the right to privacy, bodily autonomy, free speech and free religion in our schools, relationships and health care.
Even mixed-race marriages and the right to choose to send your child to a private religious school are up in the air under the court’s radical interpretation. But it’s clear that right now, the GOP is targeting three main issues: voting rights, abortion and LGBTQ rights.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has identified at least 162 anti-LGBTQ laws currently under consideration in 35 states. That’s more bills than the total for all of 2021, more than double the total for 2020, and just 10 short of the total from 2018, 2019, and 2020 — combined.
The bills cover a wide variety of topics, with the vast majority being targeted at LGBTQ youth, a population already at greater risk of bullying, depression and suicide. They include bans on books, restrictions on free speech and a few particularly cruel examples of literally favoring child misery and death to any affirmation of gay identity.
In six states, Republicans have proposed measures to allow discrimination against same-sex couples seeking to adopt or provide foster care, meaning that the party which repeatedly claims to care about children would prefer to see kids homeless, parentless and in dangerous group home facilities rather than placed in a safe, loving and supportive home with same-sex parents.
A study by John Hopkins University showed that children in group homes were 28 times more likely to be victims of sexual abuse than those in non-group settings. Yet somehow, despite literally advocating to put children in dangerous situations of known sexual abuse, the GOP has clung to the narrative that it is LGBTQ people who are dangerous predators.
In three states, legislators think it’s OK for health care providers to simply refuse to provide any and all medical treatment or care to patients, including children, who identify as LGBTQ. Another 21 states are more kind, only restricting access to health care related to their sexual health or LGBTQ identity — yet another example of the love the GOP has for children.
And in two states, the GOP has introduced particularly ironic proposals to eliminate local regulatory control over local business licenses to ensure that pro-LGBTQ businesses cannot operate or function. So much for small government, local control and free markets.
At the federal level, Democrats and a small group of Republicans (less than 1 in 4) are racing to preserve LGBTQ rights while they can, not knowing whether the upcoming November elections will give radical members of the Trump-led GOP sufficient votes to quash basic civil liberties.
And so it was, against this backdrop, that Rubio called Baldwin’s effort to ensure that her marriage and the marriages of millions of other LGBTQ people “a stupid waste of time.”
Apparently, according to the GOP, children only matter if they’re straight, families only matter if they’re straight, marriage only matters if you’re straight. If gay kids get raped or need a doctor, or gay adults get fired, if gay business owners lose their livelihoods, the vast majority of the elected leaders of the Republican Party will be there to stick their middle finger up and say, “not our problem.”
What people do tells you who they are. And no matter what GOP leaders say, their actions tell us that far too many in the current GOP want to make it a party of hate.
For those who joined the GOP when it was the party of compassionate conservatives, you’re running out of time to either get the Republican house in order or get out. At some point, you become complicit.
And for independents who vote based on issues, not parties, your choices are clear: throw your support behind a party eager to make women and the LGBTQ population second-class citizens, or vote for the party that has at the very least proven its desire to protect people, protect rights and move our country forward.
We’re just over 100 days from the election. It’s time to make a choice.
