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How Many Gay Republicans Are There

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Us Parents Were Asked How Comfortable They Would Be If They Learned Their Child Was Being Taught Lessons On Lgbtq History At School

Democrats, Republicans make history in 2020 Congressional elections

Republican parents are more comfortable than the partys non-parents with seeing public displays of affection between same-sex couples. That appears partly driven by ideology, age and association: GOP parents are less likely than non-parents to identify as conservative and more likely to be young and say they personally know or associate with somebody who identifies as LGBTQ, which prior research has found to be a key driver of acceptance.

As for the broader population, half of all Americans said they are comfortable learning children are being taught lessons on LGBTQ history at school, compared to roughly 2 in 5 who said it makes them uncomfortable. Both figures were similar to the shares measured in 2019, but comfort has increased with regard to other aspects of queer life, including seeing a child being raised by a same-sex couple, being invited to a same-sex wedding or being represented by a person who is LGBTQ in Congress.

Us House Of Representatives

In his speech announcing his candidacy for Illinois’s 18th congressional district, to succeed retiring incumbent Republican congressman Ray LaHood, Schock said,”If China continues to be irresponsible about nuclear proliferation in Iran, we should tell them that … we will sell Pershing nuclear missiles to Taiwan for their defense. Nonproliferation will either be enforced universally or not at all it is their choice. The Chinese will come around, I have no doubt.” His campaign manager described the policy as “well thought out” and Schock first defended the remarks, but Schock later said it was “more in jest” and that he had made a mistake.

Schock easily won the Republican primary in February 2008, with 72% of the vote, beating his opponents Jim McConoughey and John Morris .


Schock spoke at the 2008 Republican National Convention.

Prior to the general election, Schock was endorsed by 116 mayors across the district and the Illinois Farm Bureau. Schock’s hometown newspaper, the Journal Star, endorsed Schock “on the basis of his potential.”

In October 2008, Schock’s father testified in a federal court that his son had notarized documents with false dates while helping his parents establish tax shelters.

The Battle For A Booth

The battle for a booth at the Texas Republican Party convention every two years has turned into a proxy war for acceptance within the state party.

To get a booth, a group submits an application to the party and then a committee of party officials votes on whether to approve the request. This year, Log Cabin came up short by one vote. Party chair Matt Rinaldi voted present, which meant he did not vote in favor or against, said Marco Roberts, the former state chair for Log Cabin who resigned in May.


Booths in the conventions exhibit hall give interest groups and some elected officials a chance to meet with other politicians, delegates and members to advocate on issues. At this years convention, there were more than 75 booths at the exhibit hall, including ones for Texans for Vaccine Freedom and the anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life.

Log Cabin were primarily interested in getting their message out to convention delegates in the hopes of having influence on the party itself, Carpenter said.

Efforts to get a booth began in the 1990s, and the group came especially close in 1996. Kelton Dillard, a longtime treasurer for the state organization, had submitted a check to the state party to register for a booth. It cleared. But the party chair revoked the approval because they said the group was advocating for the practice of sodomy, which was illegal at the time.

The associate justice of the state Supreme Court who delivered the opinion was Greg Abbott.

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Peoria Board Of Education

Schock decided to run for the Peoria Board of Education a few months after graduating from high school because he felt the board needed a more diverse and youthful perspective. After he did not get on the ballot because he did not have the required number of valid signatures on his petition to run for office, he organized a successful write-in campaign, using more than 200 volunteers who visited more than 13,000 households. He defeated the incumbent with 57% of the vote at age 19, he was the youngest person serving on a school board in Illinois.

On July 2, 2003, his fellow board members elected him vice president of the board, on a vote of 43. On July 2, 2004, his fellow board members unanimously elected him school board president, making him, at 23, the youngest school board president in Illinois history.

The Gop Waves White Flag In The Same

28 LGBT Republicans

The Republican Party has moved on from one of the most seminal culture war debates, even as evangelicals fume.

At the GOP convention in 2016, Trump became the first Republican to mention protecting the rights of LGBTQ citizens. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

08/16/2021 04:30 AM EDT


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To mark the beginning of Pride Month this year, Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel did what party leaders do on these types of occasions: She sent out a tweet.

Happy #PrideMonth! she wrote, @GOP is proud to have doubled our LGBTQ support over the last 4 years, and we will continue to grow our big tent by supporting measures that promote fairness and balance protections for LGBTQ Americans and those with deeply held religious beliefs.

Inside the RNC, the missive barely registered. McDaniel, after all, had sent out a similar message in years past.

But outside the building, those 265 characters prompted immediate backlash. Not just from Democrats, who accused her of disingenuousness, but from social conservatives too who furiously dialed up McDaniel with complaints. Tony Perkins, leader of the Family Research Council, lambasted her in a scathing blog postand even encouraged people not to donate to the RNC. But the attacks, particularly from the evangelical right, were met with a shrug by the party.

A Gallup poll released earlier this year showed that by June 2021, 55 percent of Republicans supported same-sex marriage.


Nikki Haley speaks.|John Lamparski/Getty Images

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Nbc Outover 500 Lgbtq Candidates To Appear On November Ballots Shattering Records

Williams, chair of the Republican Committee in Trenton, New Jersey, agrees that some LGBTQ Republicans choose to look past certain statements or policies especially cisgender members.

LGBTQ “people who are voting for the president are most likely not going to be transgender, because we’ve been the target and the butt of most of the administration’s actions,” she said.

Americans Increasing Comfort With The Lgbtq Community

Most Americans, including Republicans generally and the parents among them, have become more comfortable with the LGBTQ community over the past three years, according to Morning Consult surveys.


When it comes to educational instruction, about a third of Republican parents said they are comfortable with LGBTQ history lessons in their childs classroom, more than twice the share who said so in May 2019, while the share who said they were uncomfortable with it fell, from 77% to 55%.

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Nbc Outtrump Supporters In Battleground States Largely Favor Lgbtq Rights Poll Finds

Asked about Trump’s attitude toward the LGBTQ community, Kabel offered a series of well-rehearsed talking points: Trump is “the most gay-friendly president,” same-sex marriage is settled law, Trump-nominated Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the pro-LGBTQ decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, and the administration is doing great work on HIV/AIDS.

As an example of how “the press doesn’t give him a break,” Kabel cited the administration’s partnership with Gilead Sciences Inc. and pharmacies, including CVS and Walgreens, to provide and distribute HIV-prevention medication to targeted communities.

“He never got credit for it,” Kabel said. “The LGBT organizations thank Walgreens and CVS and, of course, intentionally forgot to mention Trump actually made this happen.”


In June, Trump declared that the same scientific know-how that produced an AIDS vaccine would deliver one soon for Covid-19, even though there is no AIDS vaccine.

Kabel said he wishes the Republican National Committee would have met this year to update the party’s official platform, which still states at least five times that marriage should exclusively be a union of “one man and one woman.” But he said he’s not worried about a backslide on LGBTQ rights.

“The social conservatives understand that we’ve won on marriage,” he said. “They’ve lost, we’ve won, and I think they really play it down now.”

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House Votes To Protect Same-Sex Marriage

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Meet The Gay Republican Who Helped Defeat Every Anti

Since he took office in 2005, openly gay Republican Dan Zwonitzer, 41, has successfully orchestrated efforts to defeat at least six anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in the Wyoming Legislature, many of which would have set limits on same-sex marriages, and he has been a powerful political voice in behalf of gay Wyomingites. He said blocking these and other bills he considers bad for the state are what he does best.

“I’m so proud that Wyoming, even though we’re a very Republican state, that we have not passed anti-GLBT legislation,” said Zwonitzer, one of a trio of LGBTQ lawmakers in the state and the only one who is a Republican.

In fact, Wyoming, considered one of the most conservative states, has not passed any anti-LGBTQ legislation since a statute against same-sex marriage in 1977, according to fellow Rep. Sara Burlingame, a Democrat, who is the executive director of Wyoming Equality, a statewide LGBTQ advocacy group.

Zwonitzer, who is the second most senior representative in the state House, “is just well-respected,” Burlingame said.

“He carries a lot of weight, and he has been very successful in fighting these bills,” she said, adding that he’s one of a number of LGBTQ lawmakers across the country who “just carve their own path and don’t ignore their sexual orientation, but it’s not at the center of their legislative work, either.”


“I’m fine being called a RINO. It’s almost a badge of honor right now,” Zwonitzer said. “I do what I think is right.”

Theres Not Much Of A Public Opinion Gap Between Abortion Rights And Marriage Equality Among Republican Voters So Why Does Abortion Have Almost No Support From Elected Republicans

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For a second, it looked like a pretty stark difference. When Democrats introduced a series of bills to the House this month, each designed to codify in statute a particular kind of sexual freedom, the vote counts were unnervingly partisan. The Womens Health Protection Act, a bill that would codify a federal right to an abortion, received no Republican votes. HR 8373, an unnamed bill to protect legal access to contraception, received just eight Republican votes. But the Respect for Marriage Act, which would require states to recognize same-sex and interracial marriages, received a comparatively robust 47 Republican votes.

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Moira DoneganMoira Donegan is a feminist writer living in New York and an opinion columnist at The Guardian.

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Trans Rights: A Perplexing Issue

Like many other gay conservatives, however, he seems to disconnect gay rights and transgender rights. Kabel recalled a recent article with a quotation from the conservative activist Tony Perkins that contrasted the Democratic and Republican platforms in 2016.

“The only issue Perkins raised was the transgender bathroom issue,” Kabel said. “And I thought, ‘That means we won.'”

Kabel called transgender equality “one of the most perplexing issues going.”

“Transgender people deserve support and protection just like anybody else, but it’s a very complex issue,” he said. “It’s remarkable when you hear their stories, but it’s just a very perplexing issue about how to really address it and do it so that they’re protected but other people aren’t hurt, so that people’s religious views are actually taken into consideration.”

Transgender visibility is all but absent in the Log Cabin Republicans, from their leadership to their messaging.

An OUTSpoken Instagram post compares the LGBT left to the LGBT right by putting an image of a person who appears to be transgender or gender-nonconforming next to a shirtless picture of former U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock, while the campaigns store sells T-shirts bearing slogans like “gay for Tucker” “gay for Melania” and “gay not stupid.

OUTspoken sent Brokeback Patriot, who has stated trans women are not women, to New Orleans Southern Decadence party to ask passersby if they think Trump is pro-gay.

Parents Were Asked How Comfortable They Are With Lgbtq People Working With Their Children

Being a gay Republican: Is this a party that even wants me?

Vast majorities of parents who are Democrats or independents said they are comfortable with LGBTQ people interacting with their kids, while nearly 3 in 5 Republican parents agreed. Roughly 3 in 10 Republican parents said they do not personally know or associate with an LGBTQ person. Those parents were more likely to say they are uncomfortable having an LGBTQ person interact with their children than the roughly two-thirds who do, 44% to 25%.

Parker, the first openly LGBTQ mayor of a major American city, Houston, said the anti-LGBTQ talk that has surrounded the debate over what can be discussed in the classroom is an attempt to motivate a limited audience of people with fear.

Its not something that resonates with the majority of American voters and its not something that resonates with all Republicans, she said. These are targeted messages to a subset of the right an ever-shrinking core of the Republican base.

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Biden: Us Will Again Be Global Leader In Defending Lgbtq Rights

President Obama in 2011 issued a memorandum that made the promotion of LGBTQ rights abroad a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy.

The Trump administration did not formalize this directive, but U.S. diplomats have continued to support gay rights abroad.

Eric Nelson

The White House in 2019 tapped then-U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell to lead an initiative that encourages countries to decriminalize homosexuality. Grenell is one of the five openly gay ambassadors who Trump named during his administration.

The Trump administration has nevertheless faced sharp criticism over its domestic LGBTQ rights policy that included the reinstatement of the ban on openly transgender servicemembers. Activists in the U.S. and around the world also condemned the White House over its hardline immigration policy they say has made LGBTQ asylum seekers even more vulnerable.

ABiden-Harris transition spokesperson on Tuesday directed the Blade to theincoming administrations LGBTQ rights platform.

Theincoming administration has pledged to significantly bolster theoffices at the State Department and the U.S. Agency for InternationalDevelopment that are dedicated to promoting global LGBTQ+ rights anddevelopment. Biden has also said he will immediately appointa special LGBTQ rights envoy at the State Department and a special coordinatorat USAID to handle the aforementioned issues.

Openly Lgbt Members Of Congress

The US Congress is composed of men, women, and people of various ethnic backgrounds and religions all elected to represent constituents from around the country. For many years, however, having a sexual orientation other than heterosexual was seen to be incompatible with the opportunity to hold public office. Slowly, however, times have changed, and many brave Congress members proudly stand in support of gay rights. Here is a list of openly LGBT members who have served in the U.S. Congress, both in the past and in the present.

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Where Americans Stand On Lgbtq In The Classroom

American parents or guardians of children 18 years old or younger are essentially split over the teaching or discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in K-12 classrooms: 41% support it and 44% are opposed. Parents are slightly more likely to support than oppose instruction about the LGBTQ civil rights movement.

Two Trans Women In Nh House Reelected

Republicans divided over anti-LGBTQ legislation

New Hampshire currently has two trans state legislators: Lisa Bunker and Gerri Cannon. Both were initially elected in 2018 and they won reelection on Nov. 3.

Bunker said President Trumps 2016 election initially motivated her to run, but she ran in 2018 after Roems victory the year earlier. After she decided to announce her candidacy to represent Rockingham County District 18, which includes the city of Exeter, Bunker said the race was relatively easy.

Because the New Hampshire House of Representatives has 400 members, each person has to represent relatively few constituents, which means it takes much less money and resources to start a campaign. When she came into office in 2019, Bunker said there was no open hostility towards her or Cannon.

Theres a culture and an expectation of courtesy thats strongly enforced. People are expected to treat each other with decorum and courtesy at all times, she said. But there are certainly folks serving in the state legislature who are demonstrably, evidently, deeply uncomfortable with me as a trans person. One comes to know the fixed stares or the refusal to meet my gaze in the hall and things like that.

Cannon spent her years before public office as a carpenter and truck driver but she started to work with state politicians to pass protections for trans people after she came out at 45.

Gerri Cannon

They came out to their colleagues in late 2019 as genderqueer and said most of them didnt bat an eye.

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