By Vivian Medithi
On Oct. 22, the Log Cabin Republicans, a prominent LGBT group in the GOP, refused to endorse Donald Trump for president. The group is a national grass-roots organization that advocates conservative values and LGBT equality. On the face of it, its refusal to endorse Trump is an admirable moral stance, a refusal to endorse a bigot whose vice-presidential candidate is a staunch supporter of ex-gay conversion therapy and whose party platform is one of the most bigoted in recent history.
Unfortunately, even a clock that’s broken itself is right twice a day, and if you only saw a broken clock at those moments when it was on time, you might think it wasn’t broken at all. Log Cabin has proven itself an abject failure, unable to convert a lot of talk into any meaningful change.
According to the group’s mission statement, it “supports equality under the law for all, free markets, individual liberty, limited government, and a strong national defense.” Log Cabin was founded in 1977, nearly 40 years ago, and has done absolutely nothing but take people’s money and blow hot air. Ignoring for a moment that it endorsed Trump as recently as December 2015; let’s look at some of the GOP candidates it has endorsed this election cycle: Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who has repeatedly voted and spoken against marriage equality; Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., who wants to repeal gay marriage in the state and reinstitute the Defense of Marriage Act. While Log Cabin also endorses GOP senators with more progressive stances on LGBTQIA issues, such as Rob Markman, Lisa Murkowski, and Pat Toomey, its endorsement of blatant homophobes cannot be overlooked.
Log Cabin also fails to take the moral high ground because of its support of Trump prior to the caucuses. In December 2015, group President Gregory Angelo told Reuters that Trump was “one of the best, if not the best, pro-gay Republican candidates to ever run for the presidency.” Such an endorsement just prior to the first caucuses in Iowa (Trump received 24.3 percent of the vote behind Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas) and New Hampshire (Trump won at 35.3 percent) helped the Trump campaign paint a neutral position on LGBT rights, pushing its numbers up with younger conservatives. Log Cabin directly helped to create the man it now refuses to claim.
The non-endorsement is also telling in what it doesn’t mention: vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence, who has been decried by numerous LGBTQIA organizations for his support of ex-gay conversion therapy, a scientifically discredited practice opposed by the American Psychiatric Association. By refusing to call out Pence specifically, Log Cabin is standing in its own way.
If the organization really wanted to push the GOP toward LGBT equality, it would call out homophobes rather than endorsing them. It has to distance itself from Trump to maintain support, but its endorsements at the state level show it isn’t committed to change.