Statement of the Briones Society on LGBTQ Inclusion in the Republican Party

This weekend, the Briones Society joins with San Franciscans of all stripes to celebrate our city’s Pride Parade, the largest gathering of the LGBTQ community and its allies in the world. Pride is both a solemn and joyous occasion, a time for freedom-loving Americans to remember the oppression and brutality perpetrated by Public Morals Squads at places like Stonewall in the 1960s, and to draw strength from the arc of progress that has been achieved in the US since then.

Unfortunately, there is still much work to be done. Earlier this month, the Texas Republican Party (TRP) adopted a platform that states: 

Homesexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice. We believe there should be no granting of special legal entitlements or creation of special status for homosexual behavior, regardless of state of origin, and we oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values. No one should be granted special legal status based on their LGBTQ+ identification.  

The Briones Society unequivocally rejects these cruel, exclusionary, and mendacious words, which run counter to the core principles of the party of Lincoln.

We agree with the TRP that there should be no special entitlements granted solely on the basis of sexual orientation, nor should there be special penalties levied solely on the basis of religious or philosophical conviction. But the specific enumeration of the LGBTQ community in the cited paragraph, its demonstrably false assertion that homosexuality is a “lifestyle choice,” and the TRP’s exclusion from its state convention of the Log Cabin Republicans (which represents LGBTQ conservatives and their allies), all belie the notion that this platform is an agnostic endorsement of equality before the law. 

We urge the leadership of the TRP to amend its platform to strike not only its targeting of LGBTQ Americans, but also its outrageous claim – rejected by hundreds of state and local audits, as well as dozens of Republican-appointed judges – that Joe Biden is not the legitimately elected President of the United States. Republican voters, in Texas and elsewhere, are concerned about inflation, violent crime, and politicized schools. In poll after poll, they are telling Republican leaders that they’re tired of Donald Trump’s interminable campaign to center national politics around his personal grievances and fortune. It’s time for the TRP, and other state Republican parties, to get serious and focus on the issues that matter most.