Texas GOP Again Excludes LGBT Republicans From Convention

The notoriously anti-LGBT Texas Republican Party has once again denied the state's Log Cabin Republicans chapter a booth at the Texas GOP convention, as it has for at least two decades.

The State Republican Executive Committee voted Saturday to exclude the LGBT group from this summer's convention, the Austin American-Statesman reports. It has denied the Log Cabin Republicans of Texas's request to participate at least since 1998, according to the paper. Log Cabin was the only applicant rejected this year.

"Nothing happens overnight," Log Cabin state chairman Michael Baker told the American-Statesman. "I'd hoped by 2018 we could have been a lot further than we are, but here we are." He said he was "disappointed but not surprised."

The Texas Republican Party has been even more intense in its anti-LGBT rhetoric than the national party. In 1998, in rejecting the Log Cabin request, "a party spokesman said the group was as unwelcome as the Ku Klux Klan," the American-Statesman reports. In recent years, the party platform has condemned homosexuality and endorsed "ex-gay" therapy.

Some State Republican Executive Committee members expressed deeply homophobic views before the vote Saturday at a hotel in Austin, according to the American-Statesman. One said children had to be protected from "this lifestyle."

"With the hundreds of pages that we have working there, these children are hit with this lifestyle on every screen that they have: their phone, their computer, the TVs," said committee member Tanya Robertson. "I've heard the word safe spaces. We should be their safe space."

Other committee members said, though, that Log Cabin should be welcomed since its members agree with the party on most issues, and one pointed out that some people may leave the Republican Party for the Democrats because of the GOP's anti-LGBT stances. "At the rate that we're going, we're going to run out of people to kick out of this party," committee member Morgan Graham said, according to the American-Statesman.

The state party did allow one LGBT-friendly group, Metroplex Republicans, to have a booth at the convention in 2016, the paper reports. Committee members said they did not receive applications from any LGBT-supporting groups besides Log Cabin this year. The state convention is held every two years.

In past years, the committee has said Log Cabin members were welcome to attend the convention as individuals, and that apparently holds. "It's like you're invited, but you're not," Baker told the American-Statesman, adding, "We will be there to work for the unity of the party."

Marco Roberts, secretary of the state Log Cabin group and president of the Houston chapter, told the paper he saw movement by committee members toward a more accepting stance, with some telling him Log Cabin "needed to do more to make our case at the state convention." He added, "We're going to take this opportunity to educate folks more about what Log Cabin Republicans really do stand for and what is it we're trying to do."

Gregory T. Angelo, presldent of the national Log Cabin Republicans, declined comment to The Advocate on the matter, saying it was more appropriate for members of the Texas affiliate to address.