Log Cabin Republicans Drop Trans Rights Advocacy
The decision aligns the organization more closely to the Trump administration.
The conservative gay rights organization Log Cabin Republicans announced late last week that it will be a “LGB” advocacy group moving forward.
The move, dropping the “T” is meant to separate it from trans rights.
In an op-ed in the conservative media outlet Townhall, the group’s president Ross Hemminger said that the Log Cabin Republicans’ board of directors had voted to remove the recognition of trans rights because of the “new era of gender identity politics.”
The op-ed repeated many of the same talking points as the current Republican Party, referring to trans women in sports as “biological men” and that schools are teaching “radical gender ideology.”
“In other words, we are an LGB advocacy organization, as our founders envisioned and our moral center calls us to be,” Hemminger wrote in his op-ed. “This decision does not change who can belong to Log Cabin Republicans. Membership remains open to all conservatives. We welcome all of our allies in this mission and as participants in our organization.
The announcement also comes as the Republican Party continues to target trans people in its policies, and after President Donald Trump has repeatedly rolled back rights for transgender Americans. From bathroom access to gender-affirming care, trans rights have been hit again and again on the state and federal level, and also in the courts.
“After significant discussion with its membership, the Board determined that Log Cabin Republicans will focus its national advocacy specifically on lesbian, gay, and bisexual Americans and issues including marriage, adoption, military service, equal treatment under the law, and religious liberty,” the Log Cabin Republicans said in a statement.
LGBTQ Nation notes that the organization voted to include the “T” back in 2015.
In light of the news, the Human Rights Campaign slammed the organization.
“It’s news to us that they ever pretended to care about the T. Splitting up the LGBTQ+ community and pitting us against each other is exactly what anti-equality forces want to see happen, Sacrificing one part of a community in the false hope that it will somehow protect the rest of it has never worked throughout history, and it’s a tactic that should be rejected again today,” Human Rights Campaign spokesperson Delphine Luneau said in a statement to the outlet. “Meanwhile, support for transgender people among the broader LGBTQ+ population is overwhelmingly strong, because the vast majority of us understand that all our freedoms are intertwined.”
