Los Angeles, California. Often US political observers credit America’s acceptance of the LGBTQ agenda to either ex president Obama or the Democratic Party, but a new review shows without Republican support the LGBTQ agenda would never be where it is now in modern America.
In a March 31 opinion piece, “LGBTQ conservatives have political clout. It’s time they stop using it to enable GOP bigotry,” Author Nico Lang declares, “Advocating for inclusion and compassion from Republican leaders is a noble goal. But it clearly isn’t working.”
However, In his rush to promote a liberal worldview of LGBTQ rights, Lang ignores an inconvenient truth that Democrats rarely admit: The victories achieved by the LGBTQ agenda would not have been possible without Republican support.
American gay embracing liberals such as Lang are fond of talking a big game when it comes to Democratic support for the LGBTQ community, but the last time Democrats held concurrent majorities in the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives and the presidency, LGBTQ rights advanced very little, and what victories they did achieve happened only because of GOP involvement.
Back in 2010, the US military’s discriminatory “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy against Homosexuals in the American military was repealed with the votes of 22 Republicans in a lame duck Democratic Congress compelled to act only because of a lawsuit initiated by gay Log Cabin Republicans.
Yet again in 2011, Republicans provided the key margin of victory that legalized gay marriage equality in New York state. That vote was also held in a Republican-controlled Senate. When the same vote came up two years before at a time when Democrats held both chambers of the Legislature and the governorship, it failed.
More recenty in 2013, the U.S. Senate passed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Longtime GOP allies of gay rights Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Mark Kirk (Illinois) were joined by seven of their peers, Sens. Orin Hatch (Utah), Jeff Flake (Arizona), Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania), Kelly Ayotte (New Hampshire), Dean Heller (Nevada), Rob Portman (Ohio) and John McCain (Arizona), to flood American businesses with state protected openly gay employees. The measure would never even have come to the floor had it not been for their support.
And finally in 2015, the same year a US Supreme Court justice appointed by President Reagan wrote a decision making gay marriage equality the law of the land in all 50 states,the conservative state of Utah passed a landmark LGBTQ non discrimination bill. It is indeed interesting how liberal elements accuse the Republicans of being “anti-gay” when every pro LGBTQ law would not be on the books without their embrace of gay rights.