Texas Takes A Giant Step Backwards

The Texas GOP held their convention HateFest over the weekend and became the first state GOP group to deny Log Cabin Republicans, an organization of gay conservatives, a booth because, well, they’re gay y’all. And while the decision was a close 4-3 vote by the Texas State Republican Executive Committee, it was still a vote to Don’t Say Gay.

The Log Cabin Republicans [LCR] said the Texas convention should have allowed them to host a booth in the name of “inclusion.” Inclusion? The GOP? Well, the LCR says the proof that the GOP is more inclusive is the fact that a Mexican-American conservative Mayra Flores won a special election to take the state’s 34th congressional district.

“Texas Republicans just saw on Tuesday night what happens when the party includes new faces and voices – a Democrat-held seat was flipped for the first time in nearly a hundred years by a conservative Mexican woman. It’s clear that inclusion wins, which makes the Texas Republican Party leadership decision to exclude the Texas Log Cabin Republicans from their convention not just narrow-minded, but politically short-sighted.”

Let’s be clear, one Mexican-American winning her election does not make the party inclusive when they want troops at the border to keep immigrants, like Mayra Flores’ ancestors, out of the country.

And here are more examples, via the Texas GOP’s own 1972 2022 platform, that illustrates their inclusivity:

Homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice.

President Joe Biden “was not legitimately elected.”

Texas GOP Senator John Cornyn was rebuked for merely taking part in bipartisan gun talks.

Texas schoolchildren should “learn about the humanity of the preborn child” including teaching that life begins at fertilization.

Gender identity disorder is “a mental health condition” requiring official documents to adhere to “biological gender,” and allowing civil penalties and monetary compensation to “de-transitioners” who have received gender-affirming surgery, which the Texas GOP calls a form of medical malpractice.

Remove the Legislature’s power “to regulate the wearing of arms, with a view to prevent crime.”

That’s Texas, where they have just seen schoolchildren slaughtered by a gun nut, where they spent part of the winter without heat or electricity because of the incompetence of the GOP, and that’s the Texas GOP.

Inclusive they are not.