The Texas Republican Party is being criticized for its shocking new platform that says “homosexuality is not a normal way of life.”
The party’s updated mission statement, adopted Saturday at the convention in Houston, also declares opposition to “all efforts to validate transgender identity” and calls for a ban on all gender-affirming medical care, including hormone therapy, for anyone under the age of 21.
At the same time, he supports debunked and dangerous “conversion therapy” – which he now calls “reintegrative therapy” – to eliminate “same-sex attraction.”
“These are just crazy people,” Michael Cargill told KXAN-TV in Austin, speaking of the Republican convention in Texas. Cargill, the acting chairman of the Texas Log Cabin Republicans representing LGBTQ Republicans, called the party’s “hateful language” “un-Christian.”
This year, the party banned log cabin Republicans from having a stand at the convention.
They “need to delve into the Bible, spend some time in church on Sundays and listen to what the Lord has to say about loving all His children,” Cargill said.
Even Donald Trump Jr. suggested it political suicide for the party to fight other conservative Republicans who may be LGBT, instead of going after Democrats and “RINO,” short for “Republicans in name only.”
Brandon Rottinghouse, a professor of political science at the University of Houston, attributed the hard right turn to the already extremist party to Donald Trump.
“Donald Trump has radicalized the party and hastened demands from the base,” he told The Texas Tribune. “Now there is simply no limit to what the base can request.”
On Monday, Twitter was flooded with criticism of a party that cannot tolerate members of the LGBTQ community but can tolerate being forced to have a 12-year-old girl by a rapist and accepts the murder of 19 children in Uvalde, Texas, as the price. possession of firearms.
Political columnist Lindy Lee said the real thing that is “crazy” is Texas Republicans, as some other critics have pointed out.
Activist actor George Takei called the state party’s new platform “neo-fascist dehumanization,” noting that targeting vulnerable groups and classifying them as enemies is straight out of a fascist play.
Lee also wondered if gay billionaire Peter Thiel would now stop shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Republican Party.
Many others also attacked extremist Texans.
On other platform issues, party delegates voted to ban the teaching of sex and sexuality in schools, calling on Texas schools to teach “the dignity of the unborn” and that life begins with fertilization.
Delegates also declared Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election illegitimate and chided Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn for his support of a bipartisan agreement on gun safety legislation.
“Whereas any gun control is a violation of the Second Amendment and our God-given rights, we reject the so-called ‘bipartisan gun agreement’ and rebuke John Cornyn,” the platform reads.
