Letter: Writer mischaracterized GOP’s views on gay people – Buffalo News
Aston Theodore Randle’s Another Voice article, “LGBT conservatives and GOP are on the same page” (Nov. 8), is a stunning read. His arguments would be laughable if not so slickly presented.
He writes that the Republican Party has taken enormous steps toward including the LGBT community. Has Randle not read the National Republican Committee’s platform, the platform that President Trump ran on after its adoption in June 2020, which includes this sentence about marriage equality: “In Obergefell,” the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision, “five unelected lawyers robbed 320 million Americans of their legitimate constitutional authority to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”
Randle further writes that Trump appointed the first gay man to a cabinet position, conveniently overlooking the fact that the appointment of Richard Grenell was in an acting capacity only, not a full appointment. He was in the job just three months. And why only “acting?” Because Trump knew the Republican-controlled Senate would never give a gay man a full appointment to a cabinet level position.
The Trump administration fought to have a child born abroad of same sex parents denied U.S. citizenship, erased language in federal regulations that prohibited health and welfare programs receiving federal funding from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. He banned trans people from serving in the military. I could go on, but even a casual reader of The Buffalo News can recall that the Republican administration’s anti-LGBT actions constitute a long list.
Good luck to Randle in his new position as Tri-State Log Cabin chair, as obviously, he has his work cut out for him. May I suggest he start by stop trying to pull the wool over voters’ eyes.
Dennis Stuart