Opinion | She’s Gay and a Republican. Is There a Place for Her in the G.O.P.? – The New York Times

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Suddenly, everything has changed in America overnight. Rights that seemed like settled law are up for debate. Now that Roe’s been overturned by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, the question is, what comes next? One signal — Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a concurring opinion that, alongside abortion, rulings protecting same-sex relationships and marriage should also be reconsidered.

Jerri Ann Henry can remember a moment just a few years ago when she felt there might be a possibility that the Republican could actually move forward on gay rights. She’s the former head of the Log Cabin Republicans, and for her, the Supreme Court’s protection of marriage equality had been a personal and professional victory. From New York Times Opinion, I’m Lulu Garcia-Navarro, and this is “First Person.” Today, Jerri Ann Henry and the Republican rollback of L.G.B.T.Q. rights.

We’re going to get started. Here we go.

OK.

I really like your name, Jerri Ann. Is there a story there?

I don’t know that it’s a long story, but there is a reason. My parents were always very adamant that a name could be very defining, and I know that’s not unique to them. Everybody feels that.

But they spent a lot of time, maybe too much time, it seemed like, sometimes, with all of us but praying over and looking at the meaning of different names. So Jerri means appointed by God, and then Ann means in prayer and faith. So I always grew up hearing that my name meant that I was appointed by God to pray and be strong.

So you grew up in Texas in what sounds like quite a religious family. I know you were home-schooled. Were your parents also politically active?

Oh, very, very. There’s so many people who — politically active may mean that your parents donate a lot or a parent ran for office. We always grew up with the deep belief — and it was just burned into our brain early on that our actions and what we did each day could have a direct role in changing law, in changing who was elected to office.

My mom used to always say that you didn’t get to complain about the candidates or the party platform if you didn’t show up at the precinct meetings to set the planks. So we — I remember, literally, young enough that I had to hold my parents’ hands, walking door to door for — I couldn’t even tell you now what candidate it was but city council or something like that. We were always very involved.

But that also meant at home we spent a lot of time — over dinner, my father would gather us around and we would talk about political issues of the day and go through not just — sometimes big-picture policy issues but also look at what was happening at a national level.

I imagine that in that environment there weren’t a lot out gay and lesbian people around you. Am I right?

One thousand percent. I think there was a gay male couple in our neighborhood that everybody just sort of referred to as “The Boys” and didn’t want to say what they were. And I’m not sure I really knew what it was myself.

“The Boys“?

“The Boys.”

Meaning they were together?

Two boys that lived together. We don’t really —

But it wasn’t explained?

Right. I don’t even think that my brain knew how to interpret at that time anything sexual for sure. I don’t think that ever crossed my mind. But the idea of, oh, it’s two men, and they’re a family. But we don’t do that.

Do you remember when you might have first heard the word gay or lesbian, what you thought about those words and people who are associated with them?

Yeah. I don’t know that I could tell you the first time I heard the words, but I know that all of my early associations with them were super negative. The word lesbian — I think I had — maybe more than the word gay, the word lesbian was maybe almost used as a derogatory term.

I grew up — I was always a little bit of a tomboy and didn’t fit in, and I think I always had this small fear of, what if I was a lesbian? Because — oh my gosh — all the derogatory, bad things would then be me.

So when did you start to recognize for yourself that you liked women?

While I was in college there were quite a few different times where I sort of was like, oh, crap, that’s happening. But I think at that point, I still just sort of put it in a box as, OK, but I’m not going to let that happen. Let me put it in a box, put it on a shelf, and ignore it. And I will then overcompensate and always make sure that I have a boyfriend, that I push harder to make that not a thing.

And it wasn’t until after I graduated from college that I really started to just come to grips.

Was there a moment?

There was. You want this story?

If you don’t mind.

OK. It was one of my first jobs after I graduated from college. And I never had a girlfriend. I never dated a woman. But there was a woman that I worked with that I was like, eh, that’s probably — I’m not an idiot. I know what I’m feeling. But I never let it really creep in and become too serious a thing.

And then I walked into this meeting, and it was just me, and her, and a whole bunch of people that we had to present a whole slide deck to. We’d been prepping for it for weeks. I knew my part. She knew her part. This was going to be great. We were going to crush it, win this client, all these things.

For whatever reason, maybe to schmooze the client, she wore a pretty low-cut outfit that day, and I was sitting across the table from her. And you could have asked me my name. I don’t think I could have told you my name. I’m not sure I could have told you anything on any of the slides that I literally had written myself.

And I finally had to excuse myself because I was so flustered, and I went to the bathroom, and cried, and looked in the mirror, and I made myself — it was so painful, I think, at the time, but I made myself look in the mirror and say the words, “you are a lesbian.”

And that word, lesbian, had so many negative connotations and so much pain that that’s what moved me to tears. I didn’t want to have to say that word and associate it with myself.

So it sounds like it was really painful to say, but was it also freeing?

It was. I had to get to that point. And once I got to that point and forced myself to take the action of looking myself in the mirror in the eye and saying, yeah, this is who you are, then I could start to take a breath and think like, OK, what does that mean?

And what did it mean? You’ve been fighting that part of yourself that was attracted to women, and then suddenly it’s undeniable. But you’re still really struggling with it. How much do you think that struggle had to do with your upbringing and your politics?

I mean, I think it had everything to do with that. This didn’t fit in the vision that I had of what I wanted for myself. This meant not a picket fence. This meant not moving back to Dallas, Texas and being the perfect wife of a member of congress who fought for all the conservative values.

So that was a challenge to let that break apart and realize that wasn’t going to ever happen. And I will say I didn’t come to it quickly. I had that moment, but it was still years of fighting over that. And I couldn’t pinpoint the moment, but probably around like 2010, 2011 I started thinking — I was like, what if this is true? I don’t have to tell anybody, but what if I let myself, just for myself, believe that this is true?

And I’m going to tell you something that’s like the most cliche thing ever, but I was like, OK, so if I was a lesbian, what does that mean? I don’t know any lesbians. I don’t know anything about them. So I watched “The L Word.”

Which is like, a rite of passage for every single lesbian in the world, especially of my generation. We all had to watch it at some point. And I was like, oh.

Now, definitely I’m not — I didn’t fit into the lifestyles of any of those women.

I was in Washington, D.C. being a political wonk and a nerd, but just actually looking at what a life as a lesbian could be like. What would it be like to have another woman in my life that I loved? Would that be possible?

So there was a year or so of just me, in my head, learning that.

Researching.

Yeah, researching and exploring, crying over some of it, hating some of it, loving some of it. Then I remember at some point being like, maybe I should change my wardrobe a little. What?

I think it was a little after this, but — oh, what is her name? One of the leads of J.Crew came out. And I was like, aha. I knew there was a reason I was shopping at J.Crew. The clothes matched.

So you’re watching “The L Word,” and you’re dressing and J.Crew, and you’re coming to accept yourself and who you are. Tell me about how that fit in to your Republican identity and when you actually decided that you would be public about who and what you were in your professional life?

Yeah, well there’s probably — like there’s two moments, I think, one slightly more personal and then one way more public. So there had been — by this time, I’d had a few years go by working within Republican politics, and of course, if — I don’t know how much time you’ve spent — I know you’ve been in D.C. plenty, but there’s sort of this culture around Christmas parties in Washington, D.C. You’ve got to get invited to all of them. You’ve got to get on all the lists.

And I was still like one of those young, hungry staffers trying to get noticed by everybody and go to everything. And at some point, in what I thought was probably a really smart political strategist brain that I didn’t have but thought I had, I decided that a good way to start coming out was not to just make an announcement but to sort of backhanded mention it to people and then be like, oh, you didn’t know? Huh. I thought I told you. Oh, well. Now you do.

And you were going to do this in the Christmas party route. Is that —

Well, I wasn’t planning to do it in the Christmas party route, but I had planned — I’d gone to like four parties in the evening, and I was at like an after-after party at Shelly’s cigar bar. And we’re all sitting around talking about dating and whatnot, and one of my friends who was gay and out said something. And I was like, oh, yeah. I was like, well, me, too. And she’s like, wait, did I know that? And I was like, huh, you must have. Surely you couldn’t have not?

And she was like, huh, I don’t think I did know that, but we should get coffee next week and talk about it. And I think that started a lot of the rumor mill. So I don’t think that was a good political strategy, but my brain at the time thought it was.

So what’s the second story? You said there were two stories.

The second story was, I was on an email thread with a ton of people, and they were debating — there was a ton of people, consultants and otherwise, Republican staffers at many different levels on a number of different projects, talking back and forth about how to navigate some tough political issues related to gay individuals.

Finally, I just kept watching people go back and forth and back and forth, and it wasn’t even necessarily hateful rhetoric or anything wrong. I was just like, oh, my gosh. Nobody knows what they’re talking about. Everybody had an opinion about, oh, well, we can’t say this because the gays would think that. Or what about the gays here? And it was like this cliche “the gays,” “the gays,” “the gays,” just very broad stereotypes.

And I just replied to all, and I was like as a lesbian who can wear high heels but also manage power tools, I think you guys are all a little bit off.

You did reply all?

I did reply all.

How many people were on that list?

There were probably a couple of people on that list.

All Republican operatives? None of them are presumably openly gay? That’s quite a coming out.

It was. At that point, I had started privately to tell two or three close friends here and there, and some of the people that I had told were on that list and immediately started texting and calling. And they were like — they were freaking out. They were like, do you realize you hit reply all? And I said, I did, and that was on purpose. And I’ll take it.

What was the response?

I’m sure there was a lot of buzz behind the scenes. There were many people that I knew that I worked with that — they may have accepted me and loved me personally but did not support homosexuality for religious reasons or whatever, and I knew that. And it was sort of a, let’s agree to disagree. And so I was surrounded by that. I get it.

But they were overwhelmingly supportive. I got a lot of things that now, in hindsight, I realize were maybe a little cliche, but I don’t fault anybody for that. I think, if you’ve never had somebody come out to you, you don’t necessarily the exact words to say.

I made a point immediately after that to go to all my bosses and supervisors and make sure to tell each of them, and I think each of them told me it was OK.

And by the fourth person, I was like, I know it’s OK. I’m not asking you permission, which I think got a laugh. They were like, we know. We’re just — so they were all fine. Nobody minded. In fact, the political backlash that I probably had stressed about for a long time absolutely did not happen.

Around this time, it’s 2011. It’s right before the 2012 election, which is, of course, Obama versus Mitt Romney. So at this point, Romney was pushing a constitutional amendment that would block same-sex marriage.

And he was opposed to the end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the military. This is a moment where the Republican Party is still really pushing back against gay rights. I wonder, as you considered whether it would be possible to be out within the career you had chosen, how you sort of understood that dichotomy of the position, though, politically on gay rights?

Because you had had this genuinely lovely experience of acceptance amongst your colleagues, and yet at the same time, there’s this platform that seems to be very much in opposition to your new identity.

Sure. So I think at that time it wasn’t just Republicans, or Romney, or anybody pushing back. I think most people were. Obama was not for marriage either at that time.

So I didn’t feel threatened or that I wouldn’t have a place within the party I’d been working for. I felt that it was very much — opposition was driven by political practicality, not by actual dissent.

I guess what I’m asking is if you had any complicated feelings, that these people are willing to accept you as an individual but they’re continuing to fight against your rights?

I think complicated would even be too bold. I would say I was aware that things needed to change, but I have never, ever in my whole entire life thought that everything — that every candidate I supported was perfect or that we had a perfect platform or stance. Everything always takes work and improvement.

So me coming out and realizing my own sexuality just got me to the place to say like, OK, there’s the next battle. We’ll work on that. And very much aware that on my side of the aisle I had a lot more work to do.

And it was interesting. As a conservative, it didn’t really give me pause because I learned so early on and still hold as my own belief, individual liberty is so inherent to what makes, I think, America different and what we should be supporting and should be furthering.

So much of what I saw as issue was not just because of my personal interest as a gay American but because I felt it was contrary to that belief. It was picking and choosing who got certain rights and liberties rather than recognizing the same inherent value and rights for everyone.

So how did that play out, practically speaking?

Yeah. So I started working with young conservatives for the freedom to marry. I started volunteering go on press junkets and trips to different early primary states.

And so you’re now at the center of moving the needle on L.G.B.T.Q. issues for Republicans.

Yeah.

And gay marriage is the main thing on the agenda. You’re heading the Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry. Are you also working across the aisle? Because obviously there was a huge push by the Democrats for —

Absolutely.

— for marriage equality.

Yeah, of course. So because of that work, I did work closely with all the different L.G.B.T.Q. groups. Of course, I think had a slightly unique perspective coming from that right-of-center side and understanding how some messaging might not resonate as well.

So there was sort of a two-part campaign, one showing leaders and decision makers, whether it be in the Supreme Court or in Congress, showing leaders that the nation was ready for this, but also going out into the community and showing people in the community that they may have privately, around the dinner table, said like, eh, it’s probably OK, or maybe it’s not my favorite, but I don’t want — I don’t want to have a law hurting my neighbor. It’s fine.

Wherever their place was, I don’t think everybody realized that they were all there and that they weren’t alone, so kind of helping, on both sides of the aisle, craft that messaging and build the groundswell of support that fit far beyond a bucket of which party you were in or what your political leanings were but to this broader concept of, love is love, and that’s inherent to all of us.

We had — at the time, members of Congress started to come forward, not all the time, but we did have right-of-center Rob Portman, others put themselves on the line because they believed this was a big enough deal, too.

So you’re feeling like you’re seeing movement broadly in the culture but also a little bit on the right?

Well, yeah.

And then, of course, in June 2015, the Supreme Court decided in favor of same-sex marriage. Take me to that moment when the decision came through. Where were you?

Absolutely. So I got up early. So I’m thinking half in campaign manager mode, press prep, you know, ready to go be the face and coordinate people but also excitement. I planed my outfit for way too long. I think — I think — it was a J.Crew jacket.

I was about to ask.

It was a J.Crew blazer over my Freedom to Marry t-shirt, which I felt like would just be perfect because I knew I would have to do some press interviews and things like that. So I wanted to be ready. I took my girlfriend, who had been — she, at this point, was basically one of our volunteers, packing everything.

And we all went down there, and we were gathered. The crowd was massive. And we were waiting. And of course, we’d worked so closely with the attorneys and were involved in the case, so we had good ties. And it was seconds — when I say seconds, I mean probably like fractions of seconds before the opinions were actually released somebody texted someone. And it went like, a spark dropped in a South Texas dry-air drought season field.

The whole crowd just exploded. I remember there was a tour bus, one of those double-decker ones that people take, and everybody sits on the top so you can take pictures. There was one of those driving by, and in all honesty, I don’t think any of the people had any idea what was happening. But I hope they got some amazing pictures of everybody just broke down, crying.

And it was one of just the most electric experiences I’ve ever been a part of.

And then I went to work.

So you’ve just experienced this incredible victory. It changes the landscape of America. It also changes your life. You, yourself, take advantage of this new legislation, and you marry your partner, right?

That’s right.

But the Republican Party comes out against the decision right away.

They did.

Did you think, at that point, though, that the G.O.P. would eventually come around?

I feel like the G.O.P. issued whatever statement it felt like it needed to issue in that moment. The decision had been made, and I think most elected officials within the Republican Party, with the exception of a few, wanted to move on past it. And that’s most of how I took their statement. And I also knew the conversations that I had behind the scenes.

So the way I think about the years that followed is a period of time where the G.O.P. didn’t so much accept gay rights or embrace this cultural change, but it kind of reached this point of — I think the word I’m looking for I guess is acquiescence maybe.

Yeah.

But they do start to turn instead to look at trans rights, and that becomes the next cultural battleground. I’m thinking of the bathroom bills, that sort of thing.

Oh, yeah.

And in this period, you become the head of the Log Cabin Republicans —

That’s right.

— which historically has been, essentially, the L.G.B. wing of the party. I’m saying L.G.B. deliberately. And I wonder, at this point, when this issue started to emerge, how you, as a group, were thinking about trans rights.

Sure. So I think there’s a couple things here, and I still feel like they’re very interesting. Even though some of them are painful to me, I think they’re interesting. With the Obergefell decision and marriage equality, I believe there were a lot of people — and I will just say, among Log Cabin, writ large, so gay Republicans in the Republican Party — I think there were a lot of people who sort of felt like, OK, we won. We got that. We’re done.

We reached the mountaintop.

Next? We’re done. Do we even need to keep doing this? Now, for me, what I thought was really important is — as I noted, I think individual liberty is so critical and core to everything that I do, and I think you can take that same principle and apply it to so many other areas.

That would be women’s rights, racial issues, and, of course, rights for the trans community, the same way that when I, as the Republican working for marriage, had a unique role and a unique voice within both the L.G.B.T. community to push back on them sometimes and say, wait a minute, you’ve gone too far. This is what policy actually works to bear the conservative principles on that side. Then also a role to be played within the Conservative community to educate people on, OK, you may have been taught this. Here’s a different way to look at that, training and education.

So I thought we could do a lot of work to educate people on, you know — you mentioned bathroom bills. I had a hard time calling a dad who was worried about his child safety in a bathroom a bigot because he was worried about his child’s safety in a bathroom. But we do have to make sure he knows the full picture of what’s happening and do better education so that he can protect his child and know that a trans person in the bathroom with his child is not a safety risk.

There’s a different way that you could view the organization, and that is that we are an extension of the Republican Party made up of gay individuals, so not necessarily advocating for L.G.B.T. rights but advocating for Republican programs, and policies, and candidates as gay individuals.

What I’m hearing you say, I think, is that there’s two different interpretations of the role of the Log Cabin Republicans. One is, are you a conservative first and your sexual identity is second? And the other one is looking more at promoting issues around sexual identity with a conservative bent. It’s about what you’re privileging. Is that right?

That’s close to it. I think to a lot of people it felt like too much too fast, unrelatable. And then beyond just trans issues, it became about a cultural war and the idea of wokeness. And everybody on the left is pushing all of these things, so we need to stand up and push against them because it’s an us-them. So if that’s what they are pushing, then we will push back.

Now, that’s happened for a long time, but in the past several years it’s become the norm to a much broader degree. And so all of those battles became much bigger. I know —

These are the Trump years, of course.

Yes. Yes, they were, and that absolutely aided it.

Hm. So there was clearly a division between you and some of the members. You wanted to take it in a direction that not only the Log Cabin Republicans but the Republican Party, writ large, wasn’t headed in.

Yes, I think that it was very clear that where I would have wanted to head with everything that we did was not where we were headed going into a second Trump campaign and election season.

So what happened then?

So I resigned.

That must have been hard.

It was.

Which I think brings us to today because in recent months, of course, we’ve seen the party introduce a wave of legislation and initiatives to limit trans rights, particularly as they relate to young people. But we’re also seeing signs that the party is once again taking up the issue of gay rights. I’m thinking of the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” legislation in Florida. Can you just describe in a word what it feels like?

Crushing. It’s almost like there’s been a spark struck or a door opened that tells everybody, you can be as anything — it’s like you can say all those quiet things out loud that we thought we’d moved past. Now everybody’s going back on those things.

And even the Log Cabin Republicans are saying the quiet part out loud now. There’s something I’ve been totally fascinated by in this moment. The Log Cabin Republicans, the group you disagreed with on trans issues but which exists and was founded to support gay rights, is actually now supporting the “Don’t Say Gay” legislation. And I was hoping that you’d help me understand why they would support something that the wider gay community sees as homophobic.

So I think the debate there and where there’s — and by the way, I haven’t — I resigned several years ago, so there’s a lot of time that’s passed, and they will do what they want.

But I think there’s a group of people on, I would say, the more right-of-center side who believe that the quote, unquote “Don’t Say Gay” bill doesn’t apply to actually not saying gay. It only applies to different curriculum and specific things that, as they would define it, are things that if, you know — no, I don’t think a five-year-old needs to be told how to have sex with a male, or female, or anything like that. That’s ridiculous.

But it does create an environment that makes it impossible for, say, gay teachers or gay parents to be part of that community, and we know, historically, how things like this turn out. Florida, of course, is one of the things that people talk about the most, but if you look at bills related to trans individuals and having C.P.S. go in and seize children — I know, as a home-schooled individual back in the day, you could legitimately have C.P.S. called on you by concerned neighbors saying, why are these kids not in school?

What you’re talking about is directives in places like Texas, which basically say that parents that give their children gender-affirming care can be reported for child abuse and possibly have their child removed from their care?

Correct, which is the opposite of everything that I grew up and was taught, that parents should have the ultimate say in this. And so it seems like this disconnect. The principle of not having the state come in and take over what a parent is doing should be something that every conservative is rallying behind. But instead, we flip that on its head.

You used the word crushing to describe how you feel about this new raft of legislation, and I’m thinking about the journey you and the party have been on. What do you think about the fact that we’re starting to see signs in some states that the party is interested in rolling back marriage equality itself and that they would do this by taking the kind of state-by-state approach that the party has taken with issues like abortion? I mean, how does that feel to you?

That’s disgusting. We’ve already done this. I can look at it two ways. I can look at it from my emotional standpoint, where I think that’s horribly wrong, and the only word for it really is crushing. It feels that way. But then also politically stupid, like we are just driving wedges for the sake of fundraising just to stir things up, which is going to make it continually and continually harder to reach any reasonable solution.

More and more Americans on both sides of the aisle feel that our country is headed in the wrong direction. There’s always going to be strong polar opposites that exist. I get that. But there’s a whole lot of people who would actually like to see us reach some positive change, and that’s not going to happen when we go back and keep re-fighting battles that were already won, battles that took a lot of work, a lot of angst, a lot of time, blood, sweat and tears, literally.

There’s other big battles ahead of us. It’s going to be tough, and we’re continually leaving people out. If that’s where the Republican Party is headed, that’s not something that I’m part of. But that doesn’t mean that I have a better place in the Democrat Party.

Yeah, I wanted to ask you that because I’m hearing you in real time really struggle with this. You don’t feel like you have a place in the Democratic Party, but the Republican Party does seem to be headed in a direction that you’re not aligned with.

It makes me wonder if you think the party, though, will have space for people like you in the future. Do you think a young Jerri Ann coming up in the conservative world but starting to recognize this reality about her sexuality would ever see a place for herself in this party?

No, I don’t think young Jerri Ann would have any place here at all. I think I have the benefit or maybe the Republican Party has the benefit of my years of work that maybe make me stick around a little bit more rather than being that young, idealistic child who would have looked at this and said, mm, no.

I am willing to just keep fighting sometimes, maybe stupidly. Maybe I’m always for a lost cause. I would say that my loyalty is to my principle. That’s unwavering. I’ll keep fighting for that.

Jerri Ann, thank you very much.

Thank you.

“First Person” is a production of New York Times Opinion. We’ll be back next Thursday with a new episode. Today’s episode was produced by Courtney Stein, Derek Arthur and Cristal Duhaime. It was edited by Lisa Tobin and Kaari Pitkin with help from Stephanie Joyce. Engineering by Isaac Jones. Original music by Isaac Jones, Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud, fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker.

The rest of the “First Person” team includes Christina Djossa, Olivia Natt and Jason Pagano. Special Thanks to Kristina Samulewski, Shannon Busta, Kate Sinclair, Jeffrey Miranda, Paula Szuchman, Irene Noguchi, Patrick Healy and Katie Kingsbury.