National
Fla. Log Cabin members tilt toward Romney
Former Massachusetts governor wins straw poll at ‘gay’ GOP caucus in Miami
MIAMI — Two days before the hotly contested GOP presidential primary in Florida, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney beat his three remaining rivals by a lopsided margin Saturday night in a straw poll of gay Republican activists in the Sunshine State.
The poll of just 34 Log Cabin officers and active members from the Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Tampa areas was billed as an unscientific sample of LGBT Republicans in the state.
It took place at an informal “cocktail caucus” of Log Cabin members at a Miami restaurant. In secret balloting, Romney received 24 votes, former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich received 6 votes, Texas Congressman Ron Paul received 4 votes, and former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania received no votes.
“It’s a reflection of some of our most active and politically informed members mostly from the Miami-Dade area,” said R. Clarke Cooper, president of the national Log Cabin Republicans organization.
Officials from the group’s Florida chapters said the outcome was consistent with anecdotal information they’ve received from club members and gay and lesbian Republicans across the state – that a majority of Florida’s LGBT Republicans, including those who initially backed former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman and Texas Congressman Ron Paul, have shifted their support to Romney.
Huntsman has dropped out of the race and most political observers believe Paul has little chance of capturing the Republican nomination for president.
Shortly after Log Cabin’s cocktail caucus adjourned on Saturday evening, the Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald, and the Tampa Bay Times released the findings of a joint poll that showed a large majority of the state’s Republican voters were in agreement with the Log Cabin members.
The poll of 800 likely GOP voters showed Romney had a commanding lead of 42 percent, with Gingrich coming in second with 31 percent. Santorum came in third with 14 percent. Paul received 6 percent support from the GOP voter sample.
The Florida primary takes place on Tuesday. Thousands of GOP voters have already cast their bollots under the state’s early voting law.
Mimi Planas, co-director of Log Cabin Republicans of Miami, said her group organized the cocktail caucus in honor of members of the national Log Cabin Republicans board of directors, which met in Miami earlier in the day.
Planas, a Cuban American, was among several Hispanic Log Cabin members and officers that attended the caucus. The other co-director of the Miami chapter, Eddie Sierra, is also Cuban American.
Planas said her perception was that many LGBT Hispanic Republicans were in agreement with a majority of their straight counterparts in believing that Romney would be the best candidate to challenge President Obama in the general election in November.
“I can you tell that I, as a Republican gay voter, will be voting for Romney in the Republican primary and will support his campaign 100 percent,” said Planas, who works as an executive assistant to the president of a Miami company.
She acknowledges that Romney isn’t as supportive on LGBT issues as she would like, especially on the issue of same-sex marriage, which Romney opposes. But Planas and nearly all the others at the cocktail gathering who spoke with the Blade said their decision on which candidate to support for president was based on a wide range of issues in addition to LGBT issues.
“We see many of the LGBT Democrats as being one-issue voters,” said Planas. “We’re multi-issue voters who care a lot about a strong national defense, regulatory reform, and less, not more, government intrusion in the private sector.”
Jim Pease, president of the Tampa Bay Log Cabin Republicans chapter, said he’s developed a “sound bite” answer over the past ten years to the question by gay Democrats and others on why gay Republicans support a party or candidates that oppose LGBT rights.
“If you’re going to be a single-issue voter, than, yes, you’re going to have a problem,” he said. “But you’ve got to look at the whole picture. I’ve never found any candidate whose platform I agree with 100 percent.”
Pease added, “I have to look at what’s best for America. I want to keep America safe, I want a strong defense. I want a strong economy. I want to keep it so we have the liberties and the freedoms that we enjoy so we can be gay Republicans, so that we can be gay Democrats.”
Andy Eddy, president of the Log Cabin Chapter of Broward County, which includes the city of Fort Lauderdale, said he, too, is supporting Romney.
“I was originally supporting Huntsman and I was leaning toward Gingrich,” Eddy said. “But I was disappointed in a couple of things about Gingrich. I decided Romney would be the best person to win the Republican ticket in November 2012.”
Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum have each signed a pledge vowing to support a U.S. constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. The anti-gay National Organization for Marriage sent the pledge to all Republican presidential candidates last year. Paul and Huntsman were the only two of the original ‘top tier’ candidates to decline to sign the pledge.
Cooper, who heads the national Log Cabin organization, and several officials with the group’s Florida chapters, including Eddy, said on Saturday that it would be unlikely that the national group would decline to support Romney in November should he win the nomination based on his position on gay marriage.
Cooper said Log Cabin traditionally waits to decide whether to endorse a Republican presidential candidate until the time of the GOP national convention.
In a controversial decision, the national Log Cabin Republicans group chose not to endorse President George W. Bush for re-election in 2004 based on Bush’s support for the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would add a permanent ban on same-sex marriage in the U.S. Constitution.
Eddy noted that Log Cabin’s action in 2004 left it open for its chapters throughout the country to endorse Bush, enabling the chapters to avoid sanctions or expulsion from their local or state Republican committees. A number of Log Cabin chapters, including those in Miami-Dade and Broward County in Florida, have been accepted as official arms of the Republican Party Committees in their respective counties or cities.
Cooper said he and other Log Cabin officials believe Romney’s position on gay marriage is more nuanced than that of President Bush in 2004, who actively backed a constitutional ban. Cooper said that Romney, while signing the National Organization for Marriage pledge, refused to sign a “far more extreme” pledge against gay marriage sent to him and other candidates by the Iowa based Christian conservative group The Family Leader.
According to Cooper, Log Cabin’s decision not to endorse Bush in 2004 under group’s then president Patrick Guerriero was also based, in part, on the national Republican Party’s strong backing of referendums in several states seeking to ban gay marriage.
Cooper said the party was using gay marriage as a “wedge issue” to divide the electorate and increase the turnout of conservative voters at the polls.
“Romney has said doing a constitutional amendment is not realistic and that’s not something that’s going to happen,” Cooper said. “So when you have candidates like him and Ron Paul saying that’s not a realistic option, that’s far different than from saying I’m going to push for a federal marriage amendment.”
Eddy said he and other Log Cabin members planned to attend a Romney rally Sunday afternoon in Pompano Beach near Fort Lauderdale.
Jerame Davis, executive director of National Stonewall Democrats, an LGBT group aligned with the Democratic Party, disputes Cooper’s view that Romney’s statement that a federal constitutional amendment seeking to ban gay marriage is not likely to be seriously considered offsets Romney’s support for NOM’s federal marriage amendment pledge.
“It’s the height of hypocrisy that Log Cabin would try to excuse Mitt Romney’s adoption of NOM’s insidious hate pledge,” Davis said. “In 2004, LCR took a principled stand and refused to endorse George W. Bush for his misguided push for a federal marriage amendment.”
National
213 House members ask Speaker Johnson to condemn anti-trans rhetoric
Letter cites ‘demonizing and dehumanizing’ language
The Congressional Equality Caucus has sent a letter urging Speaker of the House Mike Johnson to condemn the surge in anti-trans rhetoric coming from members of Congress.
The letter, signed by 213 members, criticizes Johnson for permitting some lawmakers to use “demonizing and dehumanizing” language directed at the transgender community.
The first signature on the letter is Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware, the only transgender member of Congress.
It also includes signatures from Leader Hakeem Jeffries (NY-08), Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (MA-05), House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (CA-33), every member of the Congressional Equality Caucus, and members of every major House Democratic ideological caucus.
Some House Republicans have used slurs to address members of the transgender community during official business, including in committee hearings and on the House floor.
The House has strict rules governing proper language—rules the letter directly cites—while noting that no corrective action was taken by the Chair or Speaker Pro Tempore when these violations occurred.
The letter also calls out members of Congress—though none by name—for inappropriate comments, including calls to institutionalize all transgender people, references to transgender people as mentally ill, and false claims portraying them as inherently violent or as a national security threat.
Citing FBI data, the letter notes that 463 hate crime incidents were reported due to gender identity bias. It also references a 2023 Williams Institute report showing that transgender people are more than four times more likely than cisgender people to experience violent victimization, despite making up less than 2% of the U.S. population.
The letter ends with a renewed plea for Speaker Johnson to take appropriate measures to protect not only the trans member of Congress from harassment, but also transgender people across the country.
“We urge you to condemn the rise in dehumanizing rhetoric targeting the transgender community and to ensure members of your conference are abiding by rules of decorum and not using their platforms to demonize and scapegoat the transgender community, including by ensuring members are not using slurs to refer to the transgender community.”
The full letter, including the complete list of signatories, can be found at equality.house.gov. (https://equality.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/equality.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/letter-to-speaker-johnson-on-anti-transgender-rhetoric-enforcing-rules-of-decorum.pdf)
The White House
EXCLUSIVE: Garcia, Markey reintroduce bill to require US promotes LGBTQ rights abroad
International Human Rights Defense Act also calls for permanent special envoy
Two lawmakers on Monday have reintroduced a bill that would require the State Department to promote LGBTQ rights abroad.
A press release notes the International Human Rights Defense Act that U.S. Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) introduced would “direct” the State Department “to monitor and respond to violence against LGBTQ+ people worldwide, while creating a comprehensive plan to combat discrimination, criminalization, and hate-motivated attacks against LGBTQ+ communities” and “formally establish a special envoy to coordinate LGBTQ+ policies across the State Department.”
“LGBTQ+ people here at home and around the world continue to face escalating violence, discrimination, and rollbacks of their rights, and we must act now,” said Garcia in the press release. “This bill will stand up for LGBTQ+ communities at home and abroad, and show the world that our nation can be a leader when it comes to protecting dignity and human rights once again.”
Markey, Garcia, and U.S. Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) in 2023 introduced the International Human Rights Defense Act. Markey and former California Congressman Alan Lowenthal in 2019 sponsored the same bill.
The promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights was a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris administration’s overall foreign policy.
The global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement since the Trump-Vance administration froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid has lost more than an estimated $50 million in funding.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded dozens of advocacy groups around the world, officially shut down on July 1. Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this year said the State Department would administer the remaining 17 percent of USAID contracts that had not been cancelled.
Then-President Joe Biden in 2021 named Jessica Stern — the former executive director of Outright International — as his administration’s special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights.
The Trump-Vance White House has not named anyone to the position.
Stern, who co-founded the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice after she left the government, is among those who sharply criticized the removal of LGBTQ- and intersex-specific references from the State Department’s 2024 human rights report.
“It is deliberate erasure,” said Stern in August after the State Department released the report.
The Congressional Equality Caucus in a Sept. 9 letter to Rubio urged the State Department to once again include LGBTQ and intersex people in their annual human rights reports. Garcia, U.S. Reps. Julie Johnson (D-Texas), and Sarah McBride (D-Del.), who chair the group’s International LGBTQI+ Rights Task Force, spearheaded the letter.
“We must recommit the United States to the defense of human rights and the promotion of equality and justice around the world,” said Markey in response to the International Human Rights Defense Act that he and Garcia introduced. “It is as important as ever that we stand up and protect LGBTQ+ individuals from the Trump administration’s cruel attempts to further marginalize this community. I will continue to fight alongside LGBTQ+ individuals for a world that recognizes that LGBTQ+ rights are human rights.”
National
US bishops ban gender-affirming care at Catholic hospitals
Directive adopted during meeting in Baltimore.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops this week adopted a directive that bans Catholic hospitals from offering gender-affirming care to their patients.
Since ‘creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift,’ we have a duty ‘to protect our humanity,’ which means first of all, ‘accepting it and respecting it as it was created,’” reads the directive the USCCB adopted during their meeting that is taking place this week in Baltimore.
The Washington Blade obtained a copy of it on Thursday.
“In order to respect the nature of the human person as a unity of body and soul, Catholic health care services must not provide or permit medical interventions, whether surgical, hormonal, or genetic, that aim not to restore but rather to alter the fundamental order of the human body in its form or function,” reads the directive. “This includes, for example, some forms of genetic engineering whose purpose is not medical treatment, as well as interventions that aim to transform sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex (or to nullify sexual characteristics of a human body.)”
“In accord with the mission of Catholic health care, which includes serving those who are vulnerable, Catholic health care services and providers ‘must employ all appropriate resources to mitigate the suffering of those who experience gender incongruence or gender dysphoria’ and to provide for the full range of their health care needs, employing only those means that respect the fundamental order of the human body,” it adds.
The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2024 condemned gender-affirming surgeries and “gender theory.” The USCCB directive comes against the backdrop of the Trump-Vance administration’s continued attacks against the trans community.
The U.S. Supreme Court in June upheld a Tennessee law that bans gender-affirming medical interventions for minors.
Media reports earlier this month indicated the Trump-Vance administration will seek to prohibit Medicaid reimbursement for medical care to trans minors, and ban reimbursement through the Children’s Health Insurance Program for patients under 19. NPR also reported the White House is considering blocking all Medicaid and Medicare funding for hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors.
“The directives adopted by the USCCB will harm, not benefit transgender persons,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, a Maryland-based LGBTQ Catholic organization, in a statement. “In a church called to synodal listening and dialogue, it is embarrassing, even shameful, that the bishops failed to consult transgender people, who have found that gender-affirming medical care has enhanced their lives and their relationship with God.”
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