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Texas GOP snubs Log Cabin: shortsighted mistake or sign of things to come?

Party declares, ‘homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice’

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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has declared transition-related care for youth a form of child abuse. (Screen capture via Fox News YouTube)

With the Texas GOP denying a booth at its convention to Log Cabin Republicans, condemning homosexuality as “abnormal” and repudiating transgender identities — as well as its continued refusal to accept President Biden’s election as legitimate — the resulting fallout has observers wondering if the imbroglio represents the past or the future of the Republican Party.

The Texas Republican Party delivered its full-throated rejection of LGBTQ people — including LGBTQ people who have aligned themselves with the Republican Party and former President Trump — as an official position in the state party platform drafted at a convention in Houston last weekend, which also includes a rejection of the 2020 election results and the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibiting discrimination against Black voters. Also at the convention, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) was booed as he spoke for being part of the bipartisan working group that drafted the gun control agreement now moving through Congress in the aftermath of the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

“Homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice,” the Texas GOP platform says. “We believe there should be no granting of special legal entitlements or creation of special status for homosexual behavior, regardless of state of origin, and we oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values.”

Additionally, the platform rejects “all efforts to validate transgender identity” at a time when states are moving forward with measures banning transgender youth from competing in school sports and instituting criminal penalties for medical providers providing transition-related care to minors. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott has declared transition-related care for youth a form of child abuse and has ordered state agencies to investigate the parents of children receiving such care.

Cal Jillson, a political scientist who studies Texas politics at Southern Methodist University, said in an interview with the Blade the Texas Republican Party adopted these positions because “it’s the base of the base of the base” drafting them through a series of party and precinct meetings on the way up to the state convention.

“Many state parties have decided no longer to produce platforms in their conventions, because this happens all the time,” Jillson added. “You’ve got these deeply, ideologically committed conservatives who approve a platform that then asked to be explained away by candidates and others. So many state parties just say we’re not going to do a platform because we don’t want to go through this shit.”

The Texas Republican Party’s denial of booth space at the convention for the Log Cabin Republicans of Texas came despite the group’s commitment to conservative principles — even the repudiation of gender ideology and the Equality Act — and continued defense of President Trump as the first Republican president who was a gay ally.

Charles Moran, president of Log Cabin Republicans, urged the state party in a statement to look at the special election results in Texas last week — which saw the election to a congressional seat of Maya Flores, a Mexico-born Texas Hispanic woman and Republican — as the better alternative for the party.

“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,” Moran said. “It’s clear that inclusion wins, which makes the Texas Republican Party leadership’s decision to exclude the Texas Log Cabin Republicans from their convention not just narrow-minded, but politically short-sighted.”

It’s not the first time the Texas Republican Party has excluded Log Cabin Republicans from the convention. According to the Log Cabin Republicans, the Texas GOP has not allowed Log Cabin Republicans to have a booth in years.

“So what’s going now isn’t a change from anything….just a continuation,” Moran told the Blade. “The only difference is now the media is actually paying attention to it.”

The exclusion this year, however, has inspired commentary on both sides as Democratic opponents crow the situation is perfectly emblematic of a political party with an anti-LGBTQ history and reputation and Republicans call it an isolated incident in a party that has evolved in its approach as recent polls show marriage equality — a once unpopular idea within the GOP — now has majority support among Republicans.

Charlotte Clymer, a Democratic transgender activist, wrote on Twitter the exclusion of Log Cabin from the Texas Republican convention is not unexpected.

“Watching Log Cabin Republicans be denied access at the Texas Republican Convention is like if cows were incredulous over their applications being rejected by the butcher,” Clymer wrote.

Donald Trump Jr, who has become a leading figure in the conservative movement amid the rise of his father as a political figure and has become closely aligned with Richard Grenell, who after being the face of LGBTQ outreach under President Trump has become a star in right-wing media, was among those condemning the exclusion.

“The Texas GOP should focus its energy on fighting back against the radical Democrats and weak RINOs currently trying to legislate our 2nd Amendment rights away, instead of canceling a group of gay conservatives who are standing in the breach with us,” Trump Jr. told conservative outlet Breitbart.

The Texas Republican Party didn’t respond Wednesday to the Blade’s request for comment.

The rebuke of the Texas Republican Party appears to have its own opponents within Log Cabin. On Wednesday, Michael Cargill, acting chairman of Log Cabin Texas, announced in a statement posted to local chapter’s website he’s resigning from the board and as acting chairman, citing “DC and California LCR members inexplicably interceding in Texas affairs and trying to pointlessly bully the Texas GOP.” Log Cabin Republicans of Texas was due to have a booth at the convention by “at best 2022 and worst-case scenario 2024.”

“If the Log Cabin Republicans continue down a path of divisiveness, lack of respect for the chain of command and due process, bully tactics, lack of cohesion and unwillingness to work with all chapter and state LCR leaders in the organization, the state leadership will lose its diverse composition, and its ability to lead with credibility and a unified purpose,” Cargill said.

Additionally, Cargill said David Garza, vice president of Log Cabin Republicans Austin, and Mimi Planas, president of Log Cabin Republicans San Antonio, are also resigning from the Texas board. Further, Cargill writes “neither the Austin nor San Antonio chapters will be sending representatives to the Texas Board.”

Cargill via an email sent to Log Cabin Republicans of Texas didn’t respond Wednesday to a request for comment on what he meant by D.C. and California Log Cabin members “inexplicably interceding in Texas affairs and trying to pointlessly bully the Texas GOP.”

Moran, asked by the Blade to respond to the announced resignation, downplayed the departure as an acting leader within Log Cabin’s chapter system making an exit based on his temporary status.

“From my understanding, Mr. Cargill was serving in the role only in a temporary capacity, so his resignation comes as no surprise,” Moran said. “Our Texas board represents the 5 chapters in the state and state officers serve at the pleasure of those state boards.”

Brad Polumbo, a gay libertarian commentator, wrote in a column for the conservative Washington Examiner the exclusion of Log Cabin is at odds with the values of liberty and individual freedom within the Republican Party, which “should have room in its tent for both religious conservatives with traditional views on homosexuality and gay Republicans.”

“[A] political party’s job is to win elections, and the Texas GOP is openly rejecting a group that wants to support them, agrees with them on most issues, and wants to defeat the Democrats, all because they can’t stomach the thought of having gay people in their party,” Polumbo writes. “I wonder how that will play out with LGBT voters in the next state election?

Jillson predicted the exclusionary approach by Texas Republicans to LGBTQ people within their own party and LGBTQ issues would continue until they suffer losses at the ballot box, which hasn’t happened in years and would likely not happen in the near future with Republicans expected to win in the congressional mid-term elections.

“The Republicans who attend the state conventions are a yesteryear group, even in the Republican primary electorate, which is pretty far to the right,” Jillson said. “And they select the Republican candidates that then go on to defeat the Democratic candidates and statewide elections. So until that stops happening, the Republican Party is not going to look to the middle and say, ‘Oh, sorry. We’ve been ignoring you guys. What is it that you wanted?’ And they just don’t need to do that now.”

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U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court declines to hear case over drag show at Texas university

Students argue First Amendment protects performance

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The U.S. Supreme Court justices on June 30, 2022. ((Photo by Fred Schilling of the U.S. Supreme Court)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday declined to hear a First Amendment case over a public university president’s refusal to allow an LGBTQ student group to host a drag show on campus.

The group’s application was denied without the justices providing their reasoning or issuing dissenting opinions, as is custom for such requests for emergency review.

When plaintiffs sought to organize the drag performance to raise money for suicide prevention in March 2023, West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler cancelled the event, citing the Bible and other religious texts.

The students sued, arguing the move constituted prior restraint and viewpoint-based discrimination, in violation of the First Amendment. Wendler had called drag shows “derisive, divisive and demoralizing misogyny,” adding that “a harmless drag show” was “not possible.”

The notoriously conservative Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who former President Donald Trump appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, ruled against the plaintiffs in September, writing that “it is not clearly established that all drag shows are inherently expressive.”

Kacsmaryk further argued that the High Court’s precedent-setting opinions protecting stage performances and establishing that “speech may not be banned on the ground that it expresses ideas that offend” was inconsistent with constitutional interpretation based on “text, history and tradition.”

Plaintiffs appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is by far the most conservative of the nation’s 12 appellate circuit courts. They sought emergency review by the Supreme Court because the 5th Circuit refused to fast-track their case, so arguments were scheduled to begin after the date of their drag show.

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Federal Government

EXCLUSIVE: USAID LGBTQ coordinator visits Uganda

Jay Gilliam met with activists, community members from Feb. 19-27

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U.S. Agency for International Development Senior LGBTQI+ Coordinator Jay Gilliam (Photo courtesy of USAID)

U.S. Agency for International Development Senior LGBTQI+ Coordinator Jay Gilliam last month traveled to Uganda.

Gilliam was in the country from Feb. 19-27. He visited Kampala, the Ugandan capital, and the nearby city of Jinja.

Gilliam met with LGBTQ activists who discussed the impact of the Anti-Homosexuality Act, a law with a death penalty provision for “aggravated homosexuality” that President Yoweri Museveni signed last May. Gilliam also sat down with USAID staffers.

Gilliam on Wednesday during an exclusive interview with the Washington Blade did not identify the specific activists and organizations with whom he met “out of protection.” 

“I really wanted to meet with community members and understand the impacts on them,” he said.

Consensual same-sex sexual relations in Uganda were already criminalized before Museveni signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act. Gilliam told the Blade he spoke with a person who said authorities arrested them at a community meeting for mental health and psychosocial support “under false pretenses of engaging in same-sex relations and caught in a video that purportedly showed him.” 

The person, according to Gilliam, said authorities outed them and drove them around the town in which they were arrested in order to humiliate them. Gilliam told the Blade that prisoners and guards beat them, subjected them to so-called anal exams and denied them access to antiretroviral drugs.

“They were told that you are not even a human being. From here on you are no longer living, just dead,” recalled Gilliam.

“I just can’t imagine how difficult it is for someone to be able to live through something like that and being released and having ongoing needs for personal security, having to be relocated and getting support for that and lots of other personal issues and trauma,” added Gilliam.

Gilliam said activists shared stories of landlords and hotel owners evicting LGBTQ people and advocacy groups from their properties. Gilliam told the Blade they “purport that they don’t want to run afoul of” the Anti-Homosexuality Act.

“These evictions really exacerbate the needs from the community in terms of relocation and temporary shelter and just the trauma of being kicked out of your home, being kicked out of your village and having to find a place to stay at a moment’s notice, knowing that you’re also trying to escape harm and harassment from neighbors and community members,” he said.

Gilliam also noted the Anti-Homosexuality Act has impacted community members in different ways.

Reported cases of violence and eviction, for example, are higher among gay men and transgender women. Gilliam noted lesbian, bisexual and queer women and trans men face intimate partner violence, are forced into marriages, endure corrective rape and lose custody of their children when they are outed. He said these community members are also unable to inherit land, cannot control their own finances and face employment discrimination because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.  

US sanctioned Ugandan officials over Anti-Homosexuality Act

The U.S imposed visa restrictions on Ugandan officials shortly after Museveni signed the law. The World Bank Group later announced the suspension of new loans to Uganda.

The Biden-Harris administration last October issued a business advisory that said the Anti-Homosexuality Act “further increases restrictions on human rights, to include restrictions on freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly and exacerbates issues regarding the respect for leases and employment contracts.” The White House has also removed Uganda from a program that allows sub-Saharan African countries to trade duty-free with the U.S. and has issued a business advisory for the country over the Anti-Homosexuality Act. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Dec. 4, 2023, announced sanctions against current and former Ugandan officials who committed human rights abuses against LGBTQ people and other groups. Media reports this week indicate the U.S. denied MP Sarah Achieng Opendi a visa that would have allowed her to travel to New York in order to attend the annual U.N. Commission on the Status of Women.

Museveni, for his part, has criticized the U.S. and other Western countries’ response to the Anti-Homosexuality Act. 

Gilliam noted authorities have arrested and charged Ugandans under the law. 

Two men on motorcycles on Jan. 3 stabbed Steven Kabuye, co-executive director of Coloured Voice Truth to LGBTQ Uganda, outside his home while he was going to work. The incident took place months after Museveni attended Uganda’s National Prayer Breakfast at which U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) spoke and defended the Anti-Homosexuality Act.

The State Department condemned the attack that Kabuye blamed on politicians and religious leaders who are stoking anti-LGBTQ sentiments in Uganda. Gilliam did not meet with Ugandan government officials while he was in the country.

“We in the U.S. government have already made it clear our stance with government officials on how we feel about the AHA, as well as broader human rights concerns in country,” said Gilliam. “That’s been communicated from the very highest levels.”

The Uganda’s Constitutional Court last Dec. 18 heard arguments in a lawsuit that challenges the Anti-Homosexuality Act. It is unclear when a ruling in the case will take place, but Gilliam said LGBTQ Ugandans with whom he met described the law “as just one moment.” 

“Obviously there is lots of work that has been done, that continues to be done to respond to this moment,” he told the Blade. “They know that there’s going to be a lot of work that needs to continue to really address a lot of the root causes and to really back humanity to the community.” 

Gilliam further noted it will “take some years to recover from the damage of 2023 and the AHA (Anti-Homosexuality Act) there.” He added activists are “already laying down the groundwork for what that work looks like” in terms of finding MPs, religious leaders, human rights activists and family members who may become allies.

“Those types of allyships are going to be key to building back the community and to continue the resiliency of the movement,” said Gilliam.

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Texas

Pornhub blocks Texas accessing site over age verification law

Court battle forced statute to take effect

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Washingtonporn Blade graphic

Aylo (formerly MindGeek) the largest global adult online entertainment conglomerate, owned by Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners, has restricted access to its platforms including its flagship Pornhub in Texas after a court battle forces the state’s age verification law to take effect.

Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton had appealed a U.S. District Court decision that enjoined him from enforcing House Bill 1181. Paxton and others argued that purveyors of obscene materials online needed to institute reasonable age-verification measures to safeguard children from pornography. 

A week ago the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals partially vacated the original injunction, ruling that the age verification requirements are constitutional. 

“Applying rational-basis review, the age-verification requirement is rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in preventing minors’ access to pornography,” the three judge panel of the 5th Circuit explained. “Therefore, the age-verification requirement does not violate the First Amendment.”

While the court vacated the injunction against the age-verification requirement of the statute, it upheld the lower court’s injunction against a separate section of the law that would require pornography websites to display a health warning on their landing page and all advertisements. 

Texas users are greeted with this notice.

The Houston Chronicle reported people who go to the site are now greeted with a long message from the company railing against the legal change as “ineffective, haphazard, and dangerous.” The company calls for age verification by the makers of devices that let people on the internet, instead of individual websites.

Age verification legislation was enacted in several states in 2023 in addition to Texas, including North Carolina, Montana, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Utah and Virginia.

The new laws require users to provide digital confirmation via a certified approved third party vendor like London-based digital identity company Yoti. The other possibility would be a state approved digital ID such as the California DMV’s Wallet app, which contains a mobile driver’s license.

Users accessing Pornhub from within Louisiana are presented with a different webpage that directs them to verify their age with the state’s digital ID system, known as LA Wallet. The law passed in 2022 subjects adult websites to damage lawsuits and state civil penalties as high as $5,000 a day if they fail to verify that users are at least 18 years old by requiring the use of digitized, state-issued driver’s licenses or other methods.

The Associated Press reported this past October that an adult entertainment group’s lawsuit against a Louisiana law requiring sexually explicit websites to verify the ages of their viewers was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan in New Orleans.

Texas users are greeted with this notice.

Potential or existing Pornhub users in North Carolina and Montana are directed to a video that features adult film star Cherie DeVille, who recites a message also written under the video.

“As you may know, your elected officials in your state are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website. While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk.”

“Mandating age verification without proper enforcement gives platforms the opportunity to choose whether or not to comply,” the statement continues. “As we’ve seen in other states, this just drives traffic to sites with far fewer safety measures in place.”

“Until a real solution is offered, we have made the difficult decision to completely disable access to our website in [the aforementioned locales]” the message ends with.

The company previously blocked Utah on May 7, 2023. CNN reported at the time:

Affected users are shown a message expressing opposition to Senate Bill 287, the Utah law signed by Gov. Spencer Cox in March that creates liability for porn sites that make their content available to people below the age of 18.

“As you may know, your elected officials in Utah are requiring us to verify your age before allowing you access to our website,” the message said. “While safety and compliance are at the forefront of our mission, giving your ID card every time you want to visit an adult platform is not the most effective solution for protecting our users, and in fact, will put children and your privacy at risk.”

Courthouse News reported that after Virginia’s bill was passed in June, state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, a Democrat, criticized the state for not creating a system for age verification, and instead leaving it up to websites to manage the process, citing security risks.  

“We passed a bill during this session to protect children from online porn. However the executive branch had an obligation to create a system for age verification,” Lucas said on X, formerly Twitter. “We will continue our work to keep pornography out of the hands of minors … but we will also work to ensure that this Governor’s error does not put the privacy of Virginians at further risk.”

Beyond the U.S. in the European Union, Pornhub and two more of the world’s biggest porn websites face new requirements in the European Union that include verifying the ages of users, under the EU’s Digital Services Act.

According to a December 20 report from the Associated Press, Pornhub, XVideos and Stripchat have now been classed as “very large online platforms” subject to more stringent controls under the Digital Services Act because they each have 45 million average monthly users, according to the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch.

They are the first porn sites to be targeted by the sweeping Digital Services Act, which imposes tough obligations to keep users safe from illegal content and dodgy products, the Associated Press reported last month.

In addition to the adult entertainment websites, any violations are punishable by fines of up to 6% of global revenue or even a ban on operating in the EU. Some 19 online platforms and search engines have already been identified for stricter scrutiny under the DSA, including TikTok, Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, Google and more.

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