Republican platform tries to reverse Earth’s rotation on LGBT rights

There is a thrilling scene in the first Superman movie, which hit the silver screen in 1978. When Lois Lane suffocated and died after her car fell into a deep crevice and was entombed with soil and debris, Superman devised an ingenious plan to revive his beloved.

He understood that by flying at extremely high velocity around the Earth in the opposite direction of its current rotation, he could reverse the Earth’s spin. By doing so, he could turn back time.

Miraculously, our “Man of Steel” succeeded in saving his woman, this time before her car was swept away, and in the process, without the Earth incinerating, or rivers and oceans washing over the land, or mountains crumbling.

Attempting to take a page from Superman’s playbook, the Republican Party’s 2016 platform committee is attempting to reverse the social, political, and legislative rotation of the United States by turning back the advances lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans people have made over the years.

A subcommittee of the National Republican Committee voted to approve a plank in the party’s platform blessing the psychologically dangerous and highly oppressive so-called “ex-gay” or “conversion therapy” of attempting to “convert” LGBT to heterosexual and cisgender. This abusive practice has been outlawed in a number of states, and has been condemned by most reputable medical and psychological associations.

The subcommittee also called for outlawing marriage for same-sex couples, which would take either an act of Congress, a constitutional amendment, or a Supreme Court case overturning the historic 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision.

And of course, the subcommittee would consider itself remiss if it neglected to continue the intimidation and increase the risk for harassment, violence, and shame if it did not attempt to force trans people to enter only the restroom of the sex assigned on their birth certificates rather than the one aligning with their gender identities. Ironically, this is the same Republican Party billing itself as the party of “freedom and liberty.”

So, as the party attempts to fly at high velocity in the opposite direction around our plant to reverse time, I wonder exactly how far back they would like to take us?

Would it like to recriminalize our sexuality by taking us to pre-2003 when the Supreme Court legalized our adult consensual relationships in its Lawrence v. Texas ruling?

Would it like to take us back to its 1992 platform which read: “[The Republican Party] opposes any legislation or law which legally recognizes same-sex marriages and allows such couples to adopt children or provide foster care”?

Would it like to take us back to a time when bars and taverns serving LGBT people were denied liquor licenses by state authorities since to do so would constitute “disorderly houses” or places of “unlawful practices”? Customers were mandated by law to wear at least three articles of clothing “appropriate” to their sex, or else risk arrest.