The Log Cabin Republicans are tumbling into obscurity. Just look at their next guest of honor.

If there ever were a perfect example of “forgotten but not gone,” it would be the Log Cabin Republicans (LCR). The group has popped up in the news for its association with the one person even more invisible in the Trump campaign than it is: Melania Trump. The former First Lady will be the guest of honor at an LCR fundraiser on April 20 at Mar-a-Lago.

It’s hard to know what’s more startling about the news: Melania’s emergence on the campaign trail or the fact that the Log Cabin Republicans still exist.

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The groups involved have deep ties to both Donald Trump and the Republican National Committee.

On the first point, Melania has been pretty much MIA since she left the White House. She hasn’t been at her husband’s side during any of his legal appearances, and she didn’t turn out on the campaign trail during the primaries. Her first appearance was just this past weekend when she turned up at another fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago. The photos from the event showed Melania looking as if she would rather be having a major orthodontic procedure than appearing next to her husband.

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As for the LCR, the fundraiser shows just how much Trump has captured every part of the GOP. The hosts include Richard Grenell, Trump’s former ambassador to Germany, who is gay. He is also a right-wing ideologue who is currently jetting around the globe as Trump’s “envoy,” courting authoritarian governments and undercutting American policy.

Also listed as hosts are Bill White and Bryan Eure, a wealthy married couple who once contributed generously to Democratic causes. In fact, they were at Hillary Clinton’s would-be victory celebration on election night in 2016. Apparently sensing the way the winds were blowing, they quickly ditched whatever beliefs they previously held to embrace Trump and the MAGA world.

LCR has always been afflicted by a certain weakness for being close to power at the expense of principle. The group had no problem endorsing Mitt Romney in 2012 even though Romney pledged support for a constitutional amendment banning marriage equality and also opposed repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

But the group’s history has been a long, losing struggle against the growing power of the right-wing in the Republican party. Hard as it is to believe now, the group actually started back in 1977 in response to the Briggs initiative, a California state ballot measure that would have banned gays from being teachers. In a move that is almost impossible to imagine in today’s GOP, then-Gov. Ronald Reagan came out in opposition to the measure, and it failed.

It’s all been downhill since then.

In 1995, LCR made a $1,000 donation to eventual nominee Bob Dole’s campaign. But when word of the donation appeared in the press, the campaign returned the money along with a statement saying that it was in “100% disagreement” with the group’s agenda. Dole eventually backpedaled after being lambasted in the press and even agreed to maintain an executive order prohibiting discrimination in the federal workplace based on sexual orientation.

At some point, it just became futile to try to fight the direction of the party. LCR became less about fighting for LGBTQ+ rights and more about finding a place for wealthy gays and lesbians who liked the Republican party’s policy of smaller government and tax cuts for the rich. You could try to argue that by its very presence, LCR was trying to fight from within, but let’s face it – the folks sipping cocktails at the fundraisers weren’t fighters.

Now, in the age of Trump, LCR is little more than window dressing, an opportunity for members to content themselves in the belief that they really are part of the MAGA universe. From Trump’s perspective, they are. Because Trump measures people’s worth by their money. That’s why he loved Peter Thiel so much (until Thiel refused to donate anymore.)

But by and large, the new LCR holds LGBTQ+ people in the same contempt that the Trump universe does. For proof, look no further than the “ambassador” LCR hired last year: Isabella Riley Moody. She has openly wished for a more homophobic society, has called gay people “groomers,” and said “Heil Hitler” after interviewing an antisemite.

In its public announcement of her ambassadorship, the LCR called Moody a “funny, fierce, and fiery female.”

Of course, that’s not just the state of the LCR. That’s pretty much the state of the entire GOP under Trump: vicious, hateful, homophobic, racist – and proud of it.

There will always be a handful of people from every group that MAGA hates that will still long to be part of it and embrace it. But that doesn’t mean that the MAGA world will hate you any less.