Log Cabin Republicans: The intersection of LGBTQ+ advocacy and conservatism

The Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) has touted itself as the “nation’s largest Republican organization dedicated to representing LGBT conservatives and allies.” Despite this, LCR has increasingly endorsed anti-LGBTQ+ political candidates and policies that seek to ban LGBTQ+ content in schools and gender-affirming care for trans minors.

This article provides an overview of the group’s history, its meager standing in the Republican party, its stated core principles, and a list of LCR’s recent actions that repeatedly contradict those principles.

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History of the Log Cabin Republicans

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The Log Cabin Republicans formed in California in 1977 in opposition to Proposition 6 (also known as the Briggs Initiative), an unsuccessful ballot measure that sought to ban gay people and their supporters from working in public schools.

While the group wanted to be called the Lincoln Club, an Orange County conservative group was already using that name. Nonetheless, the group’s chosen name still references former President Abraham Lincoln, who “built the Republican Party on the principles of liberty and equality under the law” and was born in a log cabin, LCR’s website states.

In the 1990s, LCR members and its allies tried to educate influential Republican politicians about issues affecting gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. But in 1996, then-presidential candidate Bob Dole rejected LCR’s $1,000 donation, though he later accepted the cash. In 2000, LCR endorsed then-presidential candidate George W. Bush, noting his promise to unite the country and his lack of anti-gay campaign rhetoric. But while Bush established PEPFAR, a largely successful African HIV-prevention program, in 2003, he endorsed the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) to ban same-sex marriage.

In response, LCR spent $1,000,000 to fight the FMA and aired its first TV ad campaign against it. In 2004, Congress rejected the measure. In 2008, LCR endorsed then-presidential candidate John McCain, citing his opposition to the FMA, even though he supported a same-sex marriage ban sought by legislators in his home state of Arizona and also opposed efforts to end the ban on gay and bisexual military members known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT). In 2010, LCR filed a successful federal court challenge to DADT. In 2012, LCR endorsed then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney even though he opposed same-sex marriage, the repeal of DADT, and the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

While the national board of LCR chose not to endorse then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016, numerous state chapters of LCR did. But the national LCR endorsed Trump in 2020, with board members writing an op-ed in The Washington Post proclaiming that “Trump met his commitments to LGBTQ Americans.”

In reality, the Republican Party platform — which has remained unchanged since 2016 — calls for a ban on same-sex marriage and transgender military members and supports both “ex-gay” conversion therapy and making it legal for businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people. Trump’s numerous policies against the queer community have made him one of the most anti-LGBTQ+ presidents of all time.

Core principles and beliefs

According to its national website, LCR supports legislative protections against anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination in the workplace, housing, adoption, and other civil areas; a national ban on so-called conversion therapy for minors; continued policies to fight the HIV epidemic; the international decriminalization of LGBTQ+ identity; and also acceptance of LGBTQ+ refugees in the United States. The group also supports lower taxes and firearm ownership rights.

Despite this, the national LCR has consistently supported political candidates who oppose all of the group’s stated LGBTQ+-related social aims.

The national LCR purports to provide a community for other LGBTQ+ Republicans; host numerous social, professional, and political events; engage with conservative candidates at all levels of government; provide critical and timely talking points and information briefs on issues important to the organization; contribute to national policy decisions on other issues like national security and healthcare; and have full-time staff in Washington, D.C working to expand and support local chapters.

LCR opposes the rolling back of transgender public accommodations in public schools. LCR has suggested policies to Republicans that would accommodate trans students while giving school districts flexibility on how to do so. LCR also opposes gender-affirming care for minors. The group’s Out Spoken website pushes the right-wing falsehood that mental illness causes trans individuals to “snap” and become mass shooters.

Republican politicians have rarely ever acknowledged LCR outside of LCR events. The Texas Republican Party has refused to let the state LCR chapter host a table at its state convention.

Key figures and influential members

In 2011, LCR’s then-executive director R. Clarke Cooper told NPR, “We don’t see eye-to-eye with most Democrats or of any Democrats on things like government spending, issues around national defense, on U.S. foreign policy, on tax reforms.” However, he also admitted that state LCR chapters had worked with Democratic legislators and governors to help pass laws supporting same-sex marriage.

In 2016, LCR’s then-Executive Director Gregory T. Angelo wrote an article opposing the homophobia of “radical Islam.” The article didn’t mention the large role that Christian homophobia plays in U.S. anti-LGBTQ+ attitudes and and endorsed “homonationalism,” the use of the LGBTQ+ community to justify xenophobic views against other against people of color, immigrants, Muslims, and other countries.

LCR’s current President Charles Moran advised the sponsor of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, which bans public school instruction on LGBTQ+ issues. Moran has accused the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy organization of “destructively redefining support for the LGBT community around trans surgeries for minors, biological men competing in women’s sports, and sex and gender identity lessons in kindergarten.”

Recent developments

It has defended Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill by comparing its opponents to pedophiles who have “wet dreams of gender fluid, indoctrinated, and groomed children.” The group’s president, Charles Moran, has written op-eds opposing transgender civil rights and also the Equality Act, legislation seeking LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination protections. Earlier this year, the group named a straight self-described homophobe as one of its ambassadors.

The group’s executive director, Jerri Ann Henry, called President Donald Trump’s numerous anti-LGBTQ+ policies “hiccups.” The organization also endorsed 14 anti-LGBTQ+ Republicans during the 2018 midterm elections and 12 anti-LGBTQ+ extremists in 2020, including Trump, Mike Pence, and a woman who thinks pedophiles are part of the LGBTQ+ community.

More recently, Texas LCR members joined armed extremists to protest a drag show. The national organization continues to praise Trump and never condemned his incitement of the January 2021 insurrection at the Capitol. Other LCR chapters have compared President Joe Biden to Adolf Hitler and called for Biden’s death.

Criticisms of the Log Cabin Republicans

LCR has been compared to “Jews for Hitler.” LGBTQ+ rights activist Dan Savage has written of the LCR, “The sanity and/or motives of any queer person who belongs to today’s GOP is suspect—same goes for yesterday’s GOP, or tomorrow’s GOP.… You can affiliate yourself with the GOP or you can advocate for equal rights for LGBT people. You can’t do both at once—and anyone who claims to be doing both is lying.”

LGBTQ Nation columnist John Gallagher wrote, “[The LCR’s] history has been a long, losing struggle against the growing power of the right-wing in the Republican party,” adding, “LCR has always been afflicted by a certain weakness for being close to power at the expense of principle…. 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.”

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