There was a collective Log Cabin Republican (LCR) clutching of pearls heard round the nation last week. The occasion was the release of the 2016 Republican Party Platform. The conservative manifesto enshrines a litany of American exceptionalist bigotry, especially towards LGBT people. It includes a definition of marriage as solely between a man and a woman, endorses the debunked practice of gay conversion therapy and, of course, demands bathroom visitation based on birth gender. There’s also the usual crazy stuff against women’s rights, the great wall and establishing a Christian theocracy.
The LCR was quick to protest. In an angry open letter, the club’s president indignantly would have none of it. He called for donations. The money is apparently intended for an ad in a Cleveland newspaper to run during the Republican convention. It would be better spent chartering a bus to P-town, Cape Cod’s LGBT resort, for a mass nonplussed pout over lobster rolls paired with a fussy Pouilly-Fuissé at a trendy beachside seafood shack. That would make sense. But unrelenting begging for unrequited recognition has been the Log Cabin’s MO for as long as it has existed. Gay Republicans yearn for acceptance, opening their tastefully decorated homes and fat wallets for fund raisers, buying Glocks to be good gay guys with guns and gorging themselves on Chick-fil-A. Locally, they rallied around Justice Rebecca Bradley. Some even opposed the SCOTUS marriage equality declaration because defining marriage was a “states’ rights” issue. And all to no avail.
Were this any other misplaced affection, the awkward and persistent pursuit would be called stalking and the object of this unnatural obsession would have gotten a restraining order long ago. Actually, over the years, the GOP has tried to dissuade its unwanted suitors. In the past, it returned checks from gay donors and excluded the Loggers from conservative PAC conventions. Now, exasperated that the gays just won’t take a hint, the GOP finally put its foot down.
As if the Republican establishment might care, the LCR president’s petulant missive decried the platform as a personal affront. “This isn’t my GOP,” he opined, adding an emphatically (and embarrassingly) whiney, “Heck, it’s not even Donald Trump’s!” (Mind you, this was before Trump picked homophobe Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as VP).
I’m not sure what attracts gays to Trump. Maybe it’s his call for universal civilian informants. Gays do like to dish. Or maybe it’s his big beautiful wall. Walls just demand a gay touch. I see flowering succulents along the top (it’s a desert down there, after all), and understated trompe-l’œil window treatments on trompe-l’œil windows. Or, perhaps it’s just his virulent racism. One classy gay Republican on my social media feed referred to President Obama as a “yard ape.”
Anyway, it all reminds me of an exchange from that classic film, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane—the one between the sadistically abusive Baby Jane Hudson and her wheelchair-bound sister, Blanche. An appropriate paraphrase might go:
LCR: “Heck, you wouldn’t treat us like this if we weren’t gay, GOP.”
GOP: “But you are gay, LCR…but y’are!”
