CLEVELAND, Ohio—LGBT issues are expected to take center stage at the Republican National Committee’s platform committee meeting this week.
The 112-member RNC platform committee will nail down the party’s policy positions before all state delegates gather to vote on the GOP nominee next week.
At least three openly gay Trump delegates, The Washington Blade reported last month, will be at the convention: Charles Moran, the former California state chairperson of Log Cabin Republicans, Pay Pal co-founder Peter Thiel, and former Bush administration official Richard Grenell.
Additionally, there is one delegate at large from Washington, D.C., Foreign Policy Initiative’s Rachel Hoff, who is openly lesbian, and will serve on the GOP platform committee.
The language on the 2012 platform calls the “redefinition of marriage” by state courts an “assault on the foundations of society.”
Jim Bopp Jr., a conservative Indiana delegate on the platform committee, told CBS News that previous language on same sex-marriage is no longer appropriate as a result of last year’s Supreme Court ruling that allowed homosexuals to marry in each state
“Trump has stood with the victims of Islamic terrorist who murdered gay people because they are gay but so did I – that’s not being gay friendly, that’s being human friendly,” Bopp said. “If the question is should they murdered, of course not. But if it’s whether or not we should have gay marriage, it has nothing to do with it. They weren’t killed in Orlando because they couldn’t get married, they were killed because they are gay. And we oppose that.”
However, although Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in 1973 throughout all fifty states, the Republican Party’s present position on abortion states: “We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.”
“There may be some rhetorical changes in how it’s communicated, but I don’t think support for natural marriage will diminish at all,” David Barton, a platform committee member from Texas, told The Washington Examiner.
Conservatives in the Republican Party believe that moderates in favor of softer language about same-sex marriage are a smaller faction of the GOP. A subcommittee crafting language focused on LGBT issues among other topics appears to have a majority of social conservative delegates.
These delegates, including Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, have already proposed a platform amendment, which passed the sub-committee level, to ask state legislators to offer educational curriculums that give public school students electives to teach the Bible as a historical document.
Another proposed policy amendment, which soundly passed the subcommittee, supports separate bathroom use by biological gender as opposed to gender identity.