Why Texas Republicans now call gays ‘abnormal’: It was an ‘unethical’ platform change
A Republican who represented Tarrant County at the party’s state convention says it was “unethical” how the state party platform was abruptly changed Saturday to directly bash LGBTQ Americans as “abnormal” and making a “lifestyle choice.”
“I don’t think you have to poke people in the eye to stand on your principles,” platform committee member David Gebhart of Bedford said.
He called the newly revised state Republican platform “inflammatory” and predicted it will be “damaging” to the party.
Speaking to the Euless-based Northeast Tarrant County Republican Club, Gebhart said Republicans should have stuck to the hard-fought previous platform language that opposed “special legal entitlements” for LGBTQ Americans while also defending everyone’s freedom of speech and expression.
In the final hour of the four-day platform committee debate June 16 at the party convention in Houston, platform committee chairman Matt Patrick interrupted the discussion, saying he wanted to “add a short sentence.”
According to a video posted by the party, Patrick moved to amend the section on “Homosexuality and Gender Issues” and begin with the sentence: “Homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice.”
Patrick described the “abnormal” description as based on “math.”
He also blatantly lied, saying LGBTQ birth status has been “proven to be wrong.”
“Not only is it not normal, it’s extremely abnormal,” said Patrick, a Dallas activist known for wasting time during the 2020 Electoral College vote by spinning a made-up conspiracy story about an imaginary Supreme Court argument.
He was appointed to lead the committee by state party Chairman Matt Rinaldi of Irving.
Houston Republican Jason Vaughn, the only publicly LGBTQ member of the committee, replied that calling orientation abnormal or a choice is “meant to be insulting” and does not promote the party.
Gebhart, who joined the committee as a substitute when Tarrant County delegate Leigh Wambsganss of Southlake had a death in the family, spoke supporting the “less inflammatory” original language.
Patrick’s amendment passed on a 17-14 vote.
Gebhart tried to amend the language on the convention floor, invoking the name of grandstanding Kansas protesters known for picketing military funerals to bash LGBTQ Americans.
“We are the Republican Party of Texas, not the Westboro Baptist Church,” Gebhart said.
It went unheard.
Back home Monday in Euless, Gebhart told club members that he has declined news interviews about the platform change but that “I felt like it was not ethical” for Patrick to go back and revisit a platform section that had already been settled.
“You can be immovable about your beliefs and about marriage being between a man and a woman, and so forth — but not go around and just taking a stick and poking people who disagree with you,” he said.
Gebhart told the meeting, “I know people are fired up” about inappropriate sexual content in schools, particularly videos posted to the social media account LibsOfTikTok.
In Texas Monthly, reporter Christopher Hooks reminded that the previous non-bashing language was a 2018 revision.
The platform used to call LGBTQ Americans’ status an “ ‘alternative’ lifestyle” that “leads to the spread of dangerous, communicable diseases.”
Faced with an avalanche of criticism Monday over the new party platform, Rinaldi deflected complaints and instead wrote on Twitter that Democrats are “the party who thinks men can get pregnant and drag shows are a necessary part of early childhood development.”
The meeting in Euless featured Arlington Republican Susan Wright, a Star-Telegram guest columnist and former congressional candidate.
Her topic: “party unity.”
The only elected official at the meeting, 15-year Tarrant County Commissioner Gary Fickes of Colleyville, said the platform is “typical.”
“They always put a lot of things in there to get attention, red-meat stuff,” he said.
“Then when they start running, they all run to the middle.”
It’d be easier if the platform didn’t send everybody running.
This story was originally published June 21, 2022 at 10:03 AM.
