The Republican Party platform urges the “reversal” of marriage equality in the United States. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty)
Donald Trump’s Republican Party has decided to leave its 2016 platform unchanged for the 2020 elections, meaning its official opposition to same-sex marriage will remain.
The vote to leave the party’s platform unchanged by the Republican National Committee means that nothing will be added to or removed from its four-year-old policy outline.
The 2016 GOP platform states: “Traditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a free society and has for millennia been entrusted with rearing children and instilling cultural values.”
It “condemns” Obergefell v Hodges, which legalised marriage equality across America, and insists: “Five unelected lawyers robbed 320 million Americans of their legitimate constitutional authority to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The Court twisted the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment beyond recognition.”
The platform adds: “We do not accept the Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage and we urge its reversal, whether through judicial reconsideration or a constitutional amendment returning control over marriage to the states.”
GOP platform supports LGBT+ discrimination.
As well as encouraging the reversal of equal marriage in the US, the Republican platform also clearly supports businesses and charities that discriminate against LGBT+ people in the name of religion, condemning “government discrimination against individuals and businesses for acting on the belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman”.
The platform promotes replacing sex education with “sexual risk avoidance education that sets abstinence until marriage as the responsible and respected standard of behaviour”, and states that trans people using “restrooms, locker rooms, and other facilities” that match their gender “is at once illegal, dangerous, and ignores privacy issues”.
It even contains a nod to conversion therapy when it says: “We support the right of parents to determine the proper medical treatment and therapy for their minor children.”
Aside from its horrific positions on LGBT+ rights, the Trump administration’s decision to keep the Republican platform the same is confusing.
It repeatedly refers to plans for legislation which in 2020 have already been passed, and also attacks the “current administration”, which in 2016 was Obama’s Democratic government.
LGBT+ Republicans condemn platform.
The decision has left Republican politicians infuriated, across the party’s political spectrum.
At one end, former executive director of Log Cabin Republicans Jerri Ann Henry the decision upholds “one of the worst platforms in terms of LGBT+ issues”, and said that re-using the old platform was “in no way, shape, form or fashion … an OK solution”.
But even Terry Schilling, executive director of the extremely anti-LGBT+ American Principles Project, told Politico: “America has changed incredibly since 2016 and not updating our platform to reflect that is an unforced error.”
He added: “We can’t go into 2020 with the same platform we had in 2016, and by limiting the ability to make changes you run the risk of having a stale platform. It will be tone deaf.”