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Trump addresses Log Cabin Republicans at Mar-a-Lago gala
Dec 16, 2022
Former President Donald Trump addressed an audience gathered at his Mar-a-Lago club and estate in Palm Beach, Fla., Thursday night for the Log Cabin Republicans’ Spirit of Lincoln gala, the conservative LGBTQ group’s flagship event. “We are fighting for the gay community, and we are fighting and fighting hard,” Trump said. “Last night, we had over 450 LGBT conservatives and our straight allies join us for another amazing Spirit of Lincoln gala,” Log Cabin Republicans President Charles Moran told the Washington Blade. “While the speakers and award honorees spanned the conservative spectrum, all of them, including President Trump, articulated a deep appreciation for our community and committed to our broader inclusion and support for gay rights,” Moran said, adding, “This is the bar we’ll be holding all GOP candidates to in 2023 and 2024.” Last year, the Log Cabin Republicans honored Melania Trump with its Spirit of Lincoln award, citing her work combatting bullying in her role as first lady. However, the group’s support of the former president, his family and his administration has not come without controversy — even among members of its own leadership, prompting Jerri Ann Henry to resign from her position as executive director in 2019. Log Cabin Republicans’ embrace of Trump also comes amid fractures that have perhaps reemerged or deepened between LGBTQ conservatives and other factions within the GOP. This summer, the group’s Texas-based chapters were rebuffed by the state’s Republican Party, which denied their requests for space for a booth during the party’s annual convention and called homosexuality “an abnormal lifestyle choice” in its official platform. The move recalled incidents in the late 1990s when the Log Cabin Republicans were labeled pedophiles and compared to the Ku Klux Klan by Texas GOP leaders who denied the group’s requests to host booths at their conventions. The dangerous smear linking LGBTQ people to child sexual abuse and exploitation is once again ascendant on the right, propagated by many of Trump’s political allies. Members of Log Cabin Republicans’ San Antonio chapter joined a protest of a family-friendly drag performance Tuesday night in which patrons and organizers of the event were accused of “grooming” children for abuse. “I don’t know anything about the drag protest or any involvement our chapter had in it,” Moran told the Blade. Moran sought to draw a contrast between the Trump administration’s positions on LGBTQ issues and the treatment of his group this summer by GOP officials in Texas, writing in a USA Today op-ed that the former president is “a leader of LGBT inclusion.” “It’s difficult to understand just how game-changing Trump’s presidential campaigns and presidency were for LGBT conservatives, who were suddenly included as welcome members of the party after decades of being sidelined,” wrote Moran. The positions held by Moran and the Log Cabin Republicans differ sharply from those held by LGBTQ organizations and LGBTQ Americans more broadly — at least, as evidenced by the percentage of LGBTQ voters who supported Trump in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. One of the first actions President Joe Biden took after taking office last year was to repeal the Trump administration’s ban that prohibited thousands of transgender Americans from enlisting and serving in the armed forces. Following Trump’s announcement of his plans to run again in 2024, GLAAD released a statement arguing that the former president’s record was “defined by anti-LGBTQ actions and rhetoric and policy that empowered white supremacists and fueled racism, xenophobia, antisemitism and misogyny.” The group pointed to its “Trump Accountability Project,” which, it wrote, “tracked the Trump administration’s attacks against the LGBTQ community, documenting more than 200 negative policies and dangerous rhetoric against LGBTQ Americans during his presidency.” The Human Rights Campaign, meanwhile, has listed the Trump administration’s harmful policies and positions concerning LGBTQ people in categories ranging from healthcare and education to representation and foreign affairs.
https://www.washingtonblade.com/2022/12/16/trump-addresses-log-cabin-republicans-at-mar-a-lago-gala/