It seems like these gay Texas conservatives have finally figured out that maybe, just maybe, the GOP will never be on their side.
Despite their decades of trying to advocate for queer Texans in the republican party, the Texas Log Cabin Republicans have never so much as been allowed a booth at the Texas GOP Convention.
Now, after years of its being removed, anti-LGBTQ language has been reinstated to the Texas GOP platform, dashing the little progress the party had made in recent years.
In a new article out of the Texas Tribune, former Texas Log Cabin Republican leadership has spoken on the party’s time with the greater Texas GOP and the reasons they finally gave up the ghost.
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The party’s first president, Paul von Wupperfeld, admits that they “failed to moderate the Republican party.”
“I’m glad we tried, and I think we did the right thing by trying,” von Wupperfeld states. “We’re actually going the other way, faster and faster.”
Though he helped start this republican organization, von Wupperfeld says he hasn’t voted republican since 2000.
“I didn’t believe it could succeed anymore. I sort of lost hope and got tired of the drama and the fighting internally and the fighting within the party.”
Dale Carpenter, the president who succeeded von Wupperfeld, thinks about as highly of the course the organization has taken as his former does.
“I do not believe that we made any progress,” Carpenter concedes. “In fact, I think the party got worse.”
“[The party’s] views have not changed, but the wider cultures have. That’s a very striking thing to me. They’re like a fossil from another age. And it’s on everything. I don’t believe they support a single thing that’s happened over the last 25 years.”
Carpenter held his position as president for only two years until resigning in 1997, as he felt the party had become overrun with social conservatives. Funny how that happens in a Republican party.
Both of these men served their positions during a time when same-sex relations were completely outlawed in Texas, as anti-sodomy laws weren’t banned until 2003 when they were suppressed at the federal level. In this regard, too, the party is sliding backwards; Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton actually said after the recent SCOTUS rulings that he was open to bringing anti-sodomy laws back to the state.
Related: This Texas lawyer wants to cut off access to PrEP because it “enables homosexual behavior”
These former members aren’t the only ones who feel that the Texas GOP has become irreparably distant to queer causes.
Several Texas Log Cabin Republicans in leadership positions have resigned within just the past couple months:
Michael Cargill, acting chairman of @LogCabinTexas, announces he’s resigning from the LCR Texas board & as acting chairman.
He says two other board members are also resigning, and that the Austin and San Antonio LCR chapters will stop sending reps to the state LCR board. #txlege pic.twitter.com/wg1DcsSI07
— Jasper Scherer (@jaspscherer) June 22, 2022
Long-time Texas Log Cabin Treasurer Kelton Dillard claims that the Texas GOP’s entire Executive Committee “has kind of gone back to being almost as nutty as they’ve ever been.”
Between things like Governor Greg Abbott explicitly targeting trans youth and Senator Ted Cruz calling legalizing gay marriage “clearly wrong,” it’s tough to imagine how any queer folks could still hope to align themselves with the Texas GOP.
With their state’s conservatives against them, former leaders saying they’ve failed, and their hemorrhaging of current leadership, the logs of this cabin may just come tumbling down.
