There’s at least one GOP presidential hopeful urging his party to stop demonizing the LGBTQ+ community, even if his candidacy remains a long shot.
Former Texas congressman Will Hurd, who’s billing himself as a “common sense” and “modern” Republican, is running a digital ad with the sensible message that conservatives should focus on defeating Vladimir Putin and not fighting LGBTQ+ people.
It’s a line that Hurd has spouted many times, including on CNN earlier this summer.
“I wish [Republicans] would focus and focus their attacks on war criminals like Vladimir Putin, not my friends in the LGBTQ community,” he said. “It is 2023. We should be talking about, how do we embrace our differences?”
While Hurd almost certainly won’t get his wish, giving credit where credit is due, it’s nice to see a Republican use his platform to discourage attacks on gay people, rather than encourage them.
He’s the only mainstream GOP presidential candidate to positively talk about LGBTQ+ folx, at least as far as we can tell.
A onetime CIA officer, Hurd represented Texas’ 23rd congressional district, a sprawling area that stretches from San Antonio to El Paso. The moderate politician served in the House from 2014-20.
As a congressman, Hurd was one of only eight House Republicans who voted for the Equality Act.
While his presidential rivals are focused on scapegoating marginalized groups, Hurd is trying to attract voters from all backgrounds. He’s specifically called out Ron “Don’t Say” DeSantis for his incendiary language about LGBTQ+ people, and his bizarre assertion that slavery carried benefits for Black people.
“It would be hard to make the case if Ron DeSantis was the Republican nominee that folks in Black and Brown communities would support him,” he said in a recent interview on NBC.
“Folks in the LGBTQ community won’t support him because of his hateful rhetoric towards my friends in the LGBTQ community. Then he hired a guy who had known for being anti-semitic and then wrote it and created a video that they tried to propagate on their system. Then he had to be fired. So this is a trend. One is an exception, a three is a trend and this is a big problem.”
Hurd deserves kudos for separating himself from the pact, even at the risk of alienating the feverish MAGA crowd. He’s saved his harshest criticisms for Donald Trump, saying the thrice-indicted ex-president is only running for office so he can stay out of jail.
The truth hurts, which is probably why few Republicans are willing to accept it.
Hurd, to his credit, isn’t only talking tough about Trump on left-leaning cable news programs. He’s taking his message straight to Republican voters. Last weekend, he condemned Trump in front of GOP diehards, and the former president himself, at a dinner in Iowa.
Unsurprisingly, his sanity elicited boos from the crowd, but the candidate says he doesn’t mind. In fact, he believes a silent swath of Republican voters are even on his side.
“I knew there were going to be people that didn’t like it, but what I didn’t expect was there were a lot of people that actually clapped, and then there were more people that just sat there politely and probably understand and knew what I was saying was the truth,” he said.
When Trump predictably insulted Hurd for his truthful rhetoric, the CIA vet shot back.
“Donald Trump is a liar. Donald Trump is a national security threat. Donald Trump willingly knew that he had this country’s secrets, and he was trying to tamper with evidence to hide that he had that information. All of those things are true,” he said on Meet the Press.
In a more sane universe, Hurd’s common sense messaging would break through to Republican and Republican-leaning voters. But taking the moral and ethical stance isn’t always popular.
Hurd has also refused to sign onto the Republican National Committee’s pledge that candidates will support the eventual nominee, potentially disqualifying him from the debate stage.
He may not win, but at least he can probably sleep at night. There’s value in being on the right side of history.
Mack
I don’t know. As a Republican he doesn’t promote enough hatred and of course he’s attacking the Head of the Republican Party-Putin. Hope he doesn’t fall out of any windows soon.
FreddieW
It’s great that he supports LGBT folks, but it sounds like he’s as gung-ho as Biden to get us deeper into the dangerous Ukraine mess, which is just asinine.
dbmcvey
Your boy Pence supports the Ukraine people in their defense against Russian aggression too, but he’s also anti-gay so why would you asininely support him?
still_onthemark
It would be far more dangerous to just let Putin take over Ukraine.
maxdadmark
Would you mind trolling somewhere else, please?
FreddieW
@dbmcvey
Probably because Pence proved himself on January 6 and several other occasions when he interacted publicly with gay men while VP, and I never heard of this other guy until today.
dbmcvey
@FreddieW
Or, because you’re just a troll thrashing about trying to justify the idiotic, stupid things you post.
FreddieW
@dbmcvey
I post what I think about the articles I read. It’s not my problem if you’re too fragile to read opinions that differ from your own or if you’ve swallowed the ridiculous idea that gay men are politically monolithic.
abfab
Why would we think Gay men are monolithic? Your buddy Georgette Santos is on your team…..a GOP TROLL. VOTE PENCE!
Oh, deebee! You’re sooooooooooo fragile! xo
dbmcvey
That’s fine but he won’t be nominated because Republicans don’t like it when they’re told the truth.
But, let’s be honest, if he was in charge he wouldn’t change the party, he’d wind up going along with their terrible base.
decrans
I imagine it would be kind of similar to how you react when people tell you the truth about stats with trans youth. A lot of ad hominem attacks and repetitive blatherings.
Bosch
Lol, you’re literally criticising his character and repeating your trans blatherings. Such self-awareness.
Mediocre troll.
cc423
@decrans: For a self described “straight” person, you spend an awful lot of time trolling this gay site. Is there something you’d like to tell us?
decrans
Yeah. I come here to look at the comedy from abFab, Bosch, and Dave Matthews. I have a bisexual wolf pack and we plan gangbangs in Vegas. Is that what you wanted? Fetlife is a lifestyle, bro.
Man About Town
I guess he’s a RINO, just like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a DINO.
I would express appreciation for the melting pot, but I’m not that naive.
abfab
RFK is a WACKO.
Ronbo
Look beyond half-truths please. RFK was smeared for saying that there is something in the water causing serious problems. He called it “lead”, “microplastics” and “PFA’s” (as do scientists).
Political dogma from the DNC isn’t always right. Remember when established Democrats AGREED that Iraq had WMD’s? Remember when they (falsely) claimed Russia “hacked” the election for tRump? Remember when they claimed (falsely) that the covid19 vaccine prevented the SPREAD of the virus?
Half-truths are often full-blown lies. Don’t drink the koolaide – even if they are the lesser of two evils.
Jeremiah
That’s nice and all, but sometimes things worsen until they reach a point of no return. Such is the state of the Republican Party. It’s like saying you want to be a “common sense” or “modern” National Socialist (NAZI).
dbmcvey
There’s a troll who claims to have detrasitioned from being trans and is now a ridiculous conservative supporting anti-gay politicians.
I have to apologize to abfab because this idiotic gas lighter keeps showing up with more and more idiotic things to say and should just be ignorned. So, abfab. I’m sorry.
I will no longer respond to this ridiculous liar.
abfab
xo
Ronbo
You’ve never disagreed – you always show up and support each other as if you are one.
Toofie
Yeah, we all know that troll as they desperately seek attention. Better to ignore.
Kangol2
Will Hurd’s comments on LGBTQ people are admirable and I believe he believes them. His criticisms of Don the Con also are needed, and to his credit, though he mostly voted with Don the Con while in office, he did finally start openly criticizing him before he gave up his House seat (probably because he knew he would not be reelected after criticizing his party’s psychopathic leader).
The fact is Will Hurd has zero change of being elected in the contemporary GQP. He is not batsh!t crazy, he’s smart, he’s thoughtful, he’s a conservative Christian but not a Taliban-style evangelical or Catholic, he’s Black but isn’t violently self-loathing, and so on. The febrile hold that Don the Con has over his Republican cult has yet to break, and they gobble up every lie he tells them as if it’s ambrosia. It’s sickening to watch but dangerous for the US and globe. He did more damage in 4 years (1 million dead Americans from Covid-19, a total economic collapse, etc.) than George W. Bush did in 8, etc. And his overt fascist plans are a huge warning bell of what’s to come. Sorry, Will Hurd, but you need to leave the GQP. It’s almost completely D.O.A.
DeeAnnCA
The things is, after a point, people who believe lies will tend to believe even bigger ones.
Trump had no reason to take classified documents and then spread BS when told to give them back. He knew what he had and it was patently STUPID to leave boxes in his BATHROOM. The only thing that makes any sense is that he was either going to sell them or use them as leverage in some why.
I can’t understand why Republicans were not unsettled by Trump’s cozying up to dictators. That alone should raise red flags.
I also cannot understand why Trump and Pence worked so hard to keep trans people out of the military. Well, yes I can. It is an embarrassment to Old Bone Spurs. He has no respect for people willing to put themselves in harms way because he doesn’t understand that. It is completely foreign to him.
And Pence? He gets unhinged around women with sleeveless clothing. Talk about a dysfunctional pair! The deserve each other.
winemaker
Newsflash: There are lots of conservative gay men that are outraged at what the liberals have done, especially to California and San Francisco. These guys aren’t traitors to the gay community by any means, They’re tired of how the liberals or progressives or whatever these worthless ‘do nothing for the taxpayers other than keep jacking up the taxes to piss away on BULLSHIT’ idiots are calling themselves these days that’ve done nothing for the hardworking taxpayers to improve living conditions and dal with the issues like homelessness, crime, unaffordable housing, failing infrastructure etc that have festered on and on. This all while the one time golden state becomes more expensive, untenable and unlivable in so many places that many have become biohazards due to the human waste and filth allowed to linger on and on. The liberals look to the gay community, the Latinos, blacks and other groups as only to be pandered to when elections come around and then aftwrwards, it’s business as usual and nothing more.
decrans
Preach! I became a quasi-conservative after the gender transition. I’m part of the ambivalent right.
Thad
Whatever proposals do Republicans have to improve California?
decrans
Shellenberger ran as an independent in the 2022 gubernatorial election on a platform calling for homelessness reform via removal of encampments and mandatory treatment for drug addiction and mental illness,[80] advocating for water desalination as an answer to California’s water shortage,[81] and increasing use of nuclear power, specifically by keeping the Diablo Canyon Power Plant open and building new power plants
decrans
I’m all about mandatory testing for drug addiction with the homeless. True story: I used to wear a wig. I had sex with a muscley “unhoused” man. He had a drug problem. The government workers who came around? They hand out fresh syringes and the cycle repeats itself. I get that you want to provide them with sanitary options, but that begets the cyclical problem.
decrans
And Shellenberger is a conservative-leaning independent regularly featured on Fox News.
Ronbo
Let’s hope that LGBTQ Republicans listen, change their favorites and actually vote for this person. We can’t shame them (apparently… they ARE Republicans afterall). So, let’s acknowledge our common goals and not insult them until they realize we are their true friends.
Personal attacks from the likes abfab and dbmcvey only serve to drive these people away from progressive common sense solutions and into the arms of tRump. These bitter cohorts of ours have the right intentions; but, lack the depth of knowledge on how to ACHIEVE this goal.
We don’t convert people to common sense by attacking them with hateful personal attacks. Look to how understanding, compassion and acceptance helped us win marriage and equality rights. To stop their hateful extremists, we need to stop culturing them with our own hateful extremists. Are you listening abfab?
abfab
You’re a typical passive agressive hypocrite. In three, long paragraphs, your boring lecture is more insulting than anyone here has ever been. We’re just more direct with you @ronbo.
Get back to your Pox News, the station you mention in most all of your long-winded posts. You’re a bore.
Ronbo
I tell the truth, abfab attacks, demeans and lies.
My asking you (shaming you actually) to stop being so hateful is not passive aggressive. It is me trying to get you to stop being so nasty – because it is hurting our community.
Please stop the personal attacks. We grow stronger when we support compassion, understanding and acceptance. It’s how we secured marriage and equal rights.
Kangol2
@Ronbo, I hate to burst your bubble, but I have to correct your false version of LGBTQ history again.
You wrote: “We grow stronger when we support compassion, understanding and acceptance. It’s how we secured marriage and equal rights.” I agree about supporting compassion, understanding and acceptance, but that is not how we secured same-sex marriage or what equal rights we enjoy as LGBTQ Americans.
In fact, we do not yet have full equal rights in America. In your neck of the woods, perhaps, but there are numerous US states that do not have full equal protection laws for LGBTQ Americans, despite the 14th Amendment and more recent SCOTUS rulings. In fact, people on the right are trying to strip away what “equality” remains (someone tell Winemaker etc.)
On top of this, same-sex marriage exists because gay Americans waged legal, legislative and electoral battles for same-sex marriage, over a period of years. It has been this way with the fight for equal rights, for decades. The battle for same-sex marriage was a concerted, multi-pronged struggle to achieve this right, and as you probably know, it was not until 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges, a lawsuit, with a related suit, brought before the US Supreme Court, that same-sex marriage was achieved across the US, since there were numerous states that were not going to approve it under any other circumstances. In other cases, legal pushes in various individual states led to same-sex marriage before any state legislature voted to approve same-sex marriage.
And let us not ever forget that it was interracial marriage, in Loving v. Virginia, two years before Stonewall in 1969, that established before the US Supreme Court a federal right to marriage protected by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Again, this was not achieved through benevolence but through decades of struggle, sometimes quite violent struggle.
When you present LGBTQ history stripped of its complexity and particularly the long history of actual struggle against not just right-wing homophobes and transphobes but even liberal and libertarian allies, who at times have urged us to go slowly or wait for acceptance or hope for benevolence which never comes, as opposed to the real hard work of activism, which is the chief way things change, whether through legal activism, legislative activism, cultural and intellectual activism, and other forms of engagement and militancy,, you do a gross disservice to the people out there fighting even now for your rights, to live your life in equality and freedom in this country.
DeeAnnCA
Another thing to remember about LGBT history is this. Early on, and for some considerable time, people tried to lessen the impact of marriage equality by offering the domestic partnership construct and other similar things. However, for conservatives it was basically all or nothing. I think that’s what caused the shift in the minds of LGBT folks and go for full-fledged marriage equality and not something that was diluted. It was just unfortunate that a lot of money had to be spent to overcome conservative thinking that could have been put to better purpose. I guess the thing that always ticked me off was people saying that marriage equality would lessen or cheapen same sex marriages. Interesting where ever rights are concerned, folks always want to look at it as a Zero Sum Game,.
Ronbo
Kangol forgets that the lawsuits were not about hate and division; but rather, about inclusion and acceptance.
Kangol forgets the history that changed America. Dan Choi chained himself to Obama’s whitehouse fence without hate and America moved into our corner.
President Obama denied our humanity prior by repeating “God was in the mix,”; he stopped saying that after Dan’s visit. DADT was repeal passed in the HOUSE over President Obama after Nancy Pelosi pushed back against President Obama and the military push to delay repeal (delayed over two years!).
The Supreme Court granted us with marriage equality – not the Democrats. This was accomplished in spite of Joe Solmonese at the Human Rights Campaign and the conservatives like Hillary Clinton in the Democratic party who pushed for the “separate but equal” nonsense of domestic partnerships. Remember that Kangol?
Kangol forgets the impact of AIDS. Years of caring for the sick and dying aren’t easily forgotten. We organized, we served, we buried our dead.
Where was Kangol? Was he still reactionary nonsense screaming the same things he is screaming now…” right-wing homophobes and transphobes”! Your attacks only spur them on.
We caught more Americans with honey than your vinegar and hate. And today your policy of hate and division is reversing our gains. Stop.
Headlines:
Americans Are Becoming Less Accepting of Same-Sex Relationships, Poll Shows
6/17/23 AT 9:54 AM EDT
The Advocate Nov/Dec 2022
“Support for Same-Sex Relationships Plummets as Less Find Them “Morally Acceptable”
Stop pushing extremist positions of hate and division please. I notice that you did not identify a single right that has been denied. Stop the self-victimization.