Delegates at the Republican National Convention next week will consider the entire platform.
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Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, appearing on “On The Record with Greta Van Susteren”, said that including the border wall in the party’s proposed platform was a “hat tip” to Trump. Since then, the Supreme Court backed the right of same-sex couples to Wednesday.
NY delegate Annie Dickerson said the GOP Platform Committee has been resisting an obvious trend in the country toward gay rights, calling same-sex marriage “settled law”, saying it is only a matter of time before federal nondiscrimination statutes protecting LGBT rights are enacted.
“A man and a woman family is the best, ideal vehicle for raising children”, according to James Bopp, a GOP delegate from IN, and a prominent conservative attorney.
Shortly after, an amendment to condemn the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage was passed.
The platform committee, which completed its work Tuesday, approved language that criticized current worldwide trade deals, endorsed imposing a mandatory five-year prison sentence for people caught re-entering the country illegally after being deported and called for a wall to be built along the U.S. -Mexico border.
Rachel Hoff, the party’s first openly LGBT delegate, pushed language that would bring the GOP to the middle. “So numbers are growing in terms of allies on the committee”, she says. “And one day, when I am ready to marry the woman I love, I hope it will be me”, she said, choking up as she spoke. Both presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton and her main primary opponent Bernie Sanders have pledged to work to make D.C. the 51st state. “But were also alienating young voters”. “Freedom means freedom for everyone, including gays and lesbians”. She says delegates who spoke out against amendments by Hoff and others were not speaking out against the LGBT community.
“It was including any specific groups”, Rutledge says. “I guess this guy, the money guy, who spent $6 million on this thing. if that in fact is true, that guy just did way more harm to his cause than if he had not done that”.
‘This isn’t my GOP, and I know it’s not yours either.
The party platform, however, is retaining language opposing the Obama administration’s transgender bathroom mandate that all public schools allow boys to use girls’ bathrooms and vice versa if they believe they are the opposite sex.
Platform Committee Chairman John Barrasso, a US senator from Wyoming, made it clear as he wrapped up two days of platform deliberations that Trump’s views were welcome. John Barasso, however, says Trump exerted little influence on the committees actions.
Trump forces also steered the platform away from the party’s support for free trade.
Republicans rejected from their platform language that would’ve acknowledged “a diversity of opinion within our party” on same-sex marriage, in a victory for social conservatives.
“Their edict to the states concerning restrooms, locker rooms and other facilities is at once illegal, unsafe and ignores privacy issues”.
“Back in June 16 of 2015, Donald Trump proposed this, and it resonated with the people of America”, said Stephen Stepanek, an RNC member and delegate from New Hampshire, of Trump’s border wall idea. Transgender icon Caitlyn Jenner, who plans to appear at a brunch in Cleveland during the convention, expressed optimism about the party too, saying in a statement that, “As a proud Republican and transgender woman, I want to support courageous Republicans who advocate for LGBT freedom”.
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