Gay GOP Group Praises Trump, But Votes Narrowly Against Endorsing Him

Log Cabin Republicans Decline To Back Party’s Nominee For 1st Time Since 2004

For the first time since George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign, the Log Cabin Republicans will not endorse the party’s presidential nominee. 

Log Cabin Republicans President Gregory T. Angelo (pictured) told Politico that after two weeks of deliberations, the group’s board narrowly voted against endorsing Trump on Tuesday. The vote came despite the fact that a majority of Log Cabin’s local chapters wanted to endorse Trump, Angelo said. 

In a statement, Log Cabin praised Trump as “perhaps the most pro-LGBT presidential nominee in the history of the Republican Party.”

“His unprecedented overtures to the ‘LGBTQ community’ — a first for any major-party candidate in our nation’s history — are worthy of praise, and should serve as a clarion call to the GOP that the days of needing to toe an anti-LGBT line are now a thing of the past,’ the group wrote. 

But Log Cabin added that Trump has also surrounded himself with anti-LGBT advisers and endorsed the anti-LGBT “First Amendment Defense Act.” 

“Should Mr. Trump become our nation’s next President, Log Cabin Republicans welcomes the opportunity to work with his administration to ensure the advances in LGBT freedom we have fought for and secured will continue,” the group wrote. “Until and unless that happens, our trust would be misplaced.”

In addition to supporting the First Amendment Defense Act, Trump opposes marriage equality and backs North Carolina’s House Bill 2. Meanwhile, GOP vice presidential nominee Mike Pence is one of the nation’s most prominent anti-LGBT conservatives and signed the Hoosier State’s heinous Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 2015.