Young Gay Republican Horrified To Learn Republicans Excluding Her From Whole ‘Land Of The Free’ Deal

After Samuel Alito’s tyrannical Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a target was quickly put on the back of other basic freedoms associated with the right to privacy, including marriage equality. This greatly concerned LGBTQ conservatives, who believed Republicans had waved the white flag on same-sex marriage and moved on to policing which bathrooms people use. Whoops, guess you shouldn’t believe every RNC press release that runs in Politico.

PREVIOUSLY: Breaking From Politico: Republicans Just Love The Gays!

Yvonne Bailey is a 26-year-old former New Hampshire Republican state legislator and a libertarian. She’s also a lesbian who apparently believed “Republicans promised LGBTQ members like myself that marriage equality was a dead issue.” She might’ve wanted to read the fine print. Bailey treats us to her rightwing origin story in an article for the Daily Beast:

A natural contrarian, I always wanted to color outside the box. I had little respect for authority, and a deep desire to challenge mainstream thought and opinion. As an Obama-era kid, it was clear to me even as a child that there was an “approved” way of thinking—which was largely held by the Democratic Party and mainstream media.

Because of this, I knew the Democratic Party was not for me at the age of 12.

Ahh, yes, the free-wheeling, free-thinking GOP of the fucking Obama era! Sure, conservatives demonstrated little respect for authority but that was because minorities and women were in charge. Bailey goes on for a while about how she believed in “relentless freedom, American exceptionalism, and the promise of our country.” She grew up in independent-minded New Hampshire, where Republicans didn’t care about culture war issues, no matter what the “activist base” demanded. Of course, they still voted for national candidates who promoted overtly anti-LGBTQ policies.

When I was 18, I interned for New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte on Capitol Hill in the second-to-last year of her term, as she was beginning to position herself as a moderate voice on issues like LGBTQ rights. In 2014, the message appeared to be quite clear: Gay marriage is a dead issue and Republicans are moving on.

Republicans collectively denounced the 2015 Obergefell ruling legalizing same-sex marriage. Yes, not everyone blew a gasket like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and Scott Walker, but Jeb Bush, Lindsey Graham, and Chris Christie at best said they would “respect” the decision while also advocating the “religious freedom” of anti-gay bigots.

Anyone who could count knew that Democratic presidents had appointed all but one of the “yes” votes for marriage equality. Republican presidential candidates were clear that they’d put Scalia and Thomas clones on the bench. The Supreme Court isn’t about complex legal arguments. It’s all a numbers game. Even the so-called “good” non-Trump Republicans would’ve nominated justices who’d prove hostile to LGBTQ rights, specifically marriage equality.

PREVIOUSLY: Republicans All In On Openly Gross Gay-Hatin’, For Freedom

I became more assured that Republicans had embraced gay marriage in 2016 when Donald Trump held a pride flag on the campaign trail. This was something that no GOP presidential candidate had done before… ever. Whatever you think about Trump, this was clearly a sign that Republicans were moving in the correct direction.

Obama wore khakis and went bowling, but Republicans still never fully trusted him. Democrats will often show up at the firing range and stress their respect for the Second Amendment, but Republicans still insist they’re all gun grabbers. Donald Trump touched a pride flag, but the thrice-married Trump is hardly someone whose expressed commitments should count for much.

And then, of course, was the gay tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s rousing speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention, where he not only endorsed Trump but said, “I’m proud to be gay,” to rapturous applause.

The 2016 and 2020 RNC platform openly called for a same-sex marriage ban. Trump went on to nominate Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. If Bailey wanted to protect marriage equality, she would’ve voted for Hillary Clinton. Bailey raves about the GOP’s grudging acceptance of queer people during the Trump administration while ignoring the Democratic Party’s open embrace of the LGBTQ community.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=823_9ni0QTowww.youtube.com

But Bailey has finally, at long last, seen the error of her ways. She’s horrified that Republicans are promoting the anti-gay “groomer” narrative. She seems to think her party has radicalized and changed around her, while old fogies like myself believe the bigoted GOP is the same as it ever was.

This is a defining moment and a defining issue for the party. If Republican senators do not rise to the occasion, the conservative movement will have traded its soul—support for individual rights—to appease a backward-looking minority of its base.

It’s easy to mock Bailey, but I can’t help but feel as if we’ve failed people like her. She was born barely two years after Newt Gingrich became speaker of the House. She was too young to watch “West Wing” when it aired, yet she fell for Aaron Sorkin’s fantasy land version of the Republican Party. Now, the system she’s supported for most of her life is set to turn on her. It’s not even funny from a “leopards eating her face” perspective. It’s just depressing.

[The Daily Beast]

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