Texas GOP advances reparative therapy for gays. Paul J. Weber & Will Weissert, AP via Chron.com
The Texas Republican Party would endorse psychological treatment that seeks to turn gay people straight under a new platform partly aimed at rebuking laws in California and New Jersey that ban so-called "reparative therapy" on minors.
This comes on the heels of Houston passing it's controversial Equal Rights Ordinance which has lit a fire under social conservatives who feel their "culture" is being slowly eroded by progressive activists who want to see them locked away in re-education centers.
Also today the Chron ran a column by it's curiously nominated Pulitzer finalist interviewing a local gay GOP precinct chairman.
Gay Republican hopes his party does the right thing. Lisa Falkenberg, HoustonChronicle
As with all of Ms. Falkenberg's writing, this column is hidden behind the paper's pay wall so if you don't have a subscription I'm sorry. I will respect that they want fewer people reading this material and will not blockquote here.
While it's easy to look at all of this and suggest (as many Dems are doing) that it's just the social wing of the party running loose with no collar, a more sober political analyst might wonder why the party leadership doesn't seem too worried about this issue at all.
I will argue that it's a simple matter of demographics. Specifically, Hispanic demographics.
While a recent Pew Research study suggested that a majority (56%) of Hispanics now favor the legalization of gay marriage most of that support is centered around Hispanics with no religious affiliation (71% in support). For evangelical Hispanics, of the type Republicans would target, 66% still stand in opposition to gay marriage according to Pew. Given that 38% of the Texas population is estimated to be Hispanic (with 70% of those being US Born according to estimates) there's a much larger voting opportunity there than with the estimated 3.8% of Texans who identify as LGBT.
In hard numbers: It is estimated that approximately 10MM Hispanics are currently living in Texas, as opposed to approximately 600M who identify as LGBT. If you assume that approximately 70% of those Hispanics also identify as "Christian" (I'm including both evangelical and Catholics) then the targeted voter pool is 7MM versus 180M (30% of LGBT citizens still identify themselves as conservatives, with Democrats getting about 70% of the LGBT vote.)[Source: Gallup]
Analysis of this type is not meant to place value judgments on policy decisions, only to point out the raw numbers behind the thinking that is often omitted from news stories. As stated before, I am not an opponent of LGBT marriage. I feel that marriage is a contract, and I don't think the government should use it's powers to prohibit 2 consenting adults from entering into legally binding contracts.
Nor do I think churches should be "required" to conduct LGBT marriage ceremonies.
I realize that might seem like a contradiction but there's a very broad First Amendment line between allowing the LGBT community to be viewed as married within the eyes of the State, and requiring them to be married in the eyes of the church. Issues such as Houston's ERO are much more difficult and are likely to be argued in the same manner as anti-segregation laws were historically. Trying to establish a "separate but equal" standard for LGBT rights feels like a sticky proposition. I would argue that if you do business in the public realm, you have an obligation to serve the entire public regardless of race, creed or sexual orientation. However, I do feel that the Houston ERO went too far, was too ambiguous on several issues and is an example of bad public policy looking desperately for a problem to solve. As with all things, your mileage may vary.
Regardless, it will be interesting to see what comes out in the Texas Republican platform regarding LGBT issues. I've an early feeling that whatever planks are adopted will be strongly worded and decidedly anti-LGBT. However, I also think that a big reason for this is because (some) Republicans see an opening to increase the Hispanic vote, having decided that the reality of increasing the LGBT vote are slim to none no matter how they choose to react.
I should clarify that the "some" in the Republican Party to which I'm referring are not the staunch social conservatives. In most cases, for both parties, I don't feel that the true believers give all that much thought to how the party is going to do, they just want to "win".
Still, the happy warriors over at Battleground Texas have repeated ad nauseam that "demographics is destiny". By this they are referring to Hispanic voters. If Texas Republicans aren't running almost everything they do through that prism they will be losing ground.
