Mitt Romney's sidekick Paul Ryan (Photo: John Adkisson/Getty Images)
The doe-eyed Executive Director of the Log Cabin Republicans, R. Clarke Cooper, lives in a fantasy. “Romney should take a page from his running mate’s playbook and support stronger workplace nondiscrimination laws,” he wrote on Monday in the Daily Caller, presumably referring to Paul Ryan’s 2007 support for Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). This is a fallacy. While it is true that Representative Ryan voted in favor of H.R. 3685, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, moments earlier he voted to use a parliamentary maneuver to kill the bill.
Since, Ryan has voted against repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 2010 and against the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Protection Act in 2009. Additionally, Ryan supported laws that would ban gay marriage (2004, 2006) and adoption by same-sex couples (1999). Still, Cooper has a few handy tips for the Republican nominee and his sidekick, many of which require abandoning the carefully constructed “family values” narrative that began long before Romney announced his bid for the presidency.
Polling shows Republican support for employment discrimination protections and same-sex marriage has been growing. This trend transcends age, race and political identification. To succeed on the campaign trail, Romney must recognize that people who believe in equality under the law agree that this principle extends to gays and lesbians. This message is acceptable to today’s conservatives and is necessary if the GOP wants to be able to compete for independents, women and younger voters.
Romney is not ready or willing to support same-sex marriage, but there are still concrete steps that his campaign can take to counter the liberal strategy of painting the GOP as anti-gay that would also provide tangible benefits for LGBT Americans. Before the president’s May announcement that he supports gay marriage, the main issue being pressed by LGBT advocates was actually workplace protections. As a candidate, Barack Obama vowed to sign an executive order adding LGBT people to the list of groups federal contractors are barred from discriminating against. The White House then made it clear that no executive order would be signed, leaving 1.8 million Americans unprotected. It is wrong that federal contractors who are paid with taxpayer money are allowed to fire people for being LGBT. Romney has said that he opposes workplace discrimination. By vowing to sign an executive order preventing federal contractors from firing people for being LGBT, and joining Paul Ryan in support for ENDA, Romney can draw a favorable contrast between himself and the president.
Cooper is correct that polling among both conservatives and liberals is trending towards equality, yet the overwhelming majority of Republican lawmakers—including Romney and Ryan—continue to support the notion that LGBT persons are second-class citizens in the workplace, in the military, and in their own homes, “so I don’t know why we are spending all this time talking about this.”
