The Republican Party metamorphosis is underway and NOT from the top down.

[PHILIP SCHNEIDER]

Republican Party embracing the LGBT community

Wednesday, January 11, 2012 - Urban Game Changer by Shirley Husar

LOS ANGELES, January 11, 2012—It is an alliance that most people would find unlikely. They are called sell-outs, turncoats, and brainwashed, but with all of the perceived strangeness of the union and all of the rhetoric over same-sex marriage, more LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered) persons have been joining the Republican Party.

In the most recent sign of these winds of change, Bruce Harris, an openly gay African-American Republican, was sworn in on January 3, 2012, as the mayor of Chatham Borough NJ. This is the first time in our nation's history that a person who was openly gay, Black, and Republican became a mayor of any city.

This does not surprise many of us in the GOP. Despite the back-and-forth battle over same-sex marriage, the Republican Party has been quite open to the LGBT community for several years.

Harris, 61, served the borough on various boards and commissions and sat on the city council for two terms. “I have felt it is my duty to serve the community,” Harris told the Daily Record. “I think that public service is interesting, and finding ways to meet the challenges facing a small community like Chatham Borough is personally rewarding.”

Both the GOP and the LGBT community should be proud. Republicans should see Harris as an example of their growing diversity, as well as a model for the principles of the party of fiscal conservatism, of lower taxes, of smaller government, and of personal responsibility.

Harris had three major perceived hurdles to overcome: being Black, being Republican—and being openly gay. For this reason, the LGBT community should see Bruce as an example of a person who overcame the usual political rhetoric and vitriol. There are members of the LGBT community who are highly upset with both Democrats and Republicans right now. Bruce Harris stands as an example of what that anger can produce: winds of change that blow within both parties.

LGBT organization within the GOP is not new. For example, the Log Cabin Republicans are a thirty-year old organization that has dedicated itself to representing the interests of gay and lesbian Americans and their allies. The LCR have state and local chapters nationwide, as well as a full-time office in the nation's capital, a federal political action committee, and scores of state political action committees. 

This organization is one of a growing number of LGBT organizations working toward building a stronger, more inclusive Republican Party. They want to do this (shockingly) by promoting the core values of the Republican Party: limited government, individual liberty, personal responsibility, lower taxes, free market economics, and a strong national defense. They stand firm on these principles, while not abandoning their desire for freedom and equitable treatment of gay and lesbian Americans.

More and more, in a movement that should be very disturbing to Democratic leadership that has taken them for granted in much the same manner that they have taken Blacks, Jews, youths, women, and organized labor for granted, moderate and conservative gay persons are seeing the problems with the Obama administration and the Democrat Party. They see the Obama administration's attacks on economic liberty and free markets, on private property, and on limited government. They realize that, other than supporting same-sex-marriage, the Democrats do not share their core values, and they are turning in increasing numbers to the Republican Party.

The LGBT community comes to the GOP looking beyond sexual orientation and identity, instead looking at values and principles. They are proving that the GOP is not just a club for conservative Christians and Jews, but a big-tent organization of diversity and broad perspectives that always point back to the core principles. Bruce Harris seems to be an anomaly, but only to those not paying attention. He is not an exception to the rule, but the first stalk to bend in the rising winds of change.

[Kathryn Ball]

 

"DIVERSITY" comes from the root word "DIVIDE"...............wich is what has DELIBERATELY been done to us for the past 100 years & possible longer.

The "Progressive/Liberal" 'play book' had sought to divide Americans into small, often dependant groups who are made to feel like "VICTIMS" both of other groups and socio-economic status.

When people like Nancy Pelosi villify the "RICH" with an expression on her face like she had just stepped in something repulsive I have an intense desire to SLAP them! These hippocrits who engage in insider trading to enrich themselves while picking the pockets of the tax payers make me ILL!!!

Ours is not a society built upon a "CLASS SYSTEM" [a Marxist concept to begin with]. Ours is a society based on LIBERTY and FREEDOM.

The "Glue" which has held us together for more than two hundred years appears to be disolving in the wake of 'group think' [small groups, that is!] promoted by the left.

Ours is the country that people have fled to for lots of reasons but the greatest is their search for Liberty. America is the one place where there are no boundries on 'betterment' of self & family. This is the place where people have been free to be whatever they choose.....including those raised in poverty.....there are NO LIMITS placed on hard work and personal advancement other than the limits each individual places upon his/her self.

It started incrementally with small things said and done to plant the seeds of distrust. We are now encouraged to look at a Warren Buffett or a Bill Gates with distrust instead of admiration. Instead of asking how they achieved the level of success and how best to emmulate that siccess, people have begun to distrust these people and their success...the polititians have been openly fueling the fire of envy and hatred just to maintain their position of power.

Those "We the People" should be distrustful of are those polititians.............not our fellow Americans.