US: Nevada Republicans defend dropping opposition to same-sex marriage, after RNC attacks
The Nevada Republican Party has defended its decision to drop opposition to same-sex marriage from its state platform, after criticism from members of the Republican National Committee.
Carolyn L. McLarty, who sits on the RNC for Oklahoma, last week sent an email to over 100 GOP leaders attacking the Nevada party.
She wrote: “The Nevada GOP action to remove marriage and life from their platform is a disgrace. The move does nothing to unify the Republican Party.
“Republicans will continue to lose elections if we can’t even stand for protecting the most vulnerable lives among us; or for keeping sacred five thousand plus years of natural human sexuality. Both are direct attacks on God and the family.
“They are symptoms of the infiltration of the Republican Party by those who really want to destroy it.”
She said: “Excluding an entire group of American citizens based solely on their sexual preference toward the same gender is not only divisive but in the 21st century it is unacceptable.
“Nevada is home to many diverse people, including a very large LGBT population.
“The Nevada convention delegates recognized that the inclusion of divisive social issues has no place in our platform, and that an insistence on emphasizing divisiveness will do nothing more than guarantee that we’ll continue to lose elections.
“The removal of two social issues from our platform does not mean that ‘we’ as individual people are ‘for’ gay marriage or ‘for’ abortion.
“The removal of these planks recognizes the inappropriateness of the existence of these planks in our platform in the first place.”
“If we as a political party continue to exclude Americans that agree with our core principles of freedom and limited government, how can we expect to attract new candidates or continue to get quality Republican candidates elected?”
