How Can the Republican Party Regain Power?

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By Patrick Sammon, President of Log Cabin Republicans

Republicans are making a huge mistake if they use results from California’s Prop 8 to justify a lurch to the right on social issues. Voters narrowly passed the proposition that rolled back marriage equality for gay and lesbian Californians. 

Prop 8 passed because the “Yes” campaign changed the subject and scared voters with false information. It alleged threats to religious freedom and school curricula, despite the facts that no church would be required to marry a gay couple and each local school district controls its own curriculum. By distorting the truth, the “Yes” campaign played to decades-old fears that gay and lesbian people seek to “convert” children and are hostile to religious freedom.

Funding by the Mormon Church is the main reason Prop 8 passed.  News reports say members of the LDS church provided at least $20 million of the “Yes” campaign’s $35 million, helping sway 70 percent of African-Americans to vote “Yes,” compared with 53 percent of Latinos, and 49 percent support from whites. It’s painfully ironic that a religious denomination that faced terrible discrimination spent $20 million to promote discrimination against gay and lesbian families.