History suggests LGBTQ Republicans are making a mistake in Texas’ Senate race

With more than three months until Election Day, the Republican campaign against Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico has already made national news for its ugliness.

The baseless accusations against him have included claims that he’s a vegan — a near blasphemy in the beef-loving state. But the centerpiece of the campaign has been repeated assertions that he is gay or trans.

Not long after Talarico won the Democratic primary, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller posted on X, “The Democrats made history in Texas by nominating their first transgender senate candidate,” an attack he later repeated in an appearance on Fox News, where he added that Talarico was “clearly transitioning into a female.”

And Miller is far from alone. Talarico’s opponent, the scandal-plagued state Attorney General Ken Paxton, dubbed Talarico “six-gender Jimmy” and “Talafreako,” claiming he’s “too low-T for Texas.” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott even posted pictures of Talarico as a woman.

Amid all of this mudslinging, one group has been noticeably silent: LGBTQ Republicans. Their failure to speak out against the assault on Talarico — which seems more an attempt to delegitimize his masculinity than to actually question his sexuality — signals a capitulation to Republican homophobia and anti-LGBTQ bigotry, not to mention a risky betrayal of their own history.

Gay Republican organizing began in California in the 1970s as an attempt to offer an alternative to liberal gay organizations that often worked closely with the Democratic Party. The activists hoped to show that they were loyal Republicans, and in the process, stamp out the anti-gay “family values” politics that was beginning to take shape within the GOP.

Two particular events in 1978 hastened this development. One was Ed Davis’s run for the Republican nomination for California governor. As Los Angeles police chief, Davis had directed the city’s law enforcement to harass gay and lesbian people. Running for political office, Davis often railed against “fruits” and “fairies.”

That same year, a ballot initiative, Proposition 6, sought to make it illegal for any gay person to work in California’s public school system. Its sponsor, conservative Orange County state legislator John Briggs, regularly equated homosexuality with pedophilia and charged that gay teachers would molest schoolchildren.

Gay Republicans sprang into action, taking great personal and professional risk to publicly organize and mobilize against these threats.

They wanted to send a strong message to the GOP to reject the emerging religious right. In their view, religious conservatives who were trying to use the government to regulate and sometimes criminalize private matters, including sexuality and reproductive decisions, were anathema to the Republican Party’s tradition of individual rights and personal freedom. But they knew if an antigay ballot initiative won in a large state like California, it would make it even harder to stop the GOP’s national slide from social moderation to conservatism.

Both Davis and Proposition 6 lost, signaling that gay Republican activism could work.

The activists recruited other gay and lesbian people to register as Republicans to vote against outspoken homophobes in the party’s primaries and support its moderate candidates. And they insisted to party officials and Republican politicians, including Ronald Reagan, that allowing homophobic language and endorsing anti-gay legislation would alienate thousands of moderate and independent voters.

Gay Republicans were thrilled when Reagan declared during his 1980 presidential campaign that although he did not support “homosexual rights,” he also believed there was no “place in our society for intolerance and discrimination.” Despite the seeming contradictions in this position, gay Republicans thought it gave them the leverage to nudge the party in a more progressive direction.

With that goal in mind, gay Republican groups formed across the country in the 1980s, culminating in the creation of the Log Cabin Republicans, the nation’s oldest and largest LGBT Republican organization. The national organization and its state and local chapters worked against anti-gay efforts around the country as they sought to root out homophobia and anti-gay bigotry within the party.

These groups continued to argue that abandoning bigotry could provide electoral benefits. “Republicanism is a philosophy that is closer to the hearts of gay people than is the extreme liberalism of the Democrat Party,” one pamphlet asserted. But for many gay voters, the GOP was off limits because “of the extreme hate expressed toward gay people by certain elected GOP persons.”

When socially moderate and gay-friendly Republicans won races, especially in Democratic strongholds, gay Republican activists touted the victories as proof that they were right. After Rudy Giuliani narrowly won the 1993 New York City mayor’s race, for example, they pointed out that he did so with nearly a third of the city’s gay vote.

These victories emboldened gay Republicans, who continued to target anti-gay Republican politicians and encourage the GOP to prioritize economic and national security issues over culture war resentments. For decades, the Log Cabin Republicans saw themselves as existing to hold the Republicans’ feet to the fire until they eliminated — or, at least, effectively marginalized — the party’s homophobic voices.

Leading gay Republicans, like Log Cabin president Rich Tafel, regularly squared off against religious right figures on television, shaming their homophobic views as un-American and a disaster electorally. “The gay-bashing party of Falwell and Pat Robertson will never be the majority party in this country,” Tafel contended.

Gay Republicans scored a major victory when George W. Bush committed that the 2000 Republican Convention would include no anti-gay talk in the proceedings — a significant result given that just eight years earlier commentator Patrick Buchanan had delivered a blistering keynote address while some delegates waved signs that read “Thank God for AIDS” and “Family Rights Forever / Gay Rights Never.”

The Bush administration still went on to work diligently against the legalization of same-sex marriage. Even so, gay Republicans saw changing the tone within the GOP as a crucial first step toward conservative Americans eventually supporting basic rights like same-sex marriage. And as Republican voters, especially critical suburban moderates, became more accepting of homosexuality and gay rights, gay Republicans pressured the party to avoid homophobic messaging and anti-gay language, if not to abandon anti-gay politics altogether.

And when the GOP refused to listen, gay Republicans fought back. During the 2004 presidential campaign, Log Cabin Republicans refused to endorse Bush because of his support for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages and his tolerance of anti-gay language in the party platform. Gay Republicans felt they had to make their opposition clear. “If you remain silent while people are kicking you in the stomach,” Log Cabin’s executive director explained, “you become completely irrelevant.”

But this sort of opposition has come to a screeching halt in the Trump era. Ironically, LGBTQ Republicans have a particularly close relationship with the president and unusual access to this White House. Additionally, gay men occupy numerous high profile positions within the Trump administration, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Yet, these gains have scrambled how gay Republicans navigate their peculiar place within the party.

On the one hand, they continue to speak out against some homophobia from elected Republicans, such as Rep. Andy Ogles’s (R-Tenn.) posting on X at the start of Pride Month that “Homosexuality has no place in America.” Yet their decision to remain silent about the attacks on Talarico may speak even louder.

It’s unclear whether they see the campaign against Talarico as an unserious attempt at humor or worry that scolding the party would be an embrace of the “political correctness” that Trump has made anathema in the GOP.

Yet, whatever their reasons, their silence signals a troubling return to the Republicanism of the past that used outright homophobia for political gain — and a forewarning of things to come. Even worse, it’s coming at a moment when Americans are exhibiting declining support for LGBTQ issues and Republicans’ backing of same-sex marriage has plummeted, down 18% from just four years ago.

Undoubtedly, gay Republicans have always made compromises and chosen their battles carefully in order to exert influence within the GOP. Yet none of this included turning a blind eye to Republican homophobia; instead, they directly confronted it — even when it came from lukewarm allies like Bush.

Gay Republicans may believe that by overlooking the attacks on Talarico they can show themselves to be good sports who are not easily offended, true conservatives who know the difference between campaign hijinks and serious political threats, unlike LGBTQ liberals. Yet they may soon discover that the slurs against Talarico were not an isolated swipe at a political opponent — and, worse, that their silence has facilitated the return of the GOP’s assault on LGBTQ rights.

Neil J. Young is the author of Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right. He lives in Los Angeles.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of The Inquirer.