The Montana Republican Party has ended
its support for laws which would make sex between two members of the
same sex illegal.
In 1997 the Montana Supreme Court
struck down the state's sodomy laws. That year the GOP began holding
the position that homosexual acts should be made illegal.
“We support the clear will of the
people of Montana expressed by legislation to keep homosexual acts
illegal,” the party's platform previously read.
At the party's state convention in
Missoula over the weekend, party delegates voted to strike the
language from its official platform.
Party Executive Director Bowen
Greenwood told the Independent
Record that the move was part of a larger effort to simplify
the document.
“I don't think there was any specific
discussion about the issue of homosexual acts and the old law from
the 1990s, it was just a question of we were redoing this whole
thing,” he said.
Other sections, Greenwood explained,
were also shortened.
But the platform reinforces the party's
opposition to gay marriage. The party supports “the definition of
marriage as only between one man and one woman,” the platform
states.