A Republican National Committee (RNC) investigation into its 2012 electoral defeat calls for less vocal opposition to gay rights.

The report, released Monday and dubbed the Growth and Opportunity Project, was commissioned by RNC Chairman Reince Priebus.

Under a section titled Demographic Partners, the report calls for outreach to young people who support gay rights.

“For the GOP to appeal to younger voters, we do not have to agree on every issue, but we do need to make sure young people do not see the Party as totally intolerant of alternative points of view,” the report's authors wrote. “Already, there is a generational difference within the conservative movement about issues involving the treatment and the rights of gays – and for many younger voters, these issues are a gateway into whether the Party is a place they want to be.”

“If our Party is not welcoming and inclusive, young people and increasingly other voters will continue to tune us out. The Party should be proud of its conservative principles, but just because someone disagrees with us on 20 percent of the issues, that does not mean we cannot come together on the rest of the issues where we do agree.”

The group Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry called the acknowledgment a “first step.”

“I applaud the committee for producing this report, but this is only a first step,” Tyler Deaton, campaign manager for Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry, said in a statement. “The Young Conservatives Leadership Committee calls on the Growth and Opportunity Project to go further by fully respecting in word and deed those of us who support the freedom to marry for all loving and committed couples.”

Tony Perkins, president of the Christian conservative Family Research Council (FRC), warned that supporting marriage equality would “place [the] Republican Party on [a] path to permanent minority.”

“[H]istory – and most statistical data – shows that young people tend to become more conservative and more religious as they grow up, get married, and start families of their own,” argued Perkins, who helped write the Republican Platform's plank against marriage equality. “[M]eaning that a hasty retreat on marriage may score cheap points now, but it would actually alienate the same people later on.”

Writing at ThinkProgress.org, Josh Israel criticized the RNC's report for leaving out LGBT people.

“Rather than work to appeal to the five percent of American voters who identify as LGBT – and preferred the Democratic nominee by a more than three-to-one margin – the new GOP plan is to stand by its exclusion, but try to sound inclusive when doing so,” Israel wrote.