The final Republican platform, released
Monday after days of debate, calls for overturning last year's
Supreme Court ruling that led to nationwide marriage equality and
supports efforts to undermine the decision.
The high court said in Obergefell v.
Hodges that gay and lesbian couples have a constitutional right
to marry.
The party's platform is debated every
four years at the Republican National Convention (RNC), but is not
binding on any candidates, including Donald Trump, who on Thursday is
expected to be named the GOP's nominee for president.
On same-sex marriage, the platform
condemns the Supreme Court's rulings in United States v. Windsor,
which led to the federal government's recognition of gay couples'
marriages, and Obergefell, calls for passage of a
“Constitutional amendment returning control over marriage to
states,” and supports passage of the First Amendment Defense Act
(FADA), a controversial bill before Congress that would protect
opponents of marriage equality.
“Traditional marriage and family,
based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation
for a free society and has for millennia been entrusted with rearing
children and instilling cultural values,” the document states. “We
condemn the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Windsor,
which wrongly removed the ability of Congress to define marriage
policy in federal law. We also condemn the Supreme Court’s lawless
ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which in the words of the late
Justice Antonin Scalia, was a 'judicial Putsch' – full of 'silly
extravagances' – that reduced 'the disciplined legal reasoning of
John Marshall and Joseph Storey to the mystical aphorisms of a
fortune cookie.'”
The platform also lurches to the right
on other LGBT issues, including its support for conversion therapy
and its opposition to allowing transgender people to use the bathroom
of their choice.
Chad Griffin, president of the Human
Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation's largest LGBT rights advocate,
blasted the platform.
“The RNC's convention theme might as
well have been 'Take America Backward Again,'” Griffin said in a
statement. “The Republican Party has just formally adopted the
most overtly discriminatory, anti-LGBTQ platform in history.
Unfortunately, we can only expect more of the same from Donald Trump
and Mike Pence, who seems committed to driving the GOP back into the
dark ages.”
(Related: OK
Gov. Mary Fallin defends GOP platform's opposition to LGBT rights.)