TEXAS REPUBLICANS CHANGE LANGUAGE ON GAY ISSUES

  

The Texas Republican Convention is continuing in Fort Worth today (Friday) and tomorrow (Saturday).

They are adopting a platform for this election year.  One of the issues that concerns them the most is gay rights.

The platform committee has softened the language on the party’s attitudes about homosexuality but they are calling for ‘reparative therapy, a psychological effort to turn gay people to straight.

This is in a rebuke to new laws in California and New Jersey that bans such therapy.

A push to include the new anti-gay language survived a key vote late Thursday.  Under the platform the Texas Republican Party will ‘recognize the legitimacy and efficacy of counseling, which offers reparative therapy and treatment for those patients seeking healing and wholeness from their homosexual lifestyle.’

At the same time there is an effort to soften some of the language on homosexuality.  What is considered a rare victory for gay activists in the Republican party, the platform may include language that states ‘homosexuality tears at the fabric of society.’ Stripping that phrase survived a sometimes tense challenge from hardliners who not only wanted to preserve it, but wanted to replace ‘homosexuality’ with ‘sexual sin.’

The state Republican convention is continuing through Saturday at the Fort Worth Convention Center.  Washington County Republicans sent 23 delegates and 16 alternates to the convention.  State Rep. Lois Kolkhorst is among the leaders of the delegation.  She spoke Thursday during a panel discussion on health care in the state.