Richard Grenell, who was the highest-ranking out gay official in Donald Trump’s administration, is calling for the Texas Republican Party to lift its ban on the Log Cabin Republicans.
He tweeted about the matter after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a far-right, virulently anti-LGBTQ+ GOPer, announced that his state will host the Republican National Convention in 2028. It will be in Houston.
“The Texas Republican Party bans Logcabin, the gay conservative group with 80 chapters across the US,” Grenell wrote on X, the platform previously known as Twitter. “Texas is the only state that bans us from their state convention. The national GOP Convention shouldn’t be in Texas if this ban remains.”
He tagged @GOPChairwoman — she’s Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee — and Texas’s U.S. senators, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn.
The Texas Republican Party’s anti-LGBTQ+ ways go far beyond banning Log Cabin from its state convention. At that convention last year, it adopted a platform that calls homosexuality “an abnormal lifestyle choice” and opposed “all efforts to validate transgender identity.” Its previous platforms were intensely anti-LGBTQ+ as well, but the 2022 platform is even more so.
Also, in March the state party’s executive committee voted to censure U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales for supporting marriage equality and gun control. Gonzales was the only Texas Republican in Congress to vote for the Respect for Marriage Act, which wrote marriage equality into federal law.
The state party’s only official response to Grenell’s comment was a GIF on X showing the Texas flag, posted by Texas Republican Party Chairman Matt Rinaldi.
For its part, Log Cabin tweeted, “Inclusion wins. @TexasGOP has 5 years to get it right…clock starts now.”
Grenell was U.S. ambassador to Germany and then acting national security adviser, a Cabinet-level position, when Trump was president.
