Montana's GOP Insists Gay People Should Be Jailed

Forget disagreements about same-sex marriage, or even anti-discrimination legislation. When it comes to the Montana Republican Party and their official platform, LGBT people need to fight just to be kept out of prison. That's because the Montana GOP is calling for homosexuality to be illegal.
Literally.
"We support the clear will of the people of Montana expressed by legislation to keep homosexual acts illegal," the Montana GOP platform reads.
Not sure how the Montana GOP knows that the clear will of the people is to make homosexuality illegal. After all, the Montana Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on sodomy years before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down nationwide sodomy laws in 2003's Lawrence v. Texas.
But maybe the Montana GOP is taking a cue from local Tea Party activists. Folks like Tim Ravndal, who in an infamous Facebook conversation, admitted that if he had his way, gay people would be tied up outside and potentially left for dead. Ravndal's punishment for making such a comment was to have his title within Montana's Tea Party taken away. (He's since fought that, and other Tea Party activists have joined with him, suggesting that there will be a war with gay people if Ravndal's position isn't reinstated.)
Either way, for a GOP platform to call for the criminalization of homosexuality is shocking, particularly at a time when more and more members of the Republican Party are either coming out as gay themselves, or fighting hard to open the GOP umbrella wide enough to create a space for LGBT people. Send the Montana GOP Chairman Will Deschamps a message that this language in his party's platform is unacceptable, and needs to go.

Even Montana Republican lawmakers agree that it's time for this policy to go. In an AP article from yesterday, Republican State Senator John Brueggeman said that the GOP should get this language out of its official platform without delay.
"Should it get taken out? Absolutely. Does anybody think we should be arresting homosexual people? If you take that stand, you really probably shouldn't be in the Republican Party," Brueggeman said.
He's right. Because if there's a space in American politics where people can openly champion the jailing and criminalization of citizens solely because of their sexual orientation, no one wants to see it.
Of course, the scary part in all of this is that Montana is not the only state where GOP party platforms call for LGBT people to be locked up and charged with crimes. Texas, too, has a GOP platform that wants to make homosexuality synonymous with "felony."
But in Montana, if State Sen. Brueggeman speaks for a wing of the Republican Party, there seems to be some momentum toward getting rid of this antiquated and homophobic platform. Indeed, it's a policy that has been on the books since the days when The Spice Girls had number one albums, and it's time to see it removed.
Ready to help take action? Send an email to the state GOP Chair Will Deschamps. Let Deschamps know that no political party -- Republican, Democrat, Green, Constitution, or Tea, if that's how they want to be officially known -- should get away with calling for people to be arrested for their sexual orientation.
Photo credit: Social Geek

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