Gays in California GOP see hopeful signs
Gay Republicans in California are sensing a thawing in the attitudes of the state's GOP membership toward gays and lesbians as the party seeks ways to reach new voters.
At the party's spring convention in Sacramento last weekend, nine Republican candidates for party offices or in upcoming statewide and local elections spoke at the board meeting of the California Log Cabin Republicans, a gay and lesbian political group.
The Log Cabin members sense a groundswell in tolerance for gays and lesbians, though not necessarily a sea change in favor of same-sex marriage or other major gay rights issues.
The group hopes to win formal recognition from the state Republican Party, which requires a vote of convention delegates.
The new vice chairwoman of the state party, San Francisco attorney Harmeet Dhillon, told the gay Republicans at the convention that she wanted more groups like theirs and is interested in "the politics of addition, but not subtraction."
The man likely to take her spot as chair of the San Francisco Republican Party is gay, and statewide the party has run gay candidates in areas with high numbers of Democrats, including in recent mayoral races in San Diego and Los Angeles.
In the early 1990s, as the Log Cabin Republicans were nearing the threshold of members and chapters to win official recognition, evangelical conservatives led a charge to change the party's bylaws to bar a gay-focused group from joining, said Christopher Bowman, a gay Republican political consultant who has been with the group since the 1970s.
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