Global Courant
WASHINGTON—
Charles Moran is proudly gay and proudly Republican.
For some, that combination is an inherent contradiction, like being a meat-eating vegetarian, a violent pacifist, or a Dodger-loving San Francisco Giants fan.
In recent months, conservative extremists have declared war on the LGBTQ+ community, engaging in skirmishes on social media, school campuses, and in the aisles of your friendly Target convenience store.
Hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been filed in state houses across the country, part of a Pink Scare aimed at inciting the Republican base for political and financial gain.
However, Moran insists there is a middle ground, even if you have to squint to see it through the eruption of the smoking culture wars.
“I don’t want my movement, the gay movement, to be hijacked by far-left cultural Marxists,” he said. “And I don’t want the anti-gay forces that still exist in the social conservative movement to hijack the progress I helped make in the Republican Party.”
Those are words guaranteed to antagonize people of different stripes, reflecting the strange and awkward position of the Log Cabin Republicans, an organization that advocates for LGBTQ+ rights from the GOP. The group, headquartered in Washington, claims more than 10,000 members across the country. Born and raised in San Pedro, 42-year-old Moran is president.
The club has long faced animosity from its supposed political kin – ‘perverted’ is one of the kinder epithets hurled at members – and the current atmosphere is certainly no more welcoming.
But Moran sees nothing contradictory in his political allegiances. Being gay doesn’t necessarily make one a Democrat, he suggested, and supporting the Republican agenda—to some degree—doesn’t automatically make one homophobic.
“You have a lot of gay conservatives who are shocked by the way the Republican Party is acting,” he said. “You have a lot of gay conservatives who are shocked by the way the bigger LGBT organizations are acting.”
Guardrails are needed, he continued, to keep both sides from going off the edge. Or put it another way, Moran suggested, there must be compromise and consensus somewhere in the fuzzy gray area between black and white.
“Over the past 20, 30 years, we’ve had a great movement with gay inclusion and normalization of who I am, of who we are in our families,” he said. “I don’t want to see that slide back. So instead of being hyper-reactive to things, I want to be principled in how we react.
On an unusually mild spring day, in a patch of greenery a few miles from the Capitol, Moran described a happy Southern California upbringing that had nothing to do with the cruelty or hatred others have experienced simply because they are who they are. He came out when he went to Occidental College.
Father was a firefighter. Mom was a flight attendant. Both were Republican, although neither was politically active.
Moran was drawn to the GOP from an early age because he believed Republicans take a more bottom-up approach to society and its problems. “Individual, family, community, city, state, nation,” he described it. “Instead of the other way around.”
Of course, he disagrees with every point of view of everyone in the party.
Moran rejects the climate change denial that many head-in-the-sand Republicans espouse. He likes a lot what the Democratic Party has to say about education and respect for working people.
“I’m certainly not a zero-sum … or voter,” he said. “I think single-issue voting is really dangerous in a democracy.”
But it’s the one issue of LGBTQ+ rights that Moran thwarts with the pitchfork-wielding wing of the Republican Party and those promoting what he believes is all right—or should be—political agenda.
It is not anti-LGBTQ+, he said, to believe that children should wait until at least age 16 to undergo gender reassignment.
It is not bigotry, he said, to wait until at least sixth grade to allow classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity.
It is not homophobic, he said, to believe that sexually oriented cross-dressing should be limited to adult audiences.
“Guess what? We regulate NC-17 movies,” Moran said, referring to ratings intended to limit certain content to mature audiences. “What’s the difference?”
Of course, some Republicans won’t be happy, it seems, until every last transsexual has disappeared and every member of the LGBTQ+ community has been closeted and locked away.
It’s not just, as they claim, about ‘protecting’ children.
Republican from Missouri governor signed legislation that will ban gender-affirming care for some adults. Other Republican-led states have looked at ways to restrict health care for transgender adults.
The Florida Board of Education, which helped GOP Governor Ron DeSantis spice up his Republican presidential resume, expanded restrictions on sexual orientation and gender instruction through 12th grade.
GOP lawmakers in Tennessee passed a first-of-its-kind law that strictly limits drag performance. (It was thrown out by a judge who, Moran noted, was appointed by President Trump.)
Once the government targets a certain group, the slope can become disturbingly slippery.
In Moran’s leafy neighborhood in northwest Washington, a profusion of rainbow flags and Pride Month streamers bloomed from windows and storefronts, as bright and cheery as the brilliant dogwoods and glossy azalea bushes.
Is he concerned that a change in the political climate, and anything less than resistance, will undo decades of hard-won achievements for the LGBTQ+ community?
Moran doesn’t.
“LGBT people are everywhere in society,” he said. “We are in every political affiliation. We are of every race. We are every religion… I think as a society we have gone beyond that.”
However, that’s not to say that some won’t keep trying to turn back the clock.
