Most Republican State Platforms Still Oppose Same-Sex Marriage

In April, the Nevada Republican party dropped its opposition to same-sex marriage from its state platform. That same month, the Maine Republican Party upheld its opposition to gay nuptials.

Despite the increasing number of Republicans in favor of same-sex marriage, Huffington Post writer Amanda Terkel reminds us that most state GOP platforms still oppose gay rights:

The party's national platform, written in 2012, comes out strongly against LGBT equality and even calls for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

For the most part, the same remains true at the state level. According to a count by The Huffington Post, only seven states plus the District of Columbia have no mention of opposition to same-sex marriage or other rights for LGBT individuals in their party platforms. Fourteen states appear to go by the national platform, leaving 29 other states with their own platforms that oppose gay rights.

But in many states, there is a significant internal push-and-pull going on as parties get ready to write new platforms, just as the national GOP will do in 2016. With the Republican Party now divided on support for same-sex marriage, it often comes down to which faction is the most organized and gains control of the platform-writing process.

According to Terkel, pro-marriage Republicans will focus on mobilizing young Republicans who support gay marriage by larger margins to push state parties to drop the anti-gay language from their platforms. Her article includes a comprehensive list of each state with anti-gay platforms and the specific language used in each.

Terkel also notes that the current anti-gay language in the national Republican platform was written by none other than the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins. The FRC, of course, is a group which has been classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.