The new “GOP Pride Coalition” launched by Republican Party Chair Ronna McDaniel is a “lose-lose-lose” proposition. President Trump likes to win. He should steer clear of this scheme.

McDaniel announced the coalition at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort on November 6. She did so at the “Spirit of Lincoln” gala held by the Log Cabin Republicans. The LCR is a group that promotes the LGBTQ agenda of the Modern Sexual Revolution within the GOP and conducts outreach to sympathetic voters.

Give the Log Cabin Republicans credit for being crafty. They handed Melania Trump an award and had President Trump and the former First Lady in attendance. That careful stagecraft added gravitas to McDaniel’s announcement of the coalition.

But no matter how shiny on the outside, this is still a triple-loser of an idea.

LOSS #1 — The True “Big Tent” is Culturally Conservative and Getting More So

For years, pundits have lectured culturally conservative Republicans that being against abortion and LGBTQ rights was “on the wrong side of history.” The pundits preached the gospel of “Big Tent Republicanism” that would welcome all the members of the Sexual Revolution.

They said this “big tent” would pave the way to a centrist-libertarian governing majority.

The problem? It’s not reality. The GOP finally may be on the verge of creating a “big tent” — but it’s big because it stretches to welcome more cultural conservatives. These new Republican voters, many of whom are traditionalist Hispanics and Blacks, certainly aren’t looking for an LGBTQ-woke party.

The American political teams are realigning. And a more culturally conservative GOP is on the right side of that realignment. Consider:

President Trump won in 2016 (and I would argue in 2020) by tapping into working class, cultural conservative values and concerns.

On March 30, Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), head of the Republican Study Committee, authored a notable memo called “Cementing the GOP as the Working Class Party.” Supported by voter and donor data, Banks contended that “the Democrat Party today is more vulnerable than it’s been in modern history.” Why? He said, “Democrats’ agenda is now shaped entirely by corporate interests and radical, elite cultural mores.” Those losing “radical, elite cultural mores” would include a libertarian, Sexual Revolution agenda on LGBTQ issues.

If the GOP embraces that Sexual Revolution agenda it risks forfeiting the gains it is making.

The Trump Realignment

Further, Banks’ memo showed that the Trump realignment, the MAGA agenda, consisted of five big issue areas:

• Immigration
• Trade
• Anti-Wokeness
• Main Street vs. Wall Street
• Big Tech

Three of those five — Anti-Wokeness, Main Street vs. Wall Street and Big Tech — include a strong component that is at odds with the pushy pro-LGBTQ list of cultural demands.

For a recent example, look no farther than Loudoun County, Virginia.

Indoctrination Within Education

The 2021 Virginia governor and statehouse victories by GOP candidates was largely driven by cultural and working class issues. When everyday parents learned that “woke” school boards — especially Loudoun County — and their Democrat supporters favored indoctrinating their kids with Critical Race Theory and explicit LGBTQ dogma disguised as “sex education,” the GOP won.

One major event was a parent arrested for protesting that his daughter was assaulted due to sexually “woke” policies. Voters were awakened and outraged.

Fighter Mike Tyson famously said, “Every boxer has a plan until he gets punched in the face.” Maybe a spin-off is, “Every suburban voter is a progressive until her daughter gets raped in the girls’ room by a boy wearing a skirt.” That’s what happened in Virginia.

It’s just the tip of the iceberg. Voter rejection of the logical consequences of the Sexual Revolution is sweeping across the nation in school board elections won by cultural conservatives.

Is the national GOP high command paying attention?

Finally, the GOP cannot have a big tent if it alienates even a small percentage of the evangelical and Catholic voters it already has. If Republican leaders push the LGBTQ agenda, they risk forfeiting the new “realignment voters” coming toward the Party as well as the conservatives currently there. No amount of new social liberals can make up for an exodus of cultural conservatives.

Why, then, is Ronna McDaniel promoting a new GOP Pride Coalition?

Perhaps because the “elite vs. working class” tension also exists within the GOP itself. Republican establishment elites despise Donald Trump. But more than that, they disdain the cultural conservatives he drew to the Party. It’s a time for choosing.

LOSS #2 — Embracing the Sexual Revolution Will Destroy Our Families, Society, and Freedom

Even if the GOP somehow politically benefited from going “LGBTQ woke,” the cost to our families and nation wouldn’t be worth it.

This isn’t just religious rhetoric. It’s social science.

Decades of research and centuries of history tell one story: Families based on monogamous heterosexual marriages are the most important factor in holding societies together. This ethic preserves order and liberty. In short, monogamous heterosexual families keep cultures from unraveling and help them succeed.

Oxford University social anthropologist J.D. Unwin, Ph.D., (a secular Freudian) conducted a landmark study of 86 civilizations over 5,000 years of history, including modern. To his surprise, Unwin found that sexual restraint and the monogamous, heterosexual family were the keys to social flourishing.

Such restraint, he observed, not only supplied stability. It preserved “social energy” that flowed into advancement in various areas. He also found that abandonment of this ethic was the main factor in social dissolution and conquest by competing nations. He stated:

No society can display productive social energy unless a new generation inherits a social system under which sexual opportunity [sex outside of monogamous heterosexual marriage] is reduced to a minimum. (Unwin, Sex & Culture, page 416, Oxford University Press)

Unwin’s findings have been confirmed and refined numerous times. Research shows that any organized movement that overtly promotes sexuality outside of the monogamous heterosexual marriage and family, always, without exception, harms a society.

The same research also demonstrates that sexual revolutions bring significant, often catastrophic, harm to individuals, including children. Dr. Steven Willing, M.D., sums up the results of a mountain of evidence from social and medical sciences:

It was long ago predicted that the Sexual Revolution would leave a trail of victims. The verdict is now in: the principles of the Sexual Revolution are injurious to personal and societal safety. Christian sexual morality is the most reliable bulwark against sexual predation.

Someone might object by saying, “But wait! The Republicans don’t exclude adulterers and other so-called sinners!” And that’s certainly true.

Every single Republican, me included, is a sinner of some sort. But that’s different than creating a formal “coalition” with a Sexual Revolution special interest group specifically promoting a sin shown to be destructive. We are to lament our sins, not organize to leverage them.

LOSS #3 — Embracing the Sexual Revolution will Forfeit the Blessing of God

God exists. He is not to be mocked. His moral laws are not to be flouted. His high-priority design for biological genders, marriage and sexuality is not to be institutionally challenged.

Yes, it is inevitable that individuals will sin. It is not inevitable that we must turn sin upside down and celebrate it as a mass social movement. It is not inevitable that we must embrace sin’s interest groups — such as the Log Cabin Republicans — as official allies for political gain.

Yet that is what Ronna McDaniel’s GOP Pride Coalition does. This is a lose-lose-lose. For all three reasons given above, it’s an unforced error. A dangerous, unnecessary gamble at precisely the wrong moment.

 

Christopher Corbett is a writer who has served with numerous ministries and policy organizations, and was co-author with Marlin Maddoux of the book Answers to the Gay Deception. From 2013-2018 he was Vice President for Strategic Communications at First Liberty Institute, a religious liberties legal organization. He holds a political science degree from the University of Chicago.