The Log Cabin Republicans, a leading conservative gay rights group, will no longer advocate for transgender issues, according to the group’s president. Gay people, he said, were losing political support because of the rise of what he called “radical transgender activists” and “their unnecessary and discomfiting focus on America’s youth.”
The shift away from transgender issues was announced in an online essay last week by the president, Ross Hemminger, and reflects a skepticism long harbored by some conservative gay people toward elements of the transgender rights movement. It also reflects a concern among some that leading gay rights groups have become “radicalized” by supporting issues like allowing trans athletes to participate in girls’ and women’s sports. That advocacy, they believe, has harmed public perceptions of the gay rights movement and has led to a decline in support for issues like same-sex marriage.
The change also more closely aligns the Log Cabin Republicans with President Trump and the MAGA movement. The White House has dismantled what it has described as “subversive, woke policies” related to transgender Americans. The administration has prohibited federal Medicaid dollars from being used to provide gender-transition medication and surgery to transgender adolescents. Mr. Trump has declared that federal policy recognizes only two sexes, male and female, stating they are “not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.” The administration has barred transgender people from serving in the military, and has sought to have federal prisons house transgender women in men’s facilities.
In his essay, Mr. Hemminger argued that the “transgender movement” had grown out of control.
“The transgender movement has ceased focusing on adults at all — nearly all of their efforts and those of their aligned special interest groups focus on minors,” he wrote. “They push schools to teach radical gender ideology; they want biological men in women’s sports regardless of the consequences; perhaps most offensively, they support gender reassignment treatments for minors, often without the knowledge or consent of the parents, knowing full well these treatments are mostly irreversible.”
Delphine Luneau, a spokeswoman for the Human Rights Campaign, which describes itself as “nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization,” said in an interview on Tuesday that many of those claims “are just not aligned with reality” and are “indicative of a malicious propaganda campaign.”
“You don’t see us defending those positions, because we don’t hold those positions,” she said.
Critics of the Trump administration have argued that by attacking trans rights, the president is engaging in a “divide and conquer” strategy when it comes to groups that seek to represent the interests of gay and trans people.
Support for gay rights has been falling in recent years, particularly among Republicans, according to polling conducted this year by Gallup. It shows that 37 percent of Republicans support same-sex marriage, down from 55 percent in 2021 and 2022.
Opposition to gay rights continues to define the politics of states like Texas, where the official 2026 platform of the state Republican Party refers to homosexuality as “an abnormal lifestyle choice.”
Danny Stevens, a former president of the Log Cabin Republicans chapter in Houston, said he thought the national group had made a smart move by abandoning trans rights issues, which it embraced in 2015.
The issue was a nonstarter for many Texas Republicans.
“At some point, I just kept thinking, why are we spending all this time convincing Republicans that we’re not crazy while associating ourselves with a movement pushing things most of them are never going to accept?” Mr. Stevens wrote in a text message on Tuesday.
He wishes the national Log Cabin group had abandoned trans issues sooner, he said. “I actually think it was necessary,” he said, if the group “wants to keep making progress within the Republican Party.”
R.G. Cravens III, a senior manager for research and analysis at the Southern Poverty Law Center, is among those who believe that the Log Cabin group has miscalculated. He thinks that if social conservatives win on trans issues, they will be emboldened to go after the rights of gays and lesbians.
“They won’t stop there,” he said. “Abandoning trans rights harms gay people.”
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