Member-only story
What Will the Log Cabin Republicans Say About the Second Trump Administration?
I can hardly wait to find out. Maybe it will even find a way to benefit a gay person somewhere
The Log Cabin Republicans have been around since the 1970s. According to the mission statement on their website today, they are “an inclusive community that supports LGBT issues and conservative values through advocacy, engagement, and thought leadership.”
I’ve been aware of them since I was in high school because one boy in my gay/straight alliance said he identified as a Republican and had joined Log Cabin. (Surely unrelatedly, though I mention it in case it means anything to you, years later that boy was featured on America’s Most Wanted and is now serving a life sentence.)
And so every once in a while I remember that Log Cabin exists and I wonder what it thinks about— well— ::waving my hands at everything but especially the queer/trans part of everything::
I don’t mean to be coy. Quite seriously, I don’t know how any queer/trans person right now can function as a Republican. I understand that a driving factor behind MAGA is racism, and that racist LGBTQ people may simply lean into their racism, and that’s that. I don’t know how they make sense of this from a queer perspective — whether they truly believe they can achieve anything for LGBTQ people within MAGA, or whether they buy the current MAGA line that the best thing gay people can possibly do for ourselves is to reject “victim mentality” and actively deny that we have any political needs, on the premise that this psychic energy will somehow manifest complete equality.
Log Cabin publishes news releases
Log Cabin has had some leadership shakeups over Trumpism. The national organization didn’t endorse Trump in 2016, but some local chapters did. In the second half of the first Trump administration, some Never Trumpers left Log Cabin, after which the national organization endorsed Trump in 2020 and 2024.
Today, the organization’s “LCR in the News” page says: “If there is a story out there about gay issues and the Republican Party, you can bet Log Cabin Republicans are out at the forefront of the news cycle…
