Op-Ed: Nothing New in GOP’s Anti-Woman, Anti-Gay Platform

The GOP's anti-abortion platform hasn't changed—it is identical to that of its 2008 platform, allowing abortions only in cases of rape and incest.

The GOP's anti-abortion platform hasn't changed—it is identical to that of its 2008 platform, allowing abortions only in cases of rape and incest.

The GOP's anti-gay platform also hasn't changed—it is identical to that of its 2008 platform, allowing marriage only between a man and a woman.

The Grand Old Party’s future, which includes a younger generation of social conservative and LGBTQ voices, depends on its ability to have open discussions about abortion, reproductive coercion and gay rights.

Yet no Log Cabin Republican is among the GOP’s list of invited speakers at the Convention.

As a matter-of-fact, "the Log Cabin Republicans may be glad to get a sentence in the Republican platform suggesting that all Americans be treated with respect and dignity," but that's all they're getting. The rest of the document will be an homage to how to respectfully tell the LGBT community that they don't have true American values and need to just shut up already, " Hunter of the Daily Kos wrote.

Clearly, the GOP is also signaling that it neither wants nor cares about the safety and full rights and protections of its citizens—especially their female, LGBTQ Republicans and Republican families.

In case I wasn’t already paying attention, the GOP hit me with a bucket of cold water in the recent incident with U.S. Republican Missouri Representative Todd Akin. Akin’s remark about rape, made on a St. Louis television station, stating a bogus, magical biological defense mechanism he thinks women have to guard against pregnancy in cases of rape highlighted not only insensitivity but also pure ignorance.

“It seems to be, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, it’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down."

Akin apparently also has a rape hierarchy—classifying some rapes as “legitimate” and some as “illegitimate.”

If the GOP had hoped to avoid controversy before the National Convention it has failed. If it had hoped to woo independent heterosexual women voters, an important constituency the Romney- Ryan team hopes to win, it has failed there too.

Moderate Republican and independent women voters have long been leery of the party's insensitivity to their issues, especially the issue of abortions justified in cases of rape.

The GOP platform upholds an oppressive stance on abortion, one, that in my opinion, could be loosely defined as "reproductive coercion" which is a form of sexual violence. One form of reproductive coercion refuses to let women use forms of birth control, as the Catholic Church suggests, and it controls women's reproductive health decision-making. Prohibiting women to make choices for their wellbeing is a form of violence.

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