Commentary: Supporters of gay rights should avoid the GOP

In 1854 residents of Ripon, Ill., helped form the Republican Party. They were abolitionists who stood squarely for civil rights in an era when many people lived in slavery. The Grand Old Party championed the rights of slaves and women.

The Great Depression changed all this: African Americans and women felt that the GOP had deserted them. Strom Thurmond, the segregationist governor of South Carolina ran for president in 1948 and later led the exodus of white southern Democrats from their party to the GOP. He switched parties in 1954 and so did many white southerners as the National Democratic Party embraced civil rights and eschewed the Jim Crow laws.

In 1972, the “Solid South” went solidly Nixon and has pretty much gone Republican ever since. South Carolina voted 98% for Democrat Franklin Roosevelt in 1936. In 1972, it gave Republican Richard Nixon 72%. Similarly, in 1936, Mississippi was 97% for FDR and in 1972, 78% for Nixon.

Mississippi, along with South Carolina, was once the heart of slave country. It is the only state that has never elected a woman to statewide office or Congress. Its flag still includes the Confederate cross, and it’s a state where advocates of civil rights were routinely tortured, terrorized and murdered. Today, Mississippi supports the Republican Party, which has sold its soul in order to win the votes of the same white southerners it once opposed.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 turned Southern politics upside down. Mississippi and South Carolina each have one black member of the House, both Democrats. The white population, once solidly Democratic, has now aligned itself with the GOP, while blacks, who once strongly supported the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, now vote overwhelmingly Democratic. he civil rights movement of the 1960s inspired the women’s rights movement of the 1970s and the gay rights movement after that.

Consider where the parties stand today. The GOP has opposed most of the agenda of blacks, women and gays, be it workplace issues, social issues or simply the freedom to not be discriminated against.

Consider the recent dust-up over the so-called religious-freedom laws in Arkansas and Indiana. Republicans passed laws making discrimination against gays legal and are also against same-sex marriage. The top prospective GOP presidential candidates support the Indiana law.

It’s clear that in today’s America, a sensible gay person should not vote Republican, nor should any person who values individual rights and freedom.

When any political party tries to make political hay by attacking and restricting the rights of any particular group, it is time for the rest of us to rise up and reject that party and all it stands for.

Be careful when you hear the Republicans going after folks. One of these days, they may be after you, and who will be left to object?

LENARD DAVIS lives in Newport Beach.