The initiative to strike anti-marriage-equality language from New Hampshire’s Republican party platform is getting closer to an actual vote when the delegates are scheduled to meet on May 2.
According to a report from the Manchester, New Hampshire–based WMUR-TV 9:
Jim Morgan, a Derry town councilor, business executive and an openly gay married man, is spearheading the initiative as the leader of the New Hampshire Log Cabin Republicans—the GOP’s largest pro-LGBT rights group.
“It’s important for us in New Hampshire because we’re losing ground to the Democrats and we need to bring more independents into the Republican mindset,” Morgan said this week.
“Some of our policies are divisive. As I go around the state, I’m meeting more and more Republicans who say they have a son or a daughter or a niece of a nephew or an aunt or an uncle who are part of the LGBT community, and many of them feel it is time for the party to no longer judge you based on who you love.” …
An effort to make the change two years ago was unsuccessful.
After former NHGOP Chair Jennifer Horn drafted two platform amendments on marriage, she was barred from introducing it at the convention due to an issue that arose about her residency. She and her husband were disqualified as delegates because they had moved from one ward to another in Nashua—and the meeting was adjourned before someone else could bring up the proposals.
The current platform says:
“Recognize marriage as the legal and sacred union between one man and one woman as ordained by God, encouraged by the State, and traditional to humankind, and the core of the Family.”
It is in line with the national Republican platform, which says the American family is “the foundation of civil society, and the cornerstone of the family is natural marriage, the union of one man and one woman.”
Under Morgan’s proposal, that marriage plank would be removed. Other family-focused items in the platform would remain intact, including support for “the fundamental role and responsibility of both parents in the care, upbringing and discipline of their children.” …
Also supporting the change is former state Sen. Dan Innis, who lost a bid to become the state’s first openly gay U.S. House member in 2014.
Innis, a member of the platform committee, noted that as a result of a 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, gay marriage is legal in all 50 states, and so, he said, it’s time to remove the “one man-one woman” language from the platform.
“We want a platform where everyone feels welcome and that may mean we don’t address certain subjects directly and let individuals make their own decisions,” Innis said.
“It’s settled law. Many people argue that there is no reason today for it to be there except to exclude some people,” Innis said.
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