Newly elected chair of the New Hampshire Log Cabin Republicans Dan Innis told WMUR TV-9 in a recent interview that he’ll continue to push his party to recognize marriage equality — or more precisely, to simply drop the language from both the Granite State’s and national Republican party platforms that recognize marriage only as between “one man and one woman.”
“All we’re asking is that the relationships and partnerships and marriages we develop and are engaged in should be treated equally,” said Innis, a former state senator and long-time LGBT activist.
The US Supreme Court legalized marriage equality in all 50 states back in 2015. Well before that, New Hampshire’s governor signed same-sex marriage into law in 2009, and of course neighboring Massachusetts was the first state in the country to legalize it in 2004.
But neither the national nor Granite State Republican party has yet to accept marriage equality and have continued to disavow it in their platforms, though New Hampshire’s LCR chapter has been working for some time now to change this.
[Jim] Morgan, [Innis’s predecessor as NH LCR chair], was a strong proponent of a move to have the state Republican Party drop from its platform its recognition of marriage as only being between one man and one woman.
Morgan planned to propose a platform amendment to that effect at last year’s state party convention, but the proposal — and all proposed platform amendments — were put on hold when the COVID-19 pandemic forced the party to hold a virtual convention, rather than in-person.
Innis, who is a member of the national Log Cabin Republicans board of directors, said he intends to continue in his new role to push for the change not only in the state GOP platform, but in the national party platform as well.
Rather than proposing a platform amendment to proactively say that the party recognizes gay marriage, Innis, like Morgan, wants to drop the reference to marriage entirely.
“That’s just the best way to go about it,” Innis said. “It’s time, and I think more Republicans are on board with that than ever before.”
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