Last week 11 GOP County Chairs named their choice to run to succeed Congressman John McHugh (R-NY) in the special election, and their candidate will be Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava! Scozzafava is a strong Log Cabin ally and an inclusive Republican who has voted twice for marriage equality legislation in the New York State Assembly. LCR NY PAC maxed out to her race for reelection in 2008. Following a string of defeats in elections across the country, Scozzafava represents our party’s best chance to turn the tide and elect fair-minded conservatives to office. Go, Dede, go!

Posted: July 27th, 2009 under Elections, In the States.
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5 Republicans provided the margin of victory on the procedural vote to allow consideration of the bill. Collins, Lugar, Murkowski, Snowe and Voinovich.

Posted: July 19th, 2009 under GOP Progress, In Congress.
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An excerpt from OUT’s interview with Log Cabin Republicans National Convention Speaker Meghan McCain:

“Being free of a presidential campaign’s constraints has liberated McCain to speak her mind, but the true impetus for her current gay rights activism was the passage of Proposition 8 in California. On election night last November, McCain was understandably consumed with the results of the presidential race and, like many, “assumed that Prop 8 wouldn’t pass.” The next morning, however, she woke up in an already sour mood made worse by her BGF (best gay friend) Josh “telling me that on top of everything else, Prop 8 passed.” Like many others, McCain was swept up in a collective sense of grievance, quickly concluding that making the GOP more gay-friendly would be foremost among her priorities. (For the record, Meghan isn’t the only member of the McCain clan to support gay marriage. “My mom was always for gay marriage, but I think me being so vocal about it has made her want to be more vocal about it,” she says. “She texted me: ‘Gay marriage passed in Maine!!’ ”)

But what so recently seemed antithetical to mainstream Republicanism has lately gained support from unlikely supporters, including former vice president Dick Cheney, who recently expressed support for gay marriage, and Theodore Olson, a lawyer who represented George W. Bush during the contested election of 2000 and who is now working to overturn Prop 8. And John McCain’s former campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt, told the Log Cabin Republicans that same-sex marriage was consistent with sound conservative principles. As for her father, McCain says, “He’s 73 and of a different generation. I hope someday he will come around.””

Read more of Meghan McCain on equality and the future of the GOP in her OUT interview.

Posted: July 16th, 2009 under From the Right, GOP Heroes, In the News.
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(Los Angeles, CA) – On June 9, 2009, Judge Virginia A. Phillips of the Central District of California denied the U.S. Government’s attempt to dismiss Log Cabin Republicans’ lawsuit challenging the U.S. military’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy as unconstitutional. Judge Phillips’ ruling is the culmination of a 4½-year effort to reach a preliminary ruling on the merits of the case.

Log Cabin Republicans’ case was the first direct challenge to the Policy filed in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which held that criminalization of homosexual conduct by the State of Texas was unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause.

“More than four years later and with the wind at our backs, Log Cabin Republicans is proud to continue the fight to repeal this policy, which puts our nation’s security and military readiness at risk,” said Terry Hamilton, Board Chairman of Log Cabin Republicans. “While we hoped the Obama Administration and Democrats in Congress would fulfill their promise to do away with ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ legislatively, we cannot stand idly by while this policy continues to violate constitutional freedoms, especially at a time when able-bodied volunteers are needed in our military.”

The prominent international law firm White & Case LLP has been handling the case for Log Cabin Republicans. “We are gratified by the court’s order denying the government’s motion to dismiss the complaint brought by the Log Cabin Republicans,” said Dan Woods, White & Case litigation partner in Los Angeles. “This is the first facial challenge to ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ to survive such a motion since the landmark Lawrence case. The lawsuit can now proceed like any other civil case, and we will have the opportunity to conduct discovery and prove that the policy is unfairly discriminatory, does not work, should never have been implemented, and should be reversed.”

“Log Cabin Republicans has been consistently lobbying Congress, the Clinton, Bush and Obama Administrations since President Clinton signed ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ into law in 1993,” states Log Cabin Republicans Spokesman Charles T. Moran. “We are confidant that the ruling from Judge Phillips gives us ample space to make our arguments in ways that other legal challenges against ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ have not been able to.”

The injured party in the case, Alexander Nicholson, a former U.S. Army Human Intelligence Collector who speaks multiple languages, including Arabic, was honorably discharged early pursuant to ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ just six months after 9/11.

The Court has scheduled a hearing for July 6 to discuss, in detail, the scope of discovery and a schedule for the case going forward.

The order from the court may be found here: http://online.logcabin.org/assets/pdf/log-cabin-order.pdf

Posted: July 2nd, 2009 under In the News, Log Cabin In Focus.
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