Katy Faust has apparently discovered something important about Log Cabin Republicans: We aren’t conservative, because she says so.
How convenient.
In her latest RealClearPolitics essay, Faust attacks Log Cabin Republicans for dropping the “T” and returning to our original mission of advocating for gay and lesbian Americans within the Republican Party. Her argument is that supporting gay marriage and gay families is fundamentally incompatible with conservatism – and that the Republican Party was founded to oppose precisely the kind of family structures we support.
There’s just one problem: Her history is spectacularly wrong.
Faust points to the Republican Party’s first national platform in 1856, which condemned “those twin relics of barbarism, Polygamy and Slavery.” She then makes the extraordinary leap that because early Republicans opposed polygamy, modern Republicans must oppose same-sex marriage.
That isn’t history. It’s word association.
Yes, the early Republican Party opposed polygamy. It also opposed slavery. Those were enormous political and constitutional battles in 19th-century America. But putting two things in the same sentence does not make them the same institution – or establish some timeless Republican doctrine against every family structure Katy Faust happens to dislike.
Polygamy involved multiple spouses. Same-sex marriage involves two consenting adults.
Those are different institutions, with different histories, different legal structures, and different questions of public policy. If Faust wants to lecture Republicans about their history, she might want to learn it first.
Her argument about gay families is no better. Faust claims that same-sex marriage “deprives” children of a mother or a father and then leaps from marriage equality to adoption, surrogacy, sperm and egg donation, and commercial reproduction as though all of these things are interchangeable.
They aren’t.
Gay families are not a thought experiment. They are families.
They include adoptive parents, biological parents, stepparents, grandparents, and children who are being raised in loving, stable homes. Some gay couples have children through adoption. Some have children from previous relationships. Some use reproductive technology. Some don’t have children at all.
Faust is entitled to have strong opinions about any of those questions. What she is not entitled to do is pretend that her preferred answer is the only possible conservative answer.
That brings us to the larger problem with her argument: She has confused conservatism with a particular strain of social conservatism and then appointed herself the referee of who gets to use the word.
Log Cabin Republicans have been conservative and Republican for more than four decades.
We believe in limited government, individual liberty, free speech, personal responsibility, the rule of law, a strong national defense, and equal treatment under the law.
We also believe gay Americans should be able to participate fully in the political movement that reflects those principles. That shouldn’t be controversial.
The Republican Party of 1856 is not the Republican Party of 2026. Thank God.
Political parties evolve. Conservative ideas evolve. The application of enduring principles changes as the country changes. Republicans who understand that aren’t abandoning conservatism; they’re practicing it.
And there is nothing particularly conservative about telling two adults that government should prohibit them from marrying because someone else disapproves of their family.
Faust concludes that Log Cabin Republicans should drop the rest of the acronym – and apparently the Republican Party along with it.
Our recent decision to refine and refocus our agenda was a recommitment to our overarching mission: advocating for lesbian, gay, and bisexual Americans who believe in liberty, limited government, and the Republican Party.
Katy Faust is perfectly entitled to disagree with us, but if she wants to try to use Republican Party history to do so, she could at least spend more time familiarizing herself with it.
Thankfully, Log Cabin Republicans isn’t looking for Katy Faust’s approval on anything, especially who is and who isn’t sufficiently conservative.
