By Shawn Holster, GOP Endorsed Candidate for MN Senate District 63, and Christine Bolan, Treasurer, Log Cabin Republicans of Minnesota

The following is a letter intended for MNGOP State Convention Delegates and Conservative LGBT Allies and sent to the Star Tribune for publication.   To date, the Star Tribune has yet to print it.

There has been a great deal of chatter and clamor surrounding the 2022 MNGOP State Convention and the status of the Minnesota Log Cabin Republicans (an organization of LGBT and allies), as an affiliate organization. There is an abundance of rumor, hearsay, and confusion. Let us provide some clarity and lay this controversy to rest.

There is a contingent, a small contingent, within the Minnesota GOP that attempted to sever ties with the Log Cabin Republicans.  This much is true. This arises, in part, from Log Cabin Republicans’ anti-conversion therapy stance.

Conversion therapy has been abandoned by most in the behavioral health community, due to lack of scientific credibility. It is bigotry hiding behind a veil of cognitive behavioral therapy. It is marginal theology in a lab coat. Being homosexual is not pathological, therefore, there is no “cure”. While most members of the Log Cabin Republicans personally repudiate thepractice of conversion therapy, the subject itself is not in the organization’s official platform. For clarity, the Log Cabin Republicans do support the right of parents to seek counseling for their children for any reason.

This claim fuels and dovetails into another - that the Log Cabin Republicans support sexual/gender identity education/indoctrination for small children. Grooming. Democrats promote these policies in the name of inclusivity and acceptance, though, these very policies are especially predatory toward those that they claim to protect: LGBT youth. While these children are exploring and determining all aspects of their identities and where they fit into this world, predators, disguised as educators, groom them to be the perfect pawns in a demented game, where the winner achieves superiority through force and intimidation.  These are the tactics of predators, not the Log Cabin Republicans.

In this deranged world, trans trumps gay, so young gays and lesbians are at the greatest risk for manipulation. It is difficult to pinpoint the origins of this misconception of the Log Cabin Republicans. We suspect that it is nothing more than effective subterfuge on behalf of these predators, themselves, as the organization has always been against these practices, publicly and vociferously through their official online media publication, getoutspoken.com.  The membership of the Log Cabin Republicans consists of gay and straight parents, gay and straight aunts and uncles, and gay and straight Godparents - No member of the Log Cabin Republicans supports teachers over parents, nor do they support any form of indoctrination in schools. The children must be protected.

The assertion that the Minnesota GOP does not want any affiliation with the Log Cabin Republicans was proven comprehensively false in the opening hour of the convention, with a loud demand to seat the delegates, by an overwhelming majority of all on the floor. While there may be some members of the party who fail to understand the mission of the organization, the firm and overwhelming consensus is that the Log Cabin Republicans, and the other affiliate organizations, are a vital part of bringing new members into the party. Supporters from all over the state rallied to ensure the reaffiliation of all of these organizations, including, and especially, the Log Cabin Republicans.

Regardless of the fact that the state central committee failed to reinstate the affiliate organizations within the time constraints, convention delegates found the proper channels, within the state party constitution, to procedurally reaffirm party affiliation, for all groups, for another year.

Although many Minnesota conservatives have never even heard of the Log Cabin Republicans, they are on the liberal radar. The Minnesota Log Cabin Republicans have been physically attacked, threatened, and bullied by liberal groups, in person and online, time and again. They are a group of principled conservatives, who believe in the Republican Party platform and rebuke the liberal agenda. They will not stand by quietly, while the DFL and other liberals make this out to be something that it is not. Minnesota Republicans made their voices heard at the convention, and they stand behind the Log Cabin Republicans.