We have been so focused on the Democratic party platform, that we failed to notice the anti-LGBT planks in the Republican party platform.

.@tperkins talking to the press abt today's GOP platform Meeting #RNCinCLE pic.twitter.com/HLkkZ6BKqo

— JP Duffy (@JPDuffy) July 11, 2016

Courtesy of the New Civil Rights Movement:  

Republican National Committee subcommittee members Monday voted to approve a plank embracing the use of harmful anti-LGBT conversion therapy, after it was introduced by the head of a certified anti-gay hate group. The plank will be voted on by a committee and then all RNC voting members before becoming an official part of the 2016 platform. 

Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, an RNC delegate, Monday morning met with RNC chair Reince Priebus, reportedly to discuss including the call to support medically dangerous efforts that claim to change a person's sexual orientation.

Of course as many of you know this whole "conversion therapy" consists mostly of shaming the young gay person for their "sinful" feelings and frightening them with eternal damnation if they do not renounce their devil inspired perversions and instead embrace the only lifestyle accepted by their church, parents, and peers.

Other language in the draft of the party platform includes retaining the opposition to abortion rights, including Trump's tough anti-trade rhetoric, and doing away with the pushing for a Constitutional Amendment that would define marriage as being only between a man and a woman.

There was also a part in there about pornography:  

Republican delegates unanimously adopted an amendment to their draft platform Monday morning that called pornography “a public health crisis” and a “public menace” that is destroying lives.

Holy Meese Commission Batman!

If it is any consolation, much like the Democratic party platform, there is no guarantee that a President Trump, or any other GOP politicians would push for any of these policies, despite their inclusion on the platform.

Think of it as a blueprint which numerous political hopefuls will borrow from to drum up support from the base, but which most of them will completely forget about the minute they are sworn in.

Still the very fact of its inclusion gives us an idea of where the Republican party stands on the issues.

And clearly, for the most part, that it still somewhere back in 1955.

Ted Cruz is starting a super wing-nutty anti-abortion group. Apparently he does not feel enough people hate him yet.

"Agh! I told you don't hold up a mirror to my face! It's terrifying!"

Courtesy of Mother Jones:

 During a campaign stop in Des Moines, Iowa, on Wednesday, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said he's created an anti-abortion group that will "champion every child, born and unborn." The Pro-Lifers for Cruz coalition already has more than 17,000 members, according to a press release, and will be chaired by Tony Perkins, the anti-LGBT president of the Family Research Council who recently said same-sex marriage is responsible for "havoc in our homes and blood in our streets." Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has also created a committee, but Cruz has cornered some of the more extreme members of the anti-abortion movement. Also heading up the coalition are 11 anti-abortion co-chairs "representing virtually every perspective on the pro-life spectrum." 

One of those perspectives is that of Troy Newman, the president of Operation Rescue and a board member of the Center for Medical Progress, the group behind the debunked Planned Parenthood videos, whose founder David Daleiden was recently indicted for alleged crimes in connection to the videos. In his announcement on Wednesday, Cruz called Newman's group "one of the leading pro-life Christian activist organizations in the nation."

This Troy Newman guy is so divorced from reality that he once said this about women's health clinics in California:

"Is it no wonder that California is experiencing the worst drought in history when it is the largest child-killer in all of the United States?"

Yes because a lack of precipitation and women controlling their own reproductive organs are so clearly intertwined.

Let's just add this to the growing list of reasons that Ted Cruz must NEVER be allowed to gain any real political power.

In sign of desperation Donald Trump tries a little too hard to woo the Religious Right.

Courtesy of KXAN:

After initially declining the invitation, Trump spoke Friday in front of several hundred social conservative leaders at the Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit in Washington. He joined a speaking program that includes Republican rivals with long records of dedication to religious causes — among them, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist pastor, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who wants his colleagues to risk a government shutdown to block funding to Planned Parenthood. 

Trump brought his Bible along once again, and briefly addressed his faith between attacks on his rivals and Democrats. 

“I believe in God. I believe in the Bible. I’m a Christian,” he said. He ended by bemoaning the increased use of the term “Happy Holidays” in place of “Merry Christmas” as a sign that Christianity is under attack. As president, he said, he’d reverse the trend.

God, the jumping on the "War on Christmas" bandwagon.  That is possibly the lamest pandering that any politician can do.

And as Mediaite points out Trump is more than a little vulnerable to attacks on that topic himself:

And that is only the cherry on top of the numerous tweets that Trump sent out over the years to friends and co-workers wishing them, not a Merry Christmas, but the more politically correct "Happy Holidays."

Ah hypocrisy, where would the Trump campaign, and in fact the entire GOP "deep bench" of nominees be without it?

This Values Voter Summit is also where Trump got booed for calling Marco Rubio a "clown."

Yeah I think Trump's starting to feel the heat.

Yeah in politics BS will only take you so far (Of course in the Republican party that distance is the top of the polls) but eventually people are going to start getting sick of the dog and Pony show and demand to see what you've got.

And all that Donald Trump has got, is more dogs and more ponies.