Christian Right Lashes Out After GOP Chairwoman Tweets “Happy Pride Month”

Last week, Ronna Romney McDaniel, the chair of the Republican Party, tweeted this celebration of Pride Month… clearly oblivious to what party she represents:

Happy #PrideMonth!

@GOP is proud to have doubled our LGBTQ support over the last 4 years, and we will continue to grow our big tent by supporting measures that promote fairness and balance protections for LGBTQ Americans and those with deeply held religious beliefs.

She was lying. As you can see by the ratio, people let her know it. The GOP has never been on the side of LGBTQ people. They still oppose the Equality Act. They’re still passing anti-trans legislation state by state. They still oppose fairness and civil rights protections for LGBTQ people. And if they “doubled” their support, it’s only because that support was microscopically low to begin with. (Democrats have plenty of flaws on these issues, too, but they’re not the enemies here.)

But what’s especially amusing about that tweet is that right-wing ideologues are also angry at the GOP for supporting LGBTQ people even symbolically.

The Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins called for a GOP boycott:

If McDaniel was looking for a way to end her party’s record-breaking fundraising, she nailed it. Right now, there are few things she — or any Republican — could have said that would have been more tone-deaf and offensive than applauding the woke agenda her base is trying to combat…

…

So until the RNC gets its act together and decides to represent real conservative values, my advice is this: send your hard-earned dollars directly to candidates who have a track record of fighting for the principles you believe in. Look for men and women who won’t compromise when it comes to free speech, religious freedom, and common sense.

Christian Nationalist Jenna Ellis called McDaniel’s tweet an endorsement of immorality:

The Illinois Family Institute called on McDaniel to resign:

To have the head of the Republican Party celebrate the egregious sins of homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation should shock and outrage Republicans. “LGB” and “T” activism pose the greatest threat to First Amendment protections of speech and religious exercise ever posed in American history. The normalization and celebration of homoeroticism and cross-sex impersonation are destroying individual lives, the bodies of children, families, privacy rights, the safety of girls and women, women’s sports, churches, government schools, colleges and universities, and the arts. And we have the head of the only party ostensibly committed to protecting life, the family, and religious liberty celebrating that which is destroying America.

With unprincipled, myopic pragmatists like that, who needs enemies.

And no one understands “unprincipled” and “myopic” than Christians who treat Donald Trump as a hero…

Anyway, let them fight. It’s telling that these hate-mongers are more upset about a Republican falsely suggesting the party’s support for LGBTQ people than all the actual awful things Republicans have done over the past several years. But their entire conservative Christian faith is built upon punishing everyone who doesn’t fit into their narrow vision of utopia.