From Friend to Foe: The devolution of Frank LaRose on LGBTQ rights
State Senator Frank LaRose would be ashamed at what Secretary of State Frank LaRose became while searching for his next political promotion.
If you’re of a certain age, you might remember the Ohio Republican Party’s push to outlaw gay marriage. Putting the question on the 2004 presidential ballot, which passed with 61 percent of the vote, was one reason President George W. Bush captured the state in his successful re-election campaign.
Gay couples had to wait for eleven years before the Supreme Court threw that heinous mistake in the dustbin of history where it belonged.
Shrieking about marriage as “being between a man and a woman” and equating it with bestiality doesn’t motivate fundamentalist Christians, a vital cog of the Republican coalition, like it once did.
In the 20 years since the state banned gay marriage, many of those Christians have learned that they have gay friends and family. Weird how that works!
The new issue, you might have noticed, is attacking transgender people in Ohio despite 80 percent of Americans favoring LGBTQ protections.
From Kate Sosin of pbs.org in May 2022:
“It’s staggering how quickly [marriage] disappeared as an issue,” [Darmouth professor Randall] Balmer said “And so, they almost frantically began looking for something else. And of course, the trans thing was the next thing on the horizon.”
Thanks to the idiocy of State Rep. Gary Click (R-Vickery), we now have irrefutable proof that the attacks against transgender children and teenage athletes are part of a long-term goal of eradicating transgender people’s rights to exist.
From Jon King of Ohio Capital Journal via Erin Reed of Erin in the Morning:
“In terms of endgame, why are we allowing these practices for anyone?” said [Michigan State Representative Josh] Schriver. “Why would we stop this for anyone under 18, but not apply this for anyone over 18? It’s harmful across the board, and I think that’s something that we need to take into consideration in terms of the endgame.”
Click, whose legislation would also prevent transgender athletes from playing women’s sports in Ohio, called Schriver’s comment a “very smart thought” and then added advice for Republican legislators seeking to outlaw gender affirming care.
“I think sometimes what we know legislatively is we have to take sometimes small bites,” said Click, who then lauded restrictions placed on transgender adult clinics by Ohio’s Republican Gov. Mike DeWine.
It was never about protecting little girls or keeping “men” out of women’s sports. But Click knows he can’t be honest about his views of wanting to strip healthcare from adults, so this is part of the dog and pony show he presents like the musty, two-bit pastor that he is.
President Business Deals, by contrast, was more succinct about the war on transgender people when he basically mocked Republican voters about their vitriolic response to the issue during a rally in South Carolina in June 2023:
“It’s amazing how strongly people feel about that. You see I’m talking about cutting taxes, people go like that,” Trump said, mimicking a docile golf clap.
“I talk about transgender; everyone goes crazy. Who would have thought? Five years ago, you didn’t know what the hell it was.”
It’s a quote that reminds me of one-time arch-segregationist George Wallace, via The Atlantic:
You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor.
It is probably worth noting that Wallace later became a born-again Christian who apologized to Civil Rights leaders for impeding their holy mission.
There’s a lesson there for any Republican politician who cares to look, but it certainly won’t be Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who is still campaigning for his party’s United States Senate nomination despite having no money or significant endorsements.
LaRose went out of his way recently to intentionally misgender former college swimmer Lia Thomas, who committed the high crime of beating professional bigot Riley Gaines by a hundredth of a second for fifth place in a swimming race that occurred over two years ago.
It’s unsurprising to anyone who has paid attention to LaRose’s senate campaign, which I declared dead on arrival in April 2023 and have yet to see any proof that I’m wrong.
LaRose has pandered to the extremist elements of his party throughout his campaign. He soiled the sanctity of his office by actively campaigning for Issue 1 in the August Special Election, which saw voters hand him an embarrassing 15-point loss after he failed to swindle them into diluting the power of their votes.
Then, in October, the Republican-juiced Supreme Court found LaRose broke the law when he attempted to put a public drag performance ban on the ballot in Bellefontaine despite organizers changing the language of the petitions during the circulation stage.
From Ken Schneck of The Buckeye Flame in October 2023:
In a victory for the LGBTQ+ community, the Ohio Supreme Court has decided unanimously to invalidate a ballot initiative to ban public drag performances in Bellefontaine, on grounds that the ballot language was changed after the fact.
[…]
The five protestors filed a formal complaint with the Logan County Board of Elections, showing discrepancies between certified copies of public records on file and pictures of the petition when it was circulated for signatures.
But Secretary of State Frank LaRose and the BOE denied the protestors’ complaint, allowing the petition to be placed on the November ballot.
The Republican-leaning Ohio Supreme Court’s decision on Sunday reverses LaRose’s ruling and blocks the ballot measure from moving forward.
In its decision, the Court also denounced LaRose and the Logan County Board of Elections (BOE), who sided against the five electoral protesters.
“Secretary LaRose and the board of elections abused their discretion and disregarded the law in overruling relators’ protest,” the Court wrote.
LaRose didn’t stop there! He then became the face of the campaign against the November edition of Issue 1. Ohioans once again laughed in his face to the tune of a 14-point loss as the state’s hog voters successfully enshrined abortion rights into the state constitution.
It’s a sad state of affairs for LaRose to earn the fundamentalist vote. But it’s unfortunate considering that LaRose, as recently as ten, eight, and six years ago, used to be one of the staunchest advocates for LGBTQ rights in the Ohio Republican Party.
Before LaRose needed the votes from the most repellent wing of his party, he was an up-and-coming moderate State Senator from Copley, a wealthy suburb of Akron.
LaRose showed willingness to work across the aisle early in his career when he joined with Democrats to co-sponsor Senate Bill 125 during the 130th Ohio General Assembly.
The bill would have made sexual orientation a protected class in Ohio.
From The Akron Beacon Journal in May 2013:
COLUMBUS:A bipartisan group of Ohio lawmakers that includes Sen. Frank LaRose, R-Copley Township, is taking another shot this year at outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation.
The proposed package of legislation is nearly identical to previous efforts. It would add anti-discrimination protection, including housing and wages. The Columbus Dispatch reports that bills in the House and Senate are being proposed by two Republicans and two Democrats.
Sadly, it’s still legal to discriminate against LGBTQ people in many parts of Ohio.
But LaRose didn’t let the bad news stop his holy quest. When he drew a Republican primary challenger that was backed by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and Ohio Right to Life, LaRose doubled down on wanting to protect LGBTQ people from discrimination while also wanting to revamp the state’s redistricting process and allow online voter registration!
From Robert Wang of cantonrep.com in April 2014:
LaRose has cast himself as a pragmatic, fiscal conservative who’s focused on job creation by lightening the burden of unneeded complex regulations through his bill pending in the House. He has also tried to revamp the state’s redistricting process, allow online voter registration and ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation
Coincidentally, Ohio Right to Life, the organization that LaRose has bent over backward trying to appease in his lifelong ambition to be a United States Senator, accused LaRose of supporting funding for Planned Parenthood.
Ohio Right to Life, which has endorsed Davenport, says LaRose supports public funding of abortion provider Planned Parenthood.
LaRose also went on to say that he was “willing to pursue" a “limited increase on taxes” on the oil and gas industry to “offset the loss of revenue from the tax cuts and fund projects.”
It proved a palatable platform for primary voters as LaRose coasted to the Republican nomination.
Undeterred that summer, LaRose co-sponsored the Gay Games in Cleveland:
Frankly, it’s sad that sponsoring the Gay Games in 2024 would almost certainly sink him in the Republican Primary. And to LaRose’s credit, it’s a scenario he worked hard to prevent.
A couple of months after sponsoring the Gay Games, LaRose flew to Washington D.C. to meet with high-dollar donors and other thirsty politicians for a closed-door conference about efforts to make the Republican party more LGBTQ-inclusive.
From Chris Johnson of The Washington Blade in October 2014:
High-dollar donors seeking to make the Republican Party more LGBT-inclusive are set to gather in D.C. on Thursday for a closed-door conference, according to four sources familiar with the event.
The American Unity Conference is set to begin Thursday morning at the Hay Adams Hotel on H and 16th streets, N.W. It’s hosted by the same pro-LGBT Republican advocates behind the American Unity Fund and the American Unity PAC, related groups that seek to elect pro-LGBT Republican candidates and encourage GOP support for LGBT rights.
[…]
State legislators who are set to attend, according to the source, are Holly Raschein, a Republican state House representative from Florida; Stephen Urquhart, a Republican state senator from Utah; and Frank LaRose, another Republican state senator from Ohio.
LaRose continued a fight for equality for at least two years.
A couple of years later, LaRose predicted that an “evolution” on LGBTQ rights would come to his party—an evolution that he wanted to come sooner rather than later.
From Jessica Wehrman of daytondailynews.com in July 2016:
State Sen. Frank LaRose, R-Copley, said a “silent majority” of the party supports LGBTQ rights. When he introduced a non-discrimination bill, many of his Republican colleagues pulled him aside to express support. But when he asked for them to cosponsor the bill, they refused.
Still, he said, “I see an evolution occurring in my party – and it can’t come sooner.”
Unfortunately, it was here that LaRose showed the laughable political instincts that have dogged him throughout his entire United States Senate campaign.
LaRose, for whatever reasons, was right on the issue despite Republican outrage over their little gay marriage bans being overturned. LGBTQ people (emphasis on that “T,” brother!) deserve the designation as a protected class.
But like President Business Deals said at the top of the article, about five years ago, Republicans realized they could “other” transgender people like they did gay people almost two decades prior.
And so, like many other times in LaRose’s career, he threw his so-called principles in the trash in exchange for a worse position that he thought would help him earn his next political promotion.
Any Evangelicals looking to LaRose to enforce their worldviews should take heed of his betrayal of gay and transgender people. If anything is certain about LaRose, it’s that he’ll always do whatever is best for himself. No questions asked.
THOSE WMDs. Ohio’s expanded school vouchers proving to be little more than a gift to rich people already sending their kids to private school… Seven small Ohio towns and villages perfect for your next day trip… How highways destroyed Columbus’ Black neighborhoods… The best solar-powered battery charger… Encrypted phone ‘Sky’ linked to murder-for-hire plot in Maryland… Long live the work wife—just don’t call her that (corrected link).