At this month’s state GOP convention in Sacramento, the California Republican Party approved the charter of the Log Cabin Republicans of California by an 861-293 vote, making it an officially recognized party organization. Much of the attention following the vote has focused on the political consequences: How the chartered club can help with the party’s re-branding and outreach to the state’s gay and lesbian community.

“This is about working together to win elections in California,” John Musella, the club’s incoming chairman, said in a recent press release. “Being officially recognized sends a strong signal that the Republicans’ ‘Big Tent’ has room for everyone. Our chartering in California should serve as an example of how every Republican organization can stand proud and work together.”

The political impact is significant, but that’s hardly the most important part of the story. In an era when pundits describe politics as hopelessly divided, a group of outcasts succeeded in changing the hearts and minds of their adversaries. The Log Cabin Republicans didn’t just win a charter — they won a major argument in the culture wars in California.

“Seventy-five percent of the body — 75 percent — overwhelmingly affirmed our place in the party,” said Charles Moran, past president of the Log Cabin Republicans of California. “The Republican Party has moved away from fighting those ideological battles and is now focused on winning elections.”

Gays once “the ultimate enemy”

The party has come a long way since those past “ideological battles.” The state party once was led by such Log Cabin opponents as Rep. Bill Dannemeyer, Rep. Bob Dornan and the Rev. Lou Sheldon. Only two decades ago, any association with the gay club was considered toxic in a GOP primary. It’s been 15 years since moderate Republicans joined conservatives in campaigning for Proposition 22, the state’s 2000 defense of marriage initiative that was passed by 61 percent of voters.

And it’s only been seven years since Proposition 8, which also banned same-sex marriage, was passed by 52 percent of state voters.

“In the 1980s, I was afraid to walk around the state convention alone,” Frank Ricchiazzi, a longtime Log Cabin Republican leader, told the L.A. Times in 2012. “I could see the hatred in the eyes of some of those people.”

Back in the late 1970s, when gay Republicans began to organize, they faced off against GOP Assemblyman John Briggs, who had proposed a 1978 initiative to ban gays and lesbians from teaching in public schools. Proposition 8 lost, getting 42 percent of the vote.

“I assume most of them are seducing young boys in toilets,” the conservative Orange County lawmaker said in defense of his Briggs Amendment, according to Gustavo Arellano’s book, “Orange County: A Personal History.” San Francisco, according to Briggs, was nothing more than “the moral garbage dump of homosexuality in this country.”

Although the measure failed, thanks in part to opposition from Ronald Reagan, it still didn’t lessen the rhetoric from some California Republicans.

In the 1980s, Congressman Bill Dannemeyer led the charge with his work, “Shadow in the Land: Homosexuality in America.” He thought “AIDS was God’s way of punishing gays” and described gays and lesbians as “the ultimate enemy.” According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Dannemeyer believed gays would “plunge our people, and indeed the entire West, into a dark night of the soul that could last hundreds of years.”

1998 Senate race

In the 1990s, the Rev. Lou Sheldon, leader of the Traditional Values Coalition, was at the height of his power. He helped elect Republicans by distributing 4 million voter guides to California churches.  Sheldon routinely cited the threat of “homosexuals” in his literature and held conferences to mobilize like-minded conservatives. A 1991 symposium at the Disneyland Hotel drew spirited opposition from gay and lesbian activists, five of whom were arrested for disrupting the event.

Throughout the 1990s, Sheldon was a central player in GOP politics, while any association with the Log Cabin Republicans could be used as a hit piece against Republicans. In the 1998 U.S. Senate race, GOP Senate candidate Matt Fong was criticized in the primary for receiving support from the Log Cabin Republicans. Fong, considered a moderate, received the club’s backing despite his support for the Defense of Marriage Act. Ironically, the Log Cabin Republicans raised $8,000 for Fong who, in turn, donated $50,000 to Sheldon’s anti-gay group.

“Rev. Lou is a friend,” Fong said of the donation, when it was unearthed for the general election against incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer. “We were working on the Defense of Marriage Act initiative that he was contemplating. It is an act that was supported in principle by President Clinton. I support the defense of a traditional marriage.”

Fong lost the 1998 election to Boxer, 53 percent to 43 percent. The son of longtime Democratic California Secretary of State Marge Fong Eu, he died in 2011 at age 57.

Two years after Fong’s defeat, in 2000 Republican State Sen. Pete Knight authored Proposition 22, a 14-word initiative to ban gay marriage.

The campaign was managed by GOP political consultant Rob Stutzman. He told columnist Debra Saunders polygamy might be next because “there’s a logical extension to it … if you accept the premise that marriage should be whatever relationships people want to enter into.”

Prop. 22 was endorsed by U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who came in second that year for his party’s presidential nomination to future President George W. Bush. In 2008, McCain garnered his party’s presidential nod, but lost to Democrat Barack Obama. Both McCain and Obama opposed same-sex marriage; in 2012, Obama changed his position and backed it.

Barney Frank

Hostility from the right was matched by hostility from the left. Some in the gay and lesbian community viewed the Log Cabin Republicans as “self-loathing” at best or traitors at worst.

“I now understand why they call themselves the Log Cabin Republicans: Their role model is Uncle Tom,” openly gay Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., wrote in 2012; he left office in 2013. “Twenty years now I’ve been hearing why the Log Cabins are gonna make the Republicans better and they’ve been getting worse.”

Frank was referring to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” the 1852 novel that helped spark the Civil War; the title character, a slave, is excessively subservient to his white masters.

Yet this month, instead of prominent party leaders using their convention speeches to attack the “homosexual lifestyle,” they embraced the state’s gay Republicans.

“They have been solid soldiers in their fight against leftist tyranny in California,” said California’s Republican National Committeeman Shawn Steel. “I would welcome them in our organization. … I am proud to have them in the California Republican Party.”

H/T to OC Weekly & LA Times for archives. 

“We’re pushing the party outside of its comfort zone,” California Republican Party Chairman Jim Brulte said in advance of the convention. “And we’re already seeing the benefits.”

So did the party’s convention mantra prove to be more than just a slogan?

GOP groups, activists and delegates, who’ve traditionally felt excluded from the state party, describe last weekend’s convention as a “blockbuster” step forward in terms of inclusiveness and creating a broader, more accepting party.

Log Cabin Republicans “Blockbuster” CA GOP Convention

“This convention was blockbuster for Log Cabin,” Charles Moran, chairman of the California Log Cabin Republicans, said of the 2014 spring convention. “The last few years, things have been increasingly getting better for us as we’ve grown and the Party leadership has been more willing to engage with us. But, this convention took that to a whole new level.”

Once at the margins, California’s chapter of the the nation’s largest organization of gay and lesbian Republicans says that it is on the path toward an official charter from the GOP, a thought unheard of just a decade ago. The group’s annual luau-themed convention hospitality suite was packed the entire night, despite being right across the hall from the suite of Assemblyman Tim Donnelly of Hesperia, the conservative running for governor.

Then again, the two aren’t mutually exclusive: many Log Cabin Republicans, and their supporters, are conservative backers of the Tea Party star.

“The mix of people in our suite really does show the diversity of Log Cabin — roughly half the folks in our suite were wearing Donnelly stickers, and the other half Kashkari stickers,” said Moran, who added that gubernatorial candidate Neel Kashkari, a moderate, was the first candidate at the Log Cabin’s doorstep. “I really can’t think of another place in the convention where there was this much intermingling of the two camps.”

Small accommodations for overlooked groups

It wasn’t just gay and lesbian Republicans that felt more welcomed by the nearly 1,000 delegates and activists at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport. Other groups, who have felt that the GOP wasn’t communicating with them, noticed a change in the party’s desire to communicate. Literally.

At convention after convention, unlike their Democratic counterparts, Republicans have failed to provide an American Sign Language interpreter to accompany convention speakers. That’s now changed.

This year’s spring convention, for the first time in recent history, included an ASL interpreter for deaf and hard-of-hearing delegates.

Consider it a small change that shows the party is serious about its promise to “Rebuild, Renew, Reclaim.”

“We had a request from a delegate, and we want the party to be accessible to all,” party spokesman Mark Standriff said of the change.

Allen Wilson, a state party delegate who is hard of hearing, said he’s been asking the party for years to provide an ASL interpreter. Eventually, he stopped asking.

“I truly thank Chairman Brulte and Vice Chairman Dhillon for making this accommodation,” said Wilson, who is active in Republican politics. “The Deaf and Hard of Hearing struggle everyday on challenges for jobs, education and equal access. We don’t want a handout but acknowledgment of our challenges should come with empathy not sympathy.”

The Hearing Loss Association of America estimates that roughly 20 percent of Americans, 48 million people, report some degree of hearing loss. That number includes a third of Americans over the age of 65 who report some hearing loss.

CA GOP Vice-Chair Harmeet Dhillon: More people heard our message

California Republican Party Vice Chair Harmeet Dhillon, who received complaints from friends that felt excluded from full participation in political events, said she’s proud to see the party make the change.

“I’m proud that our party is really trying to reach every interested voter and activist by making them welcome at our keynote lunch through the inclusion of sign language interpreters at our convention,” Dhillon said. “Today more people were able to receive [former Secretary of State Condolleezza] Rice’s inspirational message about liberty, global responsibility and educational opportunity for all Americans, rich and poor.”

All of the party’s changes are getting noticed by national leaders and the media. Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus told the Bay Area’s KTVU that it’s providing financial support to help the party rebuild. “The RNC national party is spending real money here to help the GOP rebuild itself and we’re starting on the ground,” he said.

“These events have felt like those post-soccer game parties where the team that lost 10-1 tries to convince itself that the next contest will be better,” wrote Steven Greenhut, California columnist for the UT San Diego. “The buzz among convention-goers was that there actually was a buzz.”

If, as many party bosses privately hope, Kashkari wins a place in the Top Two primary election in June, expect the buzz to continue. Top Two produces two winners, the likely other one being Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, who then face off in the November election.

“The first candidate at our doorstep was Neal Kashkari, who gave an impassioned plea for the party to modernize, grow the tent and get with the times,” said Moran of the Log Cabin Republicans.