Republicans, LGBT, Carl DeMaio, and Gay Candidates

I've gotten some feedback on what I posted yesterday about Carl DeMaio, the LGBT community, and Republicans. I'm not talking about hardcore left wing progressives here. There are certainly many of them.I'm talking about college educated upper income business people who agree with DeMaio on many issues. They might favor less regulations, lower taxes, and be skeptical about global warming. You are far more likely to find people who agree with DeMaio and the Republicans on a majority of the issues in the gay community than in Black or Hispanic communities.

I'm not saying this is most or many of the LGBT community, only that these people are out there and voting Democratic. Some people present the gay community as monolithic left wing progressives.

I have no doubt that the barrier for entry for many in this group is that most Republicans don't support gay issues and the GOP isn't softening it's stance. So some in the LGBT community can safely see Republicans as the "Party of Hate."

It's not debatable that the GOP isn't going to suddenly be the party supporting gay issues. The questions I'm posing are 1) can gay Republicans who do support those issues draw gay voters who agree with them on many economic, social, and foreign policy issues and 2) whether the GOP can win voters with Republican inclinations in spite of these positions.

To this point the answers have been "no" on both. Can that be changed?

I want to add that Roll Call had this story today:

The headline and the first sentence including "most prominent openly gay House candidate" are just awful. Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy aren't supporting Carl DeMaio because he's a "gay Republican." They're supporting a Republican and his sexual orientation is irrelevant. I'm not questioning that DeMaio being gay is part of the campaign. Some may consider voting for him because he is and others might not vote for him because he is. DeMaio being gay isn't the entirety of the campaign. He's not going to win or lose because he's gay any more than Scott Peters will win or lose because he's straight. Yes, there's a gay Republican candidate out there. We know it. You know it. How about we don't make it the focus of every story about this race?