HELENA — The Montana Republican Party is ending its call to make homosexual acts illegal, but the party is reinforcing its opposition to gay marriage.

The changes came over the weekend at the party's convention in Missoula.

The GOP had held the position seeking to criminalize homosexuality since a 1997 Montana Supreme Court case struck down similar state laws. The party had been criticized in recent years for continuing to maintain the stance.

But party executive director Bowen Greenwood says the decision to drop the language came as part of a larger effort to simply shorten a 31-page platform.

"I don't think there was any specific discussion about the issue of homosexual acts and the old law from the 1990s, it was just a question of we were redoing the whole thing," he said.

Greenwood pointed out that a lengthy section on various aspects of taxation had been shortened to simply read: "Federal, state and local taxes should be low broad-based and easily understood."

The delegates did, however, make it clear at Saturday's platform convention that the party supports "the definition of marriage as only between one man and one woman," adding the sentence to the national affairs portion of its platform.