Demonstrators stand in front of a rainbow flag of the Supreme Court in Washington on April 28, 2015. | AP Photo GOP platform panel votes down bid to soften party opposition to same-sex marriage

CLEVELAND — A panel drafting the Republican Party’s platform on Monday rejected a push to moderate the party’s stance on same-sex marriage, voting sharply against a proposal that backers said would attract LGBT voters into the GOP tent.

“I’m not here asking you to endorse my own constitutional rights … I’m only asking you to recognize that many Republicans, many of the Republicans that sent us here to do work this week in shaping our party’s platform, agree with me, and we should not be excluded from our party,” said Rachel Hoff, a openly gay delegate from Washington, D.C., at a meeting of the GOP Platform Committee here.


Hoff rattled off statistics suggesting sharply changing views on marriage among young Republicans. “If our party wants a future, we should be mindful of these statistics, and we must evolve,” she said.

Hoff’s voice wavered as she described her hope to be accepted by the party “when I’m ready to marry the woman I love.”

Hoff did ask for a vote by a show of committee members' hands, and she appeared close to the level of support she would need to file a minority report and force a debate on the issue at the full convention.

Hoff’s proposal would have professed support for the wide-ranging views on marriage within the party. The measure was defeated earlier in the day by a GOP subcommittee examining the issue. The only response to Hoff’s proposal during the full Platform Committee meeting came from Carolyn McLarty, who noted similar language had already been defeated.

Hoff’s proposal was rejected shortly after a similar push by New York delegate Annie Dickerson to strike language in the proposed GOP platform that offers support for adoption agencies that refuse to adopt to same-sex couples. “Freedom is not freedom when it abridges the rights of others,” Dickerson said, arguing that it was “blatant discrimination.”

Virginia delegate Tommy Valentine rejected Dickerson’s argument and suggested she had implied that her fellow committee members were bigoted.