One of the year’s more inexplicable political developments came shortly after the mass-shooting in Orlando, when Republicans clumsily made the case that LGBT voters should move towards the GOP . The pitch was a little convoluted.

As Donald Trump tried to explain it, Democratic support for immigration and religious liberty is ultimately bad for the LGBT community, so the Orlando slaying should reshuffle the partisan and ideological deck. The presumptive Republican nominee went so far as to say he’s the “ better friend ” of the “LBGT” [sic] community because of his anti-immigration and anti-Muslim agenda.

There was never any reason to believe this outreach would be effective, but if it caused even a few voters to reconsider old assumptions, congressional Republicans have gone out of their way to bolt a door that probably wasn’t accessible in the first place. The Huffington Post reported last week:

For the past two months, GOP lawmakers in the House haven’t missed an opportunity to slip anti-LGBT provisions into bills. They passed a National Defense Authorization Act with language to let government contractors fire people for being gay or trans. They tried to pass a 2017 water and energy spending bill with a provision barring the Obama administration from blocking funds to North Carolina over its transgender bathroom law. When Democrats tried twice to strip the anti-LGBT provision from NDAA, Republicans overruled them.