Republicans - A conservative lot

"If two people dig each other, they dig each other."

A long-time supporter

New Delhi: Donald Trump was, not surprisingly, one of the first US politicians to call Saturday's attack on the Orlando gay club a terrorist strike.He predictably tried to make political capital out of it - he tweeted "Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism ..."That aside, a quick Internet search for the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee's stand on homosexuality is illuminating. Turns out, Trump may be the most gay-friendly US Republican Presidential nominee ever.That Trump is gay-friendly is in itself anomalous to what Republicans stand for.Through history, or at least from the time gay rights became a talking point in America, Republicans have been deeply conservative on the subject. Some have outright condemned it, while some have pretended it doesn't exist.Politico, an American magazine, reported that the Republican Party's most recent official platform, which was adopted during the 2012 Republican convention, expressed its support for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman, and castigated what it called "the court-ordered redefinition of marriage" as "an assault on the foundations of our society."Not Trump. He's not just tacitly supported equal rights for gay people, Trump has actively spoken about the issue.The New York Times says that when pop star and gay icon Elton John got married to his boyfriend David Furnish, after England legalized same-sex partnerships, Trump is reported to have said : "I know both of them, and they get along wonderfully. It's a marriage that's going to work...I'm very happy for them. If two people dig each other, they dig each other."In the 1980s, when AIDS reached epidemic proportions, Trump's donated generously to charities focussed on HIV. "I live in New York. I know many, many gay people. Tremendous people," Trump said in a 2011 interview to CBN News, a Christian news outlet.Even before that, in 2000, when Trump briefly considered running for President he told The Advocate, a premier gay rights advocacy magazine that he wanted to amend the US's 1964 Civil Rights Act to include a ban of discrimination based on sexual orientation.Cynics may say that Trump's generosity toward the gay community stems from hard-nosed business instincts, but the fact remains that he would probably do even better than he currently is - a perturbing thought for some - among Republican supporters if he turned to gay-bashing.As Gregory Angelo, head of a Republican group that supports gay rights, told The New York Times about Trump: "He will be the most gay-friendly Republican nominee for president ever."