Log Cabin Republicans, the largest organization for gay conservatives in the country, just voted to stop advocating for transgender people entirely. Going forward, the group says it represents "lesbian, gay, and bisexual Americans" only. Not the T. They're calling themselves an LGB organization now, on purpose, out loud.

This group was founded in 1977 to fight a California ballot measure that would have banned gay and lesbian people from teaching in public schools. It exists because a slice of the population got told they didn't belong in a certain room. Its entire founding premise was that exclusion is wrong and worth fighting. Forty nine years later, its own board just voted to exclude a different slice of the same community, on purpose, in writing, with a press release.

Ross Hemminger, the group's president, laid out the reasoning in a column. The pitch is basically triage. Marriage, adoption, military service, and religious liberty for gay and bisexual people are winnable fights with broad public support. Trans issues, in his framing, have become a political liability that drags down everything else. Cut the anchor loose, protect what you can actually hold onto. That's the pragmatic case, and I want to give it its due before I tell you why it's garbage.

There's a real version of coalition politics where you sequence your asks and don't die on every hill at once. I get that instinct. I've made that argument myself about other things. If Hemminger had simply said "we're narrowing our lobbying focus to where we can win," that would be a strategy call I could disagree with without calling it cowardice.

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That is not what he said. In the same column, Hemminger accused the transgender rights movement of pushing schools to teach "radical gender ideology," demanding "biological men in women's sports regardless of the consequences," and supporting gender reassignment treatment for minors "often without the knowledge or consent of the parents." That's not a strategic retreat. That's picking up the other side's talking points and repeating them, word for word, as your own official position. LGBTQ Nation called it what it is: fear-mongering dressed up as policy analysis.

This didn't happen in a vacuum. The Trump administration has spent this year rolling back transgender rights on nearly every front it can reach, including cutting Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming care for youths this July. Log Cabin Republicans, meanwhile, has never been closer to the White House. Melania Trump headlined a fundraiser for the group in 2024. A former Log Cabin president now holds a position at the Department of Energy. The organization has a seat at the table it didn't have a decade ago, and it just showed you exactly what it's willing to trade for that seat.

Not everyone inside the tent is on board. A former Log Cabin Institute board member publicly said she was disappointed, and pointed out the obvious irony: Caitlyn Jenner, a transgender woman, has been one of the most visible Trump supporters in the country this whole time. Jordan Willow Evans, the first openly transgender Republican elected to office, has described her relationship with the party as increasingly strained. These are Republicans saying this. Not outside critics. People who were in the room.

I'm not gay. I don't have a personal stake in Log Cabin's membership rolls. What I have is eyes, and what I'm watching is a group that exists because of a fight against exclusion voting to exclude the most vulnerable people in its own coalition, using the exact rhetoric of the people who wanted to exclude all of them in the first place, in exchange for proximity to power. That's not strategy. That's not triage. That's selling out the people with the least leverage to buy comfort for the people with the most.

An ally who only shows up when it's easy isn't an ally. Log Cabin just showed the transgender members of their own founding coalition exactly where they rank when things get politically inconvenient. Dead last, and disposable.