May 5, 2022
Dear Members of all the chapters of Log Cabin Republicans of Texas
I want to let you all know that I will be resigning as state chairman of the Log Cabin Republicans of Texas, effective at the end of today’s state board meeting. In due deference to LCR national’s authority, and the recognition that I can no longer fully support their new direction as I have come to understand it, it is only correct that I step aside and let others that do take the reins.
As I end my work with LCR Texas, I am content at what has been accomplished, and what these accomplishments mean for the future of the Republican Party of Texas.
My partner, Mike Alberts, and I joined LCR Houston 8 years ago, and 2 years later, in 2016, I was elected to my first of 4 terms as president of this chapter. This chapter, and all the chapters across the state have grown so much since then. At that first Lincoln Dinner Mike and I attended in 2014, I’m told the chapter sold 48 tickets. By 2019, before Covid came along and put a pause on everything, we sold 167 tickets. Last year all the chapters across Texas reported record paid memberships, and a new Texas chapter joined the family of chapters that form the Log Cabin Republicans of Texas.
During that time I also served as secretary of the LCR of Texas, until I became the state chairman in 2020.
In 2016, we pivoted from talking about so-called “LGBT” rights to talking more about freedom and equality for everyone, because, as I often say, the best way to defend freedom and equality is to do it for everyone. No forcing people into contracts against their will to make cakes, or laws on what pronouns you have to use.
We created a 2-year plan to change the platform of the Republican Party of Texas, which had for the better part of three decades condemned human beings simply for existing as gay people, and in 2018 that platform was changed, to the benefit of the idea of freedom of conscience for all within the Republican Party of Texas.
In 2016, we also founded the Freedom First Republicans Coalition, joining the Texas Young Republicans, the Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas, and the Log Cabin Republicans of Texas in an alliance supporting liberty and equality for all Texans under the Republican banner.
In 2018, I was privileged to serve as the first openly gay and LCR member appointed to the Platform Committee of the Republican Party of Texas for the state convention, and honored by the responsibility the party willingly placed on me.
In 2020, I was honored by the state convention delegates in my congressional district to be elected as a Texas delegate to the national convention of the Republican National Committee.
In 2021, after the Texas House and Senate Republicans had struggled and failed for years to pass any number of bills addressing the challenges of Gender Ideology and the complexity of gender issues, LCR Texas decided for the first time to weigh in on one single bill, and took up the bill protecting women’s sports in schools, initially the least favored bill on related issues. It eventually became the lead bill, and then the only bill ever passed in Texas on gender identity issues, the only one ever backed by LCR Texas.
For the better part of the last eight years, year after year, the members of LCR Houston, and later of Texas, placed their trust in me. I am grateful for that honor and privilege.
God bless Texas
Marco Antonio Roberts, Chairman
