May 13, 2014

Nevada’s GOP Stopped Opposing Abortion and Same-Sex Marriage. Here’s What Happened Next.

<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/49814250@N07/4573030549/in/photolist-7Y6YEi-7Y6WXv-7Yabgd-7Ya9ts-7Y6QUK-7Y6M5r-7Y6HGD-eHRvhY-7Y6MCH-7Y6YpV-7Y6UtV-7YacFu-7Y6SVK-7Ya6jf-7Ya2do-7Y6Xgr-7Y6Qot-7Y6KgZ-7Y6JMn-7Y6QeB-7Y6Mdv-7Ya9cQ-7Y9ZUJ-7Y9Whq-7Y6QKF-7Y6GRp-7Ya7kQ-7Ya2DN-7Y6VCB-7Y6PjB-7Y6RKK-7Ya7Ad-7Y6Lni-7Y9XEh-7Ya2wQ-7Y6S4X-7Y9W9f-7Y6V7P-7Y6VPP-7Y6Pfz-7Y9Z63-7Y6UFx-7Ya7SG-7Y6Wdv-7Y6Prz-7Y9XNs-7Y6LGH-7Y6SSc-7Ya2Zm-7Y9ZKC">vtravelled.com</a>/Flickr

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Last month, the Nevada GOP voted to strip opposition to abortion and marriage equality out of its official party platform. This really shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone who’d been paying attention: Brian Sandoval, the state’s Republican governor, is pro-choice and doesn’t want the state to defend its same-sex marriage ban in federal court. And even Bob Cashell, the 74-year-old, Texas-born, former truck driver who serves as the mayor of staunchly conservative Reno now backs marriage equality.

Even so, a lot of Republicans in other states are freaking out.

“The Nevada GOP action to remove marriage and life from their platform is a disgrace,” wrote Oklahoma Republican National Committee member Carolyn McLarty in a recent email to some 100 Republican National Committee delegates. “Both are direct attacks on God and family.”

But so far, Nevada’s GOP delegation stands by its decision. “Nevada is home to many diverse people, including a large LGBT population,” Nevada Republican National Committeewoman Diana Orrock wrote in a letter released on Friday at the RNC’s spring meeting in Memphis. “The GOP is by definition a party of inclusion not exclusion.… Excluding an entire group of American citizens based solely on their sexual preference towards the same gender is not only divisive but in the 21st century it is unacceptable.”

Anyway, so much for the idea of hosting the 2016 Republican National Convention in Las Vegas. It sure would have been fun.

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In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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