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

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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.