The Republican Party platform, updated last month for the first time since 2016, appeared to shift away from the party’s long-held opposition to same-sex marriage.

The party’s previous platform included at least five references to marriage as a union exclusively between “one man and one woman.”

A section of the new platform, titled “Empower American Families,” says “Republicans will promote a Culture that values the Sanctity of Marriage, the blessings of childhood, the foundational role of families, and supports working parents. We will end policies that punish families.”

Many took this to mean the party was softening its stance on gay nuptials in a nod to growing public support for same-sex marriage, even among Republicans. However, some academics and critics say the language in the new platform is nearly synonymous with the previous “one man and one woman” references and doesn’t mark a shift at all.

The Republican National Committee did not return multiple requests for comment regarding whether the language in the new platform is inclusive of same-sex couples.

Charles Moran, president of Log Cabin Republicans, which describes itself as “the nation’s largest Republican organization dedicated to representing LGBT conservatives and allies,” said the change means the party has “come full circle” and is intentionally inclusive of same-sex couples.

“The Republican Party was running constitutional bans on gay marriage in the 2004 presidential election, and now we’re at a place where, 20 years later, the GOP platform is completely caught up with where society is, and quite honestly, a majority of Republicans are, as well, on respecting LGBT equality. I appreciate the language. It talks about serving the sanctity of marriage; that includes our marriages, too.”

Moran described the platform as “a Donald Trump platform for a modern Republican Party,” one that is “much more broad and much less exclusionary of people, and again, specifically for LGBT people.”

But Robin Maril, an assistant professor of constitutional law at Willamette University, said LGBTQ people shouldn’t see the language change “as a victory in any way.”

Maril noted multiple instances over the last half century when the phrase “sanctity of marriage” was used by religious figures, by Republican officials and in legislation to ban same-sex marriage.

In 1978, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued “An Agreed Statement on the Sanctity of Marriage,” which defined marriage as a union that “unites a man and a woman” and as an important foundation to having children.

Decades later, in 2004, after a Massachusetts court declared that the state must allow same-sex couples to marry, President George W. Bush  called the court’s decision “deeply troubling,” the Los Angeles Times reported at the time. 

“Marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman,” Bush said in a statement. “If activist judges insist on redefining marriage by court order, the only alternative will be the constitutional process. We must do what is legally necessary to defend the sanctity of marriage.”

Weeks later, Bush announced his support for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. 

Then, in 2006, Alabama voters ratified the “Alabama Sanctity of Marriage Amendment,” which made it unconstitutional for the state to recognize or perform same-sex marriages or civil unions. 

The phrase “sanctity of marriage,” Maril said, is “inherently exclusionary” of same-sex couples.

“At core, by being able to use this language they’re excluding without having to come out and say it,” Maril said.

Gabriele Magni, associate professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University and director of the school’s LGBTQ+ Politics Research Initiative, agreed with Maril, adding that using a more vague phrase like “sanctity of marriage” allows the party to avoid explicitly excluding LGBTQ Republican voters, while also satisfying conservative and religious voters.

The section of the GOP platform on marriage, Magni noted, also includes the phrases “the blessings of childhood” and “the foundational role of families,” which recall the party’s previous stances on marriage that stress the importance of childbearing and a traditional nuclear family that excludes same-sex couples. 

“Reading through the lines, it seems pretty obvious that they are hinting at procreation as the goal of the family,” Magni said. 

Moran described the examples Maril gave of how “sanctity of marriage” has been used historically as “obscure references.” 

“So I’m not going to go down this road of acknowledging left-wing academics who are sitting here once again, trying to pick apart any kind of progress made by Donald Trump and the Republican Party,” Moran said. “It’s nonsensical, and the most important thing here is it includes our marriages and relationships, too.”

The few other mentions of LGBTQ people in the new GOP platform are focused on transgender people, who have been the targets of hundreds of bills in recent years seeking to restrict their access to public restrooms, sports teams and identification documents consistent with their gender identities, and limit or completely ban access to transition-related medical care. 

A section of the updated platform titled “Knowledge and Skills, Not CRT and Gender Indoctrination” says Republicans will “defund schools that engage in inappropriate political indoctrination of our children using Federal Taxpayer Dollars,” alluding to the conservative effort in recent years to restrict LGBTQ-inclusive curricula and notify parents before a student can go by a different name or pronouns. 

And in a section titled “Republicans Will End Left-wing Gender Insanity,” it says Republicans will continue to support efforts to ban trans girls and women in women’s sports, ban taxpayer funding for gender-affirming surgeries, “stop Taxpayer-funded Schools from promoting gender transition,” and “reverse Biden’s radical rewrite of Title IX Education Regulations, and restore protections for women and girls.”

Moran said Log Cabin Republicans support restrictions on transition-related care for minors, which have become law in 25 states. 

“The way I describe it is, 80% of this country supports equality for the L’s, the G’s, the B’s and the T’s, but there has to be some guardrails around that, and that includes preserving women’s spaces, protecting women’s sports and Title IX, parental consent at every level, and no permanent gender transition under the age of 18,” Moran said. 

Magni said that the parts of the new platform that mention LGBTQ people, not including the “sanctity of marriage” phrasing, do represent a noticeable shift compared to the rhetoric used in Republican primaries this year. The Republican presidential candidates, he said, were trying to be seen as the most conservative, but the party itself might be attempting to cater to more moderate voters and the majority of voters who support protecting LGBTQ rights.

“I think that they know that if they want to win the election, and they want to win swing states, they need to convince some moderate or independent voters to vote for the Republican Party,” Magni said. “They’re not going to convince them by adopting their extreme position on LGBTQ+ rights. They would prefer these topics not to be the center of the conversation, and so probably that’s why they don’t mention them very often or very explicitly in the platform.”

The platform’s use of “sanctity of marriage” instead of an obviously exclusionary definition of marriage might help LGBTQ Republicans who are in a same-sex marriage “feel better about their vote,” Maril said. 

“But I think that would not be based in history or how this term has been used socially or legally over the past 20 years,” she said.

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