An Open Letter to Rand Paul on Gay Rights

Dear Dr. Rand Paul,

I am a supporter of yours. I’ve been one of yours for the past two years, defending you and pushing for you to become president of the United States when you announced your presidential campaign. I signed up for Students for Rand as soon as the announcement came in. I wrote articles in defense of you and am pushing for you to become president at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. I liked your father, who voted for the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell back in 2010.

Gay people in the United States deserve equal rights to their straight counterparts. The Bill of Rights applies to them as it does everyone else in the United States. By your own standards the Bill of Rights was created to protect minorities and you can be one by the color of your skin, the shade of your ideology, or the person you love. As a conservative and a libertarian-leaning Republican, you should know that it is about the individual and not the collective. Nobody should be jailed for being gay, fired for being gay, or forced to hide their sexuality in the workplace.

It’s not about giving special rights to a group of people; it’s about allowing them to live their lives regardless of their beliefs. It’s not about allowing a new group to sue, it’s about allowing these gay people the right to be safe with their sexuality in the first place. It’s about allowing them to live their lives without them risking being discriminated against by businesses and government themselves.  And it’s not about giving them rights according to their behavior, it’s about allowing them to live their lives regardless of what you believe.

I will continue to support you and push for you to become President, but I beg you to reconsider your position on LGBT rights. I beg you to vote for bills that will be against discrimination. Put your own words to the test and stand by them; “All I can say is, we have a zero tolerance policy for anybody who displays discriminatory behavior or belief in discriminating against people based on the color of their skin, their religion, their sexual orientation, anything like that. We won’t tolerate any of that, and I’ve seen no evidence of that.” I’m not asking you for churches to wed gay couples. I’m not asking you to force places to hire gay people. I’m asking you to apply the Bill of Rights to gay people as well. Justice Brandeis said it best,”One of the most cherished of all rights is the right to be left alone.” The right to allow gay people to live their own lives without being in fear of being fired.

You won me when you said the government should get out of marriage and that gay couples should have the same rights as straight couples, writing in your Time op-ed that people can have their own opinions about marriage “so long as the equal rights of same-sex couples are protected.” Government is there to protect our rights, not give them to us, but those rights have to be granted to all people. To reaffirm, I will not push for this in the religious square, but for those who don’t engage in religious practices such as churches or church schools, gay people should have the same rights regardless of where they work.

I will continue to say Rand Paul 2016. I will continue to push for you to become President. But in order to become the party of tomorrow we must become the party of everyone and not just a select few. In your own words once more, for the Huffington Post,”I will not rest until all Americans, white and black, rich and poor, are treated equally under the law.”  And to quote you again in the same article, “Only a candidate who is a socially tolerant, fiscally responsible and principled leader can reinvigorate the Republican brand.” Stand by your principles, Senator Rand Paul, and stand with gay people. In order to become the party of tomorrow, we need to stop being the anti-gay one.