GOP Votes Against LGTBQ Rights, But Not in a Mean Way or Anything Like That

WASHINGTON, DC – Even though all but three Republicans in the House of Representatives voted against extending the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections for LGTBQ people, the GOP wants everyone to know they weren’t trying to be jerks or anything.

“Don’t get me wrong, we totally have the utmost respect for gay people,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, not understanding what “utmost respect” means. “We just think that now, more than ever, we need to be less divisive, and this issue is just too controversial. We’re not bigots, we’re just very conservative about who deserves to share in the same basic civil rights that the average member of our party has already enjoyed for more than 200 years. They shouldn’t take this the wrong way.”

Republicans were extra sensitive to how their votes made them appear after freshman member and Twitter troll in human form Marjorie Taylor Greene said out loud the explicitly homophobic and transphobic slurs that everyone else in the party thinks, but is too afraid to say themselves. They quickly attempted to walk back her words, but not her meaning.

“We don’t believe any of those awful things that [Greene] said today, even though we say substantively similar things all the time,” said Rep. Andy Biggs. “Those are her views, not mine, and it’s not right to be judged and treated unfairly just because of someone else’s misconceptions about who I am. If only there was a way that we could create a system of legal protections to ensure that all people are treated fairly and with respect. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

To make their homophobic position seem more palatable, Republicans are planning events in church parking lots across the nation to load bottled water into the trunks of the cars of needy straight people and show that even a judgmental bigot can also do an occasional nice thing for some people some of the time.