Several months ago, we reported on an effort to eliminate the Libertarian Party platform. The effort largely succeeded, with only a handful of planks surviving, including the Sexuality and Gender plank that puts the LP ahead of all other political parties in its LGBT-friendliness. Yet this wasn't enough for Carl S. Milsted, Jr., who led the charge to gut the platform, because the night of the vote he was overheard saying that he would leave party over what little of the platform that remained. He didn't leave, and it appears that he may be changing his mind about "embarrassing" planks like Sexuality and Gender.
In his September 27 article, Freedom and Equality: They Go Together, he makes the exact point that we were making in our argument to keep LGBT equal rights in the platform. Granted, he never actually says the word "gay" anywhere in it and instead only talks about economic equality, but his basic argument, "Equality requires freedom," and "A free society requires more equality than we have today," supports our position nonetheless. Liberty and Equality are not opposites, but rather they require each other. Thankfully, the Libertarian Party platform still says so.
