In a follow up to their criticism last month, the Berrien County GOP Executive Board has withdrawn their support from Representative Pauline Wendzel (R-Watervliet) over her vote to expand the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights protections.
Last March, the Michigan Legislature approved an expansion of the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Rep. Wendzel was one of 11 House and Senate Republicans to vote for the expansion and it was eventually signed into law.
In response, the Berrien County GOP Executive Board has issued a formal rebuke, withdrawing their “good will and support” from the 11 House and Senate Republicans, including Wendzel.
“I stand by my vote that everybody deserves to be treated with basic human dignity and that discrimination is wrong – period,” Rep. Wendzel said in response.
“These out of touch activists that have taken over the Berrien County GOP believe that anybody who doesn’t agree with them 100 percent of the time should be excommunicated from the party. This is the same losing strategy that cost us everything from the Governor’s office to local school board races last November,” Wendzel added.
The resolution leaves room for the local party leaders to reverse their position, at “…such time support for and offense of,” the act is reconciled.
In the resolution approved by the Executive Board, they resolve that Public Act 6 of 2023, “violates the basic dignities of our mothers, daughters, and grandmothers, the basic autonomy of religious organizations, temples, mosques, churches, schools, and parents to manage their affairs according to their sincerely held beliefs, and the basic freedom of people to live a traditional and moral life free from government coercion to adopt gender ideology.”
The resolution further states that the Berrien County Republican Party will work to, “…elect a Republican majority in the Michigan legislature and a Republican Governor for the purpose of restoring and protecting the bathroom privacy and basic dignity of our daughters, wives, and mothers, of restoring the Title IX protection for girls and women’s sports, and of restoring the basic freedom of religious organizations to manage their affairs according to the sincerely held religious beliefs to which they ascribe.”
Rep. Wendzel’s statement:
“I stand by my vote that everybody deserves to be treated with basic human dignity and that discrimination is wrong – period.
“These out of touch activists that have taken over the Berrien County GOP believe that anybody who doesn’t agree with them 100 percent of the time should be excommunicated from the party. This is the same losing strategy that cost us everything from the Governor’s office to local school board races last November.
“Now we’re living with the consequences of these absurd purity tests – complete Democrat control of Lansing. In just 100 days, hundreds of millions of your tax dollars have been spent on foreign corporate welfare, politically connected unions have scored massive windfalls, we’ve witnessed the largest infringement on the 2nd Amendment and due process in the last twenty years, and now more taxpayer dollars will be wasted in the form of higher costs to local governments and schools due to prevailing wage policies. Our state is rushing headlong into the failed policies of the Lost Decade.
“The Republican Party is not a single-issue party. We don’t “cancel” each other for disagreements over one particular policy. That is a collectivist, leftist tactic that has driven the Democratic Party completely off the rails. I’m hopeful that by 2024, the local party will realize that winning elections and advancing an array of policy issues is more important than imprudent purity tests.”
