That said, there’s still a small but growing number of LGB voters who are loyal to the GOP. This is true for many reasons, but one of the biggest threads I stumbled upon in my interviews and research is that many LGB Republicans see their sexuality and politics as separate. They’re also more likely to factor normal GOP dogma — favoring lower taxes, less federal government intervention and some restrictions on abortion — into their identity. On top of that, most believe that the party has changed a lot in its treatment of same-sex couples. During his presidential campaign in 2016, for example, Donald Trump made overt appeals to LGBTQ voters, and ahead of the 2020 election, he announced an LGBTQ coalition, with Richard Grenell, the openly gay U.S. ambassador to Germany at the time, campaigning on Trump’s behalf.

More generally speaking, Republican voters also seem to have changed their attitude toward issues like same-sex marriage. According to Gallup, which has been tracking Americans’ support for marriage equality since 1996, a record-high 70 percent of all adults now believe that same-sex marriage should be recognized by the law and that same-sex couples should have the same rights as opposite-sex couples who are married. And for the first time ever, a majority of Republicans (55 percent) also say they support same-sex marriage…

“I think I’m accepted in the Republican Party. A lot of Republicans don’t like gays, but they say, ‘What you do is your own business,’” Leonardon said. “I don’t feel the Republican Party has an anti-gay bias nearly as much as it used to, particularly because the older Republicans have died off and the ones 50 and under just don’t care as much.”