Opinion: The Republican Party will not protect the people I love

College student Noah Johnson is voting to protect the rights of the people he loves.

In 8th grade, one of my closest friends came out to me as bisexual. This was my first real exposure to the LGBTQ+ community. Same-sex marriage had only been legal for two years, and I was raised in an environment where the issue didn’t come up much. In fact, I remember hearing the phrase “gay community” on the news when I was younger, and assuming that all the gay people in America lived in a small village together. 

The rest of that year, many of my other friends came out as well. Around that time, I was starting to get invested in politics. We were in the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, and so the Republican Party was making their perspective on issues like LGBTQ+ rights very clear. 

The 2016 Republican Party platform describes their belief that “traditional marriage and family, based on marriage between one man and one woman, is the foundation for a free society” and stated that they “condemn the Supreme Court’s lawless ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.” 

On the other hand, the Democratic Party platform of the same year stated that “Democrats applaud last year’s decision by the Supreme Court that recognized that LGBT people—like other Americans—have the right to marry the person they love.” It expanded on that by saying “we will also fight for comprehensive federal non-discrimination protections for all LGBT Americans, to guarantee equal rights in areas such as housing, employment, public accommodations, credit, jury service, education, and federal funding.” 

When I was figuring out which party I would support, it was not a difficult choice. One party, the Republicans, stated in no uncertain terms that they would strip my friends’ rights away if given the chance. The other party was the exact opposite, pledging to fight for my friends in the legislature and the courts. 

In 2021, a school shooting occurred at Oxford High School, 10 minutes from my own high school. We went into lockdown the same minute that they did. I remember sitting in my debate class, hearing my classmates read the reports trickling in. Everyone was scared. 

In the aftermath of that tragic day, where four students my age were killed, Democrats in the Michigan legislature went to work. Two years later, they successfully passed Senate Bills 79, 80, 81, and 82 and House Bills 4138 and 4142. These new laws require safe storage of firearms and universal background checks, prevent domestic abusers from possessing firearms, and allow judges to issue extreme risk protection orders. 

If these bills had been in place prior to the Oxford shooting, especially the safe storage law, it is far more likely that those four students would still be alive today. However, the vast majority of Republicans in the Michigan legislature voted against these bills. 

One year after the Oxford shooting, the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Three of the six justices issuing this decision were appointed by Donald Trump. Today, 22 states have instituted harsher restrictions than the ones set under the Roe standard. Twenty of those states voted for Trump in 2020. 

In the aftermath of the decision overturning Roe, I had friends tell me about the distress it caused them. One said that “pregnancy is my biggest fear and even thinking about it makes me want to panic”. In that same conversation, she discussed the idea of moving to the United Kingdom or Canada. 

As severe as the reproductive laws are in many states, many Republicans want them to go much further. Project 2025, the conservative agenda created by the far-right Heritage Foundation, calls for “deleting the terms… abortion, reproductive health, [and] reproductive rights… out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.” Project 2025 seeks to institute national restrictions on abortion access, require reporting and tracking of miscarriages, and limit access to birth control. 

I’m not a Democrat because I believe it will benefit me. Don’t get me wrong, I love having strong infrastructure, a clean environment, and a healthy democracy. However, the issues I most strongly about don’t affect me. 

I’m a straight man, with only three semesters left in college. My marriage rights will never be taken away. My odds of being in a school shooting in the little time I have left as a student are low. I will never need to seek an abortion. Even so, the people I love are in danger of all those things. My friends and my community have been actively harmed by the policies that the Republican Party champion, and that is why I will always fight for Democrats to win up and down the ballot.

This is part of the op-ed series from the Michigan College Democrats. To learn more about the series and read other submissions, click here.