'Who Cares' About Bathroom Bills, Says Peter Thiel, First Openly Gay Speaker at RNC in 16 Years

Updated at 10:07 p.m.

CLEVELAND, OH — As expected, Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel urged delegates at the Republican National Convention to move past “fake culture wars” and focus instead on a “broken economy” that has tarnished America’s promise.

Thiel, a PayPal founder, Facebook investor and billionaire who was revealed to be waging a secret legal battle against Gawker Media for perceived slights, was the first openly gay person to speak at a Republican National Convention since 2000, when then-Rep. Jim Kolbe of Arizona addressed the gathering in Philadelphia.

He said issues like bathroom bills are “a distraction from our real problems.”

“Who cares?” he said to hearty applause, though it’s not clear if delegates agreed or were disagreeing about a spate of Republican-sponsored “bathroom bills” in state legislatures across the country.

“I don’t pretend to agree with every platform, but fake culture wars distract us from our platform, and nobody in this party is being honest about it other than Donald Trump.

“I am proud to be gay,” Thiel said. “I am proud to be a Republican. But most of all, I am proud to be an American.”

The entrepreneur also used his short, five-minute speaking slot to endorse Trump, saying that his “make America great again” mantra is more accurately described as a pledge to take America back to a time when the future felt limitless.

Thiel said “opportunity was everywhere” when his parents moved from Frankfurt, Germany, to America. He was 1 at the time.

“In 1968, the world’s high tech capital not just one city, but all of America,” he said. “It’s hard to remember, but our government was once high-tech, too.”

Now, he said, “most of the time (government) doesn’t even work at all.”

Noting a “staggering decline,” he said “we don’t accept such incompetence from Silicon Valley, and we must not accept it from our government.”

He also criticized presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s handling of affairs in the Middle East as secretary of state and positioned Trump as a more effective leader on foreign policy.

“Her incompetence is in plain sight,” he said. “She pushed for a war in Libya, and today it’s a training ground for ISIS. On this most important issue, Donald Trump is right. It’s time to end the era of stupid wars and rebuild our country.”

His speech came a slot before Trump formally accepted the nomination.

Thiel’s support of Trump is as much of an anomaly among Silicon Valley investors as openly gay speakers are on GOP convention schedules, and that alone makes his address noteworthy. But he also represents exactly the demographic Republicans a 2012 election autopsy warned they need to win to avoid another battering from Democrats this November.

Specifically, the Growth & Opportunity Project “autopsy” said defeats at the polls result from a perception on the part of some voters that the party is “scary,” “narrow-minded” and “out of touch,” and that it’s a party of “stuffy old men.”

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said at the time that Republicans’ losses in presidential elections may be a result of the party doing a “lousy job of branding and marketing” its principles.

At the podium, Thiel sent a clear message that he supports the real estate tycoon and he’s not a scary, angry old white guy — the stereotype the Republican Party needs to overcome if it wants to attract younger, more diverse voters, the autopsy report warned.

Though not speaking directly to convention delegates, Caitlyn Jenner made the case that she is an authentic Republican who should find a home in the party. “It was easy to come out as trans. It was harder to come out as Republican,” Jenner said.

But Thiel is a more likely candidate than Jenner to be the face of the increasingly diverse Republican voter.

Thiel kept the contents of his speech under wraps. A proponent of gay marriage, Thiel was expected to proudly announce himself as a gay man and denounce cultural fights that take attention away from more important economic and foreign affairs issues.

It was also speculated that he would present the worldview of venture capitalists by promoting the libertarian-leaning agenda of low regulatory oversight and, The New York Times reported, perhaps score a direct line to Trump if he wins the White House that would boost the tech industry as a whole.

The billionaire entrepreneur set off a firestorm of controversy after disclosing he secretly financed the $115 million Hulk Hogan lawsuit that tumbled Gawker Media.

Thiel’s support for Trump and decision to run to be a delegate for Trump in California prompted Facebook, where Thiel is a board member, to say that he is not representing the social media giant at the convention.

“He is not attending on behalf of Facebook or to represent our views,” the company said in a statement to The Washington Post.

Image: Heisenberg Media via Flickr / Creative Commons