Out CEO Peter Thiel endorsed Donald
Trump for president at the Republican National Convention (RNC) on
Thursday.
The 48-year-old Thiel is best known for
co-founding PayPal and serving as its CEO. He's also known for being
the first outside investor in the social networking site Facebook.
He is a billionaire.
“Tonight I urge all of my fellow
Americans to stand up and vote for Donald Trump,” said Thiel, the
first openly gay Republican in 16 years to speak at a GOP convention.
“Of course, every American has a
unique identity,” he said. “I am proud to be gay. I am proud to
be a Republican. But most of all, I am proud to be an American.”
The 2016 Republican platform has been
criticized for its opposition to LGBT rights, including marriage
equality. The document also states support for therapies that
attempt to alter the sexual orientation or gender identity of minors
and laws that restrict transgender bathroom use.
While Thiel said that he doesn't
pretend “to agree with every plank in our party's platform,” he
implied that he agrees with it on the bathroom issue. “When I was
a kid, the great debate was about how to defeat the Soviet Union.
And we won. Now we are told that the great debate is about who gets
to use which bathroom. This is a distraction from our real problems.
Who cares?”