By Jonathan Easley – 07/11/16 08:16 PM EDT at The Hill

CLEVELAND — Republicans crafting a party platform on Monday argued over religious liberty, gay marriage and LGBT rights, highlighting divisions in the party over social issues.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus and Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), chairman of the Platform Committee, floated in and out of conference rooms at the cavernous Huntington Convention Center to oversee the skirmishes that broke out among delegates over the party’s policy planks.

The most heated exchanges took place in a subcommittee responsible for laying out the GOP platform on social issues.

The majority of the panel was made up of hard-line social conservatives such as Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. Perkins and other social conservatives on the panel had a strong enough majority to push through the bulk of the measures they sought.

But the Perkins wing was met with vocal opposition from Annie Dickerson, an adviser to billionaire GOP donor Paul Singer, who is a proponent of same-sex marriage and other issues championed by the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

Dickerson fumed as her socially liberal proposals went down and the socially conservative measures she opposed sailed through the subcommittee. … read more here