UPDATE: 7:30 p.m. EDT Tuesday The National Republican Campaign Committee removed the language pointing to Joness sexual orientation on Tuesday night following HuffPosts report, no longer referring to her female partner. The photo of Jones and her partner remains on DemocratFacts.

It was included as a factual statement but we removed it because her orientation has nothing to do with her being a Washington, D.C., carpetbagger who supports closing local military bases in TX-23 that will cost thousands of jobs, NRCC spokesperson Bob Salera said.

The original story appears below.

The congressional GOPs campaign arm is asking other Republican and conservative groups to attack Gina Ortiz Jones, the Democratic candidate for a key swing House seat in Texas, for being gay.

A National Republican Campaign Committee website outlining its preferred attacks on candidates instructs outside groups to include reminders of Joness sexual orientation in digital and television advertising and mailers, highlighting an image of Jones with her partner and the talking point that Jones and her female partner lived and worked near Washington, DC, not Texas before Jones ran for Congress.

Democrats and gay rights advocacy groups blasted the instructions as homophobic.

These personal, homophobic, and transphobic attacks shows how shameless and low Tony Gonzales and the NRCC are willing to go in the race for Texass 23rd Congressional District, said Rebecca Marques, the Texas state director at the Human Rights Campaign. It also shows how shallow their case is against a formidable veteran candidate of color and member of the LGBTQ community.

Its disturbing, but not surprising, that the House Republican campaign arm thinks its acceptable to run a gutter campaign of bigotry and homophobia against Gina and her family, said Robyn Patterson, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committees national press secretary. The people of South and West Texas are better than these attacks and the shameless Washington operatives who wrote them. Were confident Texans will send this tough fighter and veteran to Congress in November.

The NRCC did not respond to a request for comment.