It should come as no surprise that the rabidly-right-wing wingnuts at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, which hosts an annual conference with a strange consortium that is part Ron Paul Libertarians, part American Family Association hate groups, part Ann Coulter/Andrew Breitbart media whores, part Joe and Jane Average older Republican, part Tea Party patriot extremists, and part news media, (not to mention almost entirely white,) doesn’t particularly like homosexuals. In fact, I think they hate homosexuals.
So, it should also come as no surprise that CPAC’s new board has booted the gay Tea Party group GOProud from being able to co-sponsor the conference, which they have the past two years. Of course, GOProud is welcome to attend, like everyone else, but they cannot be officially affiliated with CPAC or the American Conservative Union, which exists primarily to manage the annual CPAC event.
Media mogul Andrew Breitbart, who sits on GOProud’s board, has decided he will not attend next year’s CPAC in response to the booting, as it were, and now his followers are, well, following.
“The decision means GOProud won’t be able to pay to have a booth at the exhibition hall, nor will the organization have its name appear on promotional materials for CPAC 2012,” writes Chris Johnson at The Washington Blade.
“Kristy Campbell, spokesperson for the American Conservative Union, said ACU Chair Al Cardenas took the issue of GOProud’s participation — as well as other groups — to the board ‘given controversies surrounding a few CPAC 2011 co-sponsors’ and ‘concerns raised by a number of our board members’.â€
“GOProud’s participation at CPAC had incurred the wrath of social conservative groups that pledged to boycott sponsorship of the event over the gay conservative group’s involvement. These groups include Family Research Council, Concerned Women For America, Liberty Counsel and Liberty University. In 2011, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a social conservative and Tea Party favorite, also declined to participate at CPAC.
“Also last year, GOProud board chair Chris Barron took heat from conservatives after he described Cleta Mitchell, chair of the ACU Foundation, as “a nasty bigot†in an interview. Barron apologized, but ACU chair Cardenas told FrumForum that “it’s going to be difficult to continue the relationship†with GOProud and expressed disappointment in the group’s reaction to the furor over its participation at the event.”
Roger Simon of Pajamas Media is boycotting, as is someone named Ted Frank.
World Net Daily (yes, I know,) also mentions, “a campaign assembled by Americans for Truth’s Peter LaBarbera and Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber to object to GOProud’s participation.
“Barber had objected to GOProud’s endorsement of ‘gay marriage’ as well as its demand that homosexuality be promoted in the U.S. military through the repeal of the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ practice’.
GOProud has to take part of the blame for getting the boot. After all, when someone like Chris Barron, GOProud’s co-founder, calls important people nasty names, they’re not too excited about jumping up and supporting the nascent organization.
(Note to GOProud’s Barron and LaSalvia: you actually do catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Not that you really care. If those two spent as much time working for equality as they do bashing “the gay left” as they call us, no doubt we’d all be farther along.)
Interestingly, CPAC also barred the notorious John Birch Society from co-sponsoring CPAC — but no one’s boycotting CPAC for that reason. It’s nice to know that some of the right-wing extremists out there like “the gays” more than “the crazies.”
So now, GOProud is doing what it does best: playing the victim and trying really, really hard to get lots of attention. And when you have a media whore and man who will say or do just about anything, someone like Andrew Breitbart, on your board of directors, how hard could that be? Breitbart is boycotting CPAC, and all the media whorettes who want to get in Breitbart’s good graces are joining in.
Fred Karger, the openly gay Republican presidential candidate, in The Guardian, writes, “If conservative political conference CPAC persists in its anti-gay policy, all Republican presidential candidates should boycott it,” and adds this little dash of insight into the party of supposed free markets and free ideas (sorry, Reason,)
“Alberto “Al” Cardenas, the new head of the American Conservative Union (ACU), has taken bigotry and hypocrisy to new heights. I believe I was a victim of his organisation’s prejudice earlier this year when I wanted to purchase a booth at their annual CPAC gathering in Washington, DC. My credit card information was taken last December, and I was told that I was in. Then, mysteriously, three weeks later, I was told by phone that they had “sold out”. Funny, others were purchasing booths right up until the conference began in mid February.”
Karger, so innocently, adds,
“How can anyone running for president attend, let alone speak at CPAC’s September Florida event or the February conference next year? It is tantamount to endorsing discrimination against an entire class of Americans.”
You really have to smile when you see the gay Right realize what the gay Left has seen all along. What? Discrimination against an entire class of Americans? You mean, like DOMA, And DADT, and no ENDA, and…
Politico’s Ben Smith says GOProud’s “exclusion has become the kind of cause celebre to the libertarian right that its inclusion was to social conservatives,” and adds,
“Cardenas met today, I’m told, with the executive director of the gay conservative group GOProud, Jimmy LaSalvia. It was, a person briefed on the event said, “not a good meeting.” The representatives of GOProud were furious to learn from WorldNetDaily and the Daily Caller that they’d been dropped from the organization, and were also none-too-thrilled about Cardenas’s wife’s recent comments on the subject.”
Comments?
Oh, yes:
“Unfortunately, the biggest victory of the gay movement has been to shift the debate from a ‘behavior’ to identity, whereby those that oppose homosexuality are considered bigoted or hateful. They have equated it to the Civil Rights Movement, seeking to obtain the rights granted under the constitution to all races or religions. Sexual behavior does not fall into either category!!!!It is not about homosexuals wanting to enter into a ‘marriage’ so much as it is about them wanting to gain acceptance into mainstream society by redefining the traditional definition of the institution.”
That was just a small portion.
Meanwhile, in an amusing piece, Alana Goodman writes, “If CPAC caves to outside controversy and blocks one contentious group from participating, then it sets a precedent that could lead to other organizations getting blackballed in the future.”
Funny how “the gays” are always the ones who get blackballed.
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