Bruce Carroll, aka @GayPatriot, earlier this year claimed he was going to be South Carolina’s next Republican U.S. Senator. Carroll, who supposedly was a co-founder of the do-nothing gay Tea Party group, GOProud, runs a little-read blog, also named GayPatriot. There, on March 11 of this year, Carroll wrote that he was resigning from the GOProud Board to take time for “serious deliberations” about opposing Lindsey Graham for his U.S. Senate seat. Carroll added:
Over the next few weeks, I will be studying the resources, time and effort it would take to do my part in holding Lindsey Graham accountable for his voting record and his attitude toward the voters in South Carolina.
This is important: I do not make major decisions hastily; I will take adequate time to realistically look at all of the evidence (pro and con) and consult with a diverse group of people that I trust and that also have the best interests of South Carolina at heart as I do.
Almost immediately, Carroll changed his Twitter bio to this:
Ultimately, Carroll a few weeks later decided to not run.
The bottom line is that my partner John and I made a mutual decision that we didn’t want our entire lives invaded in a way that we couldn’t control. On the show tonight, I discuss the fact that a gay leftist activist harassed me at my place of private employment in 2005 shortly after this blog was born. My job was in jeopardy for a while then and other people at my company of employment were threatened. The magnitude of those type of attacks would only have increased exponentially had I chosen to move into a role seeking public office. The Gay Left concerns me the most; I’ve witnessed good people’s lives and families destroyed over public policy differences. They are beyond the pale.
About an hour ago, Carroll sent off a few tweets, in response this photo…
…and commentary tweeted by Dan Savage:
This act of sexist buffoonery comes just a few short days after Gregory T. Angelo, the new Executive Director of the Log Cabin Republicans — what was considered the reasonable and formerly, sometimes effective gay GOP organization — sent a tweet wrongly blaming “liberal gays” for violence at Seattle Pride.
Generally, The New Civil Rights Movement prefers to stay away from all this silliness, but I have to say, enough.
You can put both these events into the “who cares?” category, or you can see them as more evidence of unfortunate bad behavior by GOP activists who claim to be leaders in the LGBT community. And add them to the long list of ludicrous attacks on the left by the bad boys formerly of GOProud, Chris Barron and Jimmy LaSalvia — making a very long list of bad decisions and poor policy by a handful of gay Republican activists. Fortunately, there are gay Republicans, like Fred Karger, and even Ken Mehlman, and countless others, who today are working hard for the LGBT community.
This isn’t about gay Republicans. This is about immaturity and bad behavior by those who supposedly are leaders in our community.
Perhaps Carroll and Angelo can explain how their immature outbursts help the LGBT community, help the people they claim to be working for, help the perception by outsiders of the LGBT community, or move LGBT issues forward in any respect whatsoever?
It’s time for the LGBT community to work together, and to work with other minorities, to help solve this nation’s problems. And it’s time for maturity.
Stupid, immature, partisan bickering isn’t going to help us pass ENDA — which I assume most gay Republicans support — and isn’t going to make life any easier for the thousands of same-sex parents raising many thousands of children, isn’t going to make immigration reform any easier, isn’t going to help LGBT people one iota.
It’s time for Bruce and Gregory to grow up, or stop claiming to be trying to help the LGBT community — because juvenile attacks like these, are not.