The brouhaha over GOProud’s participation in the Conservative Political Action Conference, the largest annual gathering of conservative activists in Washington, is getting bigger.
Those boycotting the event over the participation of openly gay conservatives are using the Orwellian name “Conservatives for Unity” to declare that gay conservatives are anathema and must be expulsed from the movement. They held forth that “it is necessary for each group within any coherent movement not to stand in diametrical opposition to one or more of its core principles. It is our conviction that the institution of marriage and the family qualify as such principles.”
But what does it say that Larry L. Eastland, a bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a board member of the American Conservative Union, the group that organizes CPAC, responded in a letter to fellow board members that they should “not be guilty of ‘casting the first stone,’ and added, “Let us not lose sight of our goals by closing the door on individuals who will stand with us on public issues on which we agree, and keep to themselves their differences on issues where it could give ‘aid and comfort’ to our opponents.”
I guess it says that the boycotters are so crazy that they make the Mormons look like liberals.
More. Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, who sits on the board of the American Conservative Union and is on the advisory board of GOProud, dismissed the boycotters, saying:
Loser people and loser organizations that haven’t done any work all year try to get headlines so they can whine about CPAC. They can get a little press. That happens all the time.
19 Comments for “CPAC Fissures Widen”
posted by Tom on
I guess it says that the boycotters are so crazy that they make the Mormons look like liberals.
The LDS is not “liberal” about gay and lesbian issues by any means, but it stands in opposition to the boycotters on many issues.
The LDS has issued statements in support of non-discrimination ordinances and legislation in Utah, issued strong statements about school bullying, and so on, and beyond the LDS’s fierce opposition to same-sex marriage, has little in common with groups like the FRC, AFA and other professional anti-gay groups that purport to speak for social conservatives.
The latter groups are getting more and more extreme as they are marginalized, in my opinion, and “crazies” is not a bad word for them. Pay attention to what the FRC’s Peter Sprigg and the AFA’s Bryan Fischer are actually saying these days. If you aren’t repulsed, you aren’t paying attention.
BTW, Chris Barron did a good job of calling out Tony Perkins as the jackass he is on Andrea Mitchell’s program this afternoon. Along the way, Barron made it clear that GOProud does not take a stand, one way or the other, on same-sex marriage, except to the extent that GOProud believes that marriage should be a matter for the several states to decide, not the federal government.
The one thing that has become clear in the last couple of months is that the “crazies” are more than willing to toss the Republican Party under the bus. I hope that is going to be a wake-up call for Republicans. Compromise isn’t going to work with these folks, and a Daniels-like “truce” is about as likely as a cow jumping over the moon, as Governor Daniels is discovering recently in Indiana.
posted by BobN on
Please, let’s not whitewash the role of the LDS. Yes, they’re taking baby steps and, yes, they’re probably going to turn on a dime some day soon* (which is easy when you can claim conversations with God), but they remain the largest obstacle to gay rights in Utah and in many other places through their generous “donations”.
* my personal prediction, based on their about-faces on race
posted by Michigan-Matt on
I’m so happy that in the wake of the stunning repeal of DADTDHDP, the incredibly well connected IGF blog writers have found an important story like GOProud & CPAC boycotters to help fill the void of incessant whining about “issues critical to the gay community.”
Sorry guys, must be a real, real slow newsday for you when this kind of editorializing takes center stage. Maybe it’s time for IGF to go back to serious issues that actually affect gays & gay life?
Nawh, this seems to be working (fill the space, write about anything) for the crazy gays in la-la-land.
How is this different from x-DNC Chair Howie Dean kicking out the Gay Outreach Desk staff when he was criticized for being spineless? How is this different from Breck-Grrrl John Edwards saying he didn’t like “those” people when referring to gays? How is this different from the Obamas –who, when asked to name a single gay couple they have as friends, looked like deer caught in the headlights? Ahhh, it’s conservatives and neo-“Christianists” this time!
At the 2007 CPAC, there were people actually protesting Mitt Romney’s keynote because he was from a “cult”.
Slow, slow, slow newsday for the gay opiners. Sigh, get back to the important stuff ok?
posted by Tom on
How is this different from …
Not too different, in one sense. The CPAC flap is getting attention on IGF because the story is supposedly a sign that “green sprouts” are shooting up in the Republican Party that will turn the party toward emerging mainstream of “equal means equal”, in time moving the Republican Party off the path of massive resistance.
But in another sense, the CPAC flap is an important story, because it brings into focus the problems that the party’s “faggot, faggot” strategy of the last decade is creating and will continue to create.
As noted in other threads, the notion that the Republican Party has moved off “faggot, faggot” and is now focusing almost exclusively on smaller government, budget reductions and jobs creation is more wishful thinking than reality. Republican politicians, apparently, didn’t get the memo and are currently fighting marriage equality in Maryland, New York and Rhode Island, working to repeal marriage equality in New Hampshire and Iowa, fighting civil unions in Hawaii, working to repeal domestic partnership rights in Wisconsin, trying to enact state constituional bans on marriage equality in Indiana and Iowa (including a total ban on any same-sex recognition in Iowa, where the Republican Party is pushing an amendment that would ban civil unions and domestic partnerships as well), to mention a few of the more notable examples.
This creates an obvious danger to the Republican Party, because the country is moving, relatively rapidly, off “faggot, faggot”. If polls are accurate, a narrow majority in the country now supports marriage equality, and in the states where the issue is at hand this year, the majorities are the largest.
In New Hampshire, for example, a recent poll shows 62% opposition to marriage equality repeal, 51% “feeling strongly” in opposition, as opposed to 24% “feeling strongly in favor of repeal.
Those are numbers that are getting close to the numbers on DADT repeal, where Republican politicians stood strong for DADT in the face of 75% support for repeal nationwide. Is the Republican Party in New Hampshire going to become the “Knights Who Say Ni”, enacting marriage equality repeal in a state that is content with marriage equality, just as the Republicans in Congress fought against DADT repeal despite strong national support for repeal?
I look at the “green shoots” versus the reality of legislative action and wonder what is going on. Most politicians have the sense not to tilt windmills heedlessly, running amok in the face of strong voter sentiment, marginalizing themselves, but Republican politicians across the country seem stuck on “faggot, faggot”, pushing an anti-gay agenda even as the party’s leadership, talking heads and think tanks drone on about how “That’s SO yesterday …” Hell, I half expect the Republican apologists to switch over to “That’s SO gay …”, the way the talk is getting out of synch with the reality.
I can think of several possible explanations for the discordance, and perhaps some combination explains what is going on with the Republican Party this legislative cycle:
I imagine that there are other factors at work, as well. Whatever is in play, I am convinced that the FRC, the AFA and other anti-gay social conservative groups are moving off rhetoric designed to appeal to the center, moving fact to fringe rhetoric and becoming, as Stephen put it, “crazies”.
Sooner or later the Republican Party is going to have to say “No!’ to the anti-gay social conservatives. DADT repeal is going to force “equal means equal” onto the front burner relatively soon, because the one thing that Americans will not long tolerate is veterans and service personnel being denied equal treatment under the law.
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
But, as has been seen in the case of how gay and lesbian hero and anti-American traitor Bradley Manning was given preferential treatment and deployed despite behavior that would have gotten a heterosexual soldier kicked out because people didn’t want to appear “homophobic”, DADT repeal has nothing to do with “equality” or “equal treatment under the law” and is in fact all about enabling gays and lesbians who are patently unfit to gain access to the military and to our country’s vital information.
It is quite interesting to watch the gay and lesbian community, led by people like Glenn Greenwald, Amanda Marcotte, and Tom openly support and endorse people like Manning who pass information to the enemy in the hopes of getting soldiers like Tom’s son and nephew killed. It makes it rather obvious that Tom’s allegiance to the gay and lesbian community and his minority identity supersedes everything else.
Furthermore, people have realized that Tom’s minority identity and the importance of its so-called “oppression” turn on and off with political affilation. People are aware that Tom and his fellow gays and lesbians consider support of the FMA and stating that marriage is a “sacred bond” between a man and a woman, as does Barack Obama, to be “pro-gay” when said by a person of the correct political affiliation — and certainly are not an appeal to any type of “faggot, faggot” sentiment. Folks have caught on that Tom and his fellow gays and lesbians apply blatant double standards to behavior and will excuse Obama Party members doing what they shriek is “faggot, faggot” politics elsewhere.
Because of baiters like Tom, who have used their sexual orientation as an excuse for mindless support of Obama Party leftists and socialists for decades, the gay and lesbian community has been inextricably bound up with massive expansions of government, crushing tax hikes, punishing the successful and rewarding the lazy, and the policies of the Obama left. Hence, marriage amendments and repeal of preferential treatment for gays and lesbians represent exactly what the electorate wants — a rollback of government, a reduction of tax burdens, and an establishment of values based on character rather than on minority status.
posted by Houndentenor on
Assuming Manning is guilty (shouldn’t there be a trial first before such an assumption is made) what does that have to do with other gays and lesbians serving?
posted by North Dallas Thirty on
Gays and lesbians like Glenn Greenwald have made it clear that they see nothing wrong with what Manning did.
Gay and lesbian organizations have refused to condemn or criticize Manning’s behavior.
The military’s own report demonstrates that Manning was the recipient of special treatment, which enabled him to continue in service and gain access to classified information even after he had committed acts for which a rank-and-file heterosexual would have been kicked out.
So let’s see; why would the military want a group of people who see nothing wrong with what Manning did, who defend his actions, and who are demanding the special treatment that allowed him the access to do what he did despite clearly being an unfit soldier?
posted by John Howard on
Transhumanism is certainly anti-Conservative, right? It is the very opposite idea to Conservatism, indeed the opposite idea is called “Bio-Conservatism”. Tranhumanism says lets replace and improve our human nature, and it would surely result in big government regulation and funding, while a blanket ban on it would not require any regulation or funding and the policing of the ban could easily be handled by existing agents. Conservatism doesn’t mean Libertarianism, some people get confused about that. Libertarian Transhumanists all support gay marriage, and THEY are who needs to be kicked out of CPAC and the Conservative movement (and both parties, they’ve got a Libertarian Party to go to), not gay people, who do not all believe in Transhumanism. Gay people who support a ban on same-sex procreation and accept that marriage should be reserved for man-woman couples would be welcome in Conservatism.
posted by BobN on
But what does it say
It says the guy knows that GOProud doesn’t actually support any of the things the anti-GOProud folks are complaining about, like same-sex marriage.
posted by BobN on
The WashingtonTimes article has some hysterical — in at least two senses of the word — commentary. Well worth a peek into the soul of modern-day “conservatism”.
posted by Jimmy on
Indeed. One would conclude upon reading those comments that to be a true conservative, one must hate LGBT people and the fact that they exist at all. WT is a publication by conservatives for conservatives. Is there something else we need to know?
posted by BobN on
WT is a publication by
conservativesthe Reverend Sun Myung Moon for conservatives.For a while there, it looked like the WT was doomed, but the Rev has changed his mind and resumed the enormous subsidies.
Pity.
posted by Tom on
It looks like the honeymoon is over:
posted by Jimmy on
An astute observation from commenter “fromks”:
“The problem with the ACU excluding GOProud is that it still includes organizations like the John Birch society. If one were going to purge merely one group for trespasses against the party, one would hope you’d start with the organization that still thinks water fluoridation is a government conspiracy to control your mind. So, basically, to completely contradict the first paragraph of this post, what the hell, they’re a bad group, but probably no worse than half of the CPAC sponsors. . . and they probably throw a better party than all the rest of the sponsors.”
posted by BobN on
The Birchers are rather centrist, considering the GOP spectrum these days.
posted by Tom on
Well, we’ll have to see what happens over the course of the next year, but I think that the party’s over for gays and lesbians within CPAC, at least for a while.
It will be interesting to see what GOProud does with this development — will they come out of the political closet and actually start fighting for same-sex marriage, or will they continue to play footsie, as in “We don’t take a position, except to say that marriage is an issue for the states …”
I’ll also be curious to see what happens at the Values Voters Summit, now that the boycotters have prevailed in the CPAC squabble. Will the Republican presidential timber (or perhaps, timbre) line up and fall all over themselves saluting, each outdoing all the others in pledging allegiance to the cause, or exercise restraint?
posted by Mike Stewart on
Sheesh.
I dont get it. GOProud is bringing votes, voters and a strong conservative platform to the Republican Party. The continued problem with CPAC is that the Republicans have yet to find a real conservative to take the helm (Trump is the only one who can beat Obama, but he will be assaulted by monied interests from Romney and Gingrich, not to mention the crazies in the Ron Paul campaign) and will fall prey to any mass-morality play the sponsors undertake.
posted by Doug on
Trump couldn’t win a race for dog catcher much less the presidency. He has way to much baggage and skeletons in his closet.
posted by Houndentenor on
A man who has declared bankruptcy TWICE is going to try to run as a fiscal conservative? Not gonna happen.