Greedy Gay Republicans

The Battle of the "F" Word

Something of a firestorm erupted in the gay community this week. Just as the conservative gay group GOProud formally endorsed Mitt Romney for the presidency, gay columnist Dan Savage felt the impetus to respond in a...rather controversial manner: by calling GOProud "House faggots."

As a matter of full disclosure, I feel the need to say a few things at the top of this op/ed. First, generally speaking, I am a fan if Dan Savage. His second greatest hit of all time was initiating Rick Santorum's "Google problem" (which Santorum rightly deserved). More importantly though, he and his partner Terry are the creators of the "It Gets Better" campaign which was started to combat the wave of suicides that have resulted from anti-gay bullying in the nations schools. They deserve a lot of credit for that contribution.

GOProud co-founders Jimmy LaSalvia & Chris Barron

On the other hand, I have no particular love for GOProud. It is not that they vote Republican or that they are conservative. That is fine. My distaste for them stems from the tone of their political discourse, not just as an organization, but also in terms of their co-founders as well. If you follow them on Twitter as I do, they are not above the occasional juvenile name-calling. I also believe that they are sell-outs. The man that they have just endorsed wants a constitutional amendment saying that they are second class citizens. They are willing to throw the entire gay community under the bus to get him elected President. It is one thing to be fiscally conservative (though I don't really believe either party is truly that), but it's quite another to sacrifice equal protections under the law for a tax cut.

Having said all of that, I can not in good conscience condone what was said by Dan Savage. The context in which that word (or any word like it) can be said is extremely narrow, and Savage stepped well out of bounds.Using that word as such a pejorative puts him on par with many of the very people that the "It Gets Better" campaign seeks to fight. It lines him up with people who spray paint that that word on people's cars, homes, or the lockers of students at school. There is zero excure for this.

All things considered, NO ONE comes out of this conflict looking good, especially given a tweet from one of GOProud's co-founders that has been unearthed by some of my fellow bloggers:

I guess the real moral of this story is this: do NOT tweet angrily. What we say in the heat of a moment may (and usually will) come back to haunt us.

The Wrap-Up: June 22, 2012

House Republicans have all but gone on record as being against job creation with their rejection of a transportation bill which passed the Senate by a HUGE margin.

Anti-gay groups in Minnesota are planning a "Dump General Mills" campaign after the business voiced its opposition to the state's proposed marriage equality ban. I guess these groups are unaware of the massive failure of the "Dump Starbucks" campaign.

The Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare") has been pushed back to next week. These justices must really like the attention they're getting.

How will Mitt Romney be spending his weekend?

A key House Republican is saying that the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell is settled law and won't be revisited even if the GOP wins big in November. You'll forgive me if I don't take a politician (regardless of party) at their word.

Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO) took a DEA administrator to task over her evasiveness on marijuana related questions. His questions were extremely straightforward. Her answers were anything but.

I think most of us knew that no one really cares about Bristol Palin. Now, there are numbers to prove it.

Carrie Underwood may have recently voiced her support for the LGBT community, but she is definitely not the first country star to have done so.

And lastly, Jimmy LaSalvia, co-founder of conservative gay group GOProud, gets grilled on his organization.

The Wrap-Up: June 14, 2012

There is a slow-burning revolt against homophobia from within the Mormon Church.

Another victim of voter ID laws: a 95 year old Wisconsinite.

After a noted silence, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has announced his support for his state's voter purge. Gov. Scott must be thrilled.

The International Olympic Committee is seeing increasing pressure to ban nations that outlaw homosexuality.

A humanist group has filed a complaint in North Carolina about the state violating the first amendmentin using churches as polling stations. It isn't surprising that this happens in North Carolina, but that it happens all over the nation.

Troy, Michigan's mayor has struck again. Seriously lady, we get it, you don't like gay people. Next topic please...

A co-founder (Jimmy LaSalvia) of conservative gay group GOProud was interviewed Wednesday morning by MSNBC's Thomas Roberts.

I had no idea that marijuana was as "legal" as it is (at least where states are concerned), but it may become even more so.

Members of the Ohio House of Representatives have sign on to a call for the state to protect citizens from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identification..

And lastly, President Obama is urging Maryland voters to vote against the state's proposed marriage equality ban. With Mitt Romney supporting a federal marriage ban, I wonder who I should vote for...?

The Wrap-Up: March 9, 2012

ADDENDUM: The February jobs report came in and 227,000 jobs were created in that month. Get ready to hear the GOP explain how it's all thanks to them and the Obama administration deserves zero credit. (The report came out just after this was originally posted)

The settlement reached in the Anoka-Hennpin school district has some far-reaching affects regrading anit-LGBT bullying.

There's some potentially good news out of Maryland. Remember, at the end of the day, these things usually come down to who turns out at the polls.

As a true sign of the impending apocalypse, Republicans are speaking against Grover Norquist's anti-tax pledge.

Yesterday marked the 500th day of Barack Obama's "evolution" on marriage equality.

I think when the military was doing the training after DADT was repealed, they missed a spot (or this Master Sergeant was out sick that day).

I'm wondering why a Nebraska football coach was testifying on (in this case, against) a town ordinance prohibiting LGBT discrimination. Although he certainly comes off as an expert...on doing the discriminating that is.

GOProud and Sam "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelberger are working together, meaning neither has any credibility (not that they did before of course).

Mitt Romney still has a Mormon problem.

And lastly, it looks like OMM's boycott of JCPenney didn't go so well. What a pity...

GOProud: Breaking the Camel's Back

I have long defended the principle of having gay conservative groups. I believe that one of the best ways to change the Republican party from being the homophobic party that it currently is and has been is from the inside. However, I have my limits when it comes to being understanding. GOProud, one of these gay/conservative groups has taken itself beyond those limits. This group actually has Ann Coulter as a board member. This woman is no friend to gay people at all. Quite the opposite, when she was against the repeal of DADT, she is against marriage equality, and the list goes on and on and on. She calls liberals in general a "Godless" lot ("Godless: The Church of Liberalism" was the title of a book she wrote). This is akin to having a KKK member on the board of the NAACP. When it comes to gay rights (or anything that resembles human decency), this woman has zero redeeming qualities. It's as if this organization is actually working against the rights for which the rest of us, including other gay/conservative groups like the Log Cabin Republicans, are fighting so hard. Even though I still feel that gay/conservative groups are still worth having, GOProud is no longer a group that I can defend.

Twitter Watch: Rough Support

Talk about throwing your own under the bus. As many bad things as she and her husband have said against the LGBT community, I can't imagine any gay person supporting Michele, let alone an entire organization. However, this coming from GOProud specifically, I can't say I'm surprised that they want to let the wolf into the hen-house.

Slamming GOProud (from The Advocate Magazine): Part 3

This is an article which appeared in "The Advocate Magazine" recently:

In the end, CPAC chair Alberto Cardenas indicated GOProud likely won’t be invited back, bowing to conservative groups like the Family Research Council, which, along with other groups, boycotted CPAC.

“They used that platform to be quite aggressive,” Cardenas told conservative publication Human Events of GOProud. “The ideal GOProud participation would have been, ‘You know what, guys? This is an inclusive society. We’re as interested in these fiscal issues as you are. Fill your website with fiscal issues that you’re for and be a mainstream discusser of issues. We just happen to have a different lifestyle.’ ” In other words, sit down, shut up, and don’t challenge homophobia.

And that’s what GOProud’s drama tells us about the endurance of the Christian right: It still wields a great deal of power in the GOP (witness how abortion became front and center in the budget battle), even as mainstream America is well beyond its issues. 

The media claimed that the Tea Party was something new, focused on fiscal issues, not social ones, and had supplanted the religious right. But in fact, what we’ve come to learn is that it is often the same old crowd, and many of the Tea Party activists are also moral crusaders. That was borne out in the campaigns by two of the most prominent Tea Party Senate candidates in 2010, Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell.

GOProud is useful to the GOP insofar as it provides the cover of being “tolerant” of gays at a time when a majority of Americans now support marriage equality, and as younger voters support full equality in huge numbers. But Cardenas’s statement shows the limit of that tolerance. Those who control the GOP don’t want to see open gays in the party at all — even if they’re only supporting “fiscal” reforms. 

That makes LGBT rights a wedge issue for Democrats to now wield against Republicans instead of the other way around, as it had been for so long. When President Obama decided not to defend DOMA, it was good for the LGBT movement but also great politics for him, something we all hope he and Democratic leaders have realized. It put the GOP on the defensive, as John Boehner showed no passion in defending DOMA — and knows most Americans don’t support DOMA — but had no choice because of that antigay base, which GOProud’s wild ride underscores is still very much in charge. ✤

Slamming GOProud (from The Advocate Magazine): Part 2

This is an article which appeared in "The Advocate Magazine" recently:

 GOProud is opposed to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which is now law. And fearing being cut out of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference - which for 2012 has banned groups that support any pro-gay legislation - Barron told the blog RedState last February, "Considering we don't support gay marriage and DADT isn't part of our agenda [I'm] not sure how this affects us at all."

Barron and GOProud now also support House speaker John Boehner defending section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act in federal appeals court after President Obama announced he believed the law is unconstitutional — though Barron himself is legally married to a man in Washington, D.C. Barron’s husband, to whom he refers a lot in his tweets, is a D.C. teacher who wrote a piece in MetroWeekly about how kids learn to be bullies from adults who bully one another. But there couldn’t possibly be a better example of an adult bullying other adults than Barron tweeting this: “The gay left = the American Taliban. Hateful, angry and dumb as shit.” He’s also tweeted that Andrew Sullivan is “fat,” “pathetic,” and “self-important” and that Meghan McCain is “intensely stupid.”

Barron has said in a radio interview that he wanted to see as many candidates as possible in the Republican primaries — including, presumably, even the antigay ones, which is most of them — but then tweeted that Fred Karger, the only openly gay announced candidate (who is associated with GOProud’s rival group, Log Cabin, and actually forcefully takes on homophobic politicians), is a “fake candidate.”

Barron’s impulsive tweets are telling in a variety of ways. He obsessively tweets about his abs and his workouts in a way that betrays a guy who’s pretty insecure about his body and perhaps his very manhood, out to prove he’s a real guy, not like those other gays, such as the “catty” Barney Frank, who Barron tweeted has a “purse” and wants to “sit in Scott Brown’s lap.”

This insecurity over masculinity seems to be a theme at GOProud. In a YouTube clip that received much attention over the winter, GOProud member Matt Hissey says he doesn’t like most gays: “I don’t really like gay people that much. Gay people frustrate me, the stereotypical gay people, it frustrates me…”

In an interview on my radio program, Barron had a meltdown after I noted blatant hypocrisy in his apologizing for having rightly called conservative power attorney Cleta Mitchell a “nasty bigot” in a public forum. Conservatives at CPAC and across the right-wing blogosphere expressed outrage at his comment, and conservative lesbian radio host Tammy Bruce quit the GOProud board within days. GOProud’s invitation back to CPAC was jeopardized as well, in yet another example of Barron’s volatile nature getting him in trouble. Attempting to stop the bleeding, he issued a slobbering apology for his bad “language.”

When I noted that it was “wussy” of him to apologize to Mitchell while refusing to apologize for calling the gay left “dumb as shit,” Barron lashed out, and I had to bring the interview to a close.

Slamming GOProud (from The Advocate Magazine): Part 1

This is an article which appeared in "The Advocate Magazine" recently:

Lessons Learned

COMMENTARY: Two notable themes emerge from GOProud: the lack of any actual gay pride in those who run it and the truth about who is still really steering the GOP.

By Michelangelo Signorile

There are two things we’ve learned from GOProud, the small, often obnoxious right-wing gay group that makes the Log Cabin Republicans seem like liberals. For the uninitiated, this is the group that supports outspokenly anti-equality public figures — from Ann Coulter, who was paid to speak to the group, to Donald Trump, who is opposed to any gay unions—and targeted gay congressman Barney Frank during the 2010 election with an ad that called him “catty.” 

First off, denialists and elitists who believe they are superior to other gays — even if the attitude masks a pitiful self-loathing — are clearly as prevalent as ever in the LGBT movement, except that they can now be out of the closet. Perversely, the fact that we can find such people in GOProud is a measure of our success. 

The other thing we’ve learned is that the Christian right, contrary to all the media blather about it losing steam as the Tea Party ascends, still has a grip on the GOP, and this can actually be helpful in gaining civil rights through the Democratic Party—if the Democrats recognize a useful wedge issue staring them in the face.

On the first count, let’s look back in history. There’ve always been gays in even the most extreme corners of the Republican Party. There was the reckless senator Joseph McCarthy’s right-hand man, Roy Cohn, who helped his boss ferret out both alleged communists and homosexuals in the government in the 1950s. In the ’80s closeted conservative activist Terry Dolan vocally supported the antigay agenda of Christian right leaders as chair of the National Conservative Political Action Committee. He helped elect—and wrote a book about—Ronald Reagan, who bowed to religious extremists and ignored AIDS, the disease that took Dolan’s life in 1986 at the age of 35. 

Justin Raimondo was the openly gay campaign manager of the virulently antigay Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign. In the new century we had Ken Mehlman, chair of the Republican National Committee and, later, George W. Bush’s reelection campaign manager, who promoted anti–gay marriage amendments across the country, helping the GOP to win with hate. And let’s not forget Mary Cheney, who, like Mehlman now, is out, but gives money to antigay politicians even as she enjoys the benefits of hard-won gay rights advances.

Their motivations are probably unique to each but there are some commonalities: a desire to be close to power; a hunger for attention and GOP approval; a selfish devotion to Republican “fiscal” policies over civil rights; and a belligerence toward gay activists, whom they seem to detest. 

GOProud’s Chris Barron fits right in, often appearing desperate for Republican acceptance, compromising his positions at a moment’s notice—if he even had any to begin with. Formerly political director for the Log Cabin Republicans, he broke away and cofounded GOProud, claiming that Log Cabin wasn’t conservative enough. Since its founding in 2009, GOProud slowly moved in the direction of not taking any pro-gay positions, all in an attempt to be included in the Republican Party, even though Barron oddly once tweeted that GOProud is “a gay organization, we only work on gay issues.”