To many, “gay Republican” is an oxy moron. If it is, then, it appears to be thriving, at least by one standard: There are now two national groups dedicated to conservative gays, though you’d be hard pressed to get either the struggling Log Cabin Republicans or splinter group GOProud to acknowledge either is going about their agendas in the right way. So what are these two groups arguing about?
Allow us to boil down the Jenny Jones-level fighting that The New Republic discusses
GOProud on LCR: They aren’t “Republican” enough. They care more about hate crimes and ENDA than estate taxes and privatizing Social Security, which should be more important to gays because of they way they’re affected by same-sex marriage bans. They hate on GOP chairman Michael Steele too much. They mimic liberal Gay Inc. rights groups like HRC.
LCR on GOProud: They only formed GOProud because they are, like, really bitter. And by “they” we mean Chris Barron and Jimmy LaSalvia, who both wanted executive director Patrick Sammon’s job after he left, but were turned down, so they created the new org. How ‘dem grapes?
How about we take this to the next level?
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Stamp
that’s one piece of bad writing, frankly.
Mark
I say let ’em schism. Over and over again.
Flame out is the phrase that comes to mind.
Dinosaur is a single word that pops up.
Kaput is a wonderful German word I think of now, as well.
Jet
Splitter!
DonG90806
Who cares??!!
Dennis
I can’t believe I “have a horse in this race”, but GOproud actually makes the LCR’s seem almost sympathetic…(GoProud would be just plain pathetic.)
GoProuders don’t care about ENDA, or hate crimes?! Sound like a bunch of gay Dick Cheneys…rather a bunch of assholes who just happen to like dick…literally and figuratively.
Alec
@Dennis: Actually, I would be hard pressed to figure out what exactly it is the gaypatriot.net crowd cares about. They’re not ecstatic about marriage rights or even civil unions and domestic partnerships. Presumably, they would decry Lawrence v. Texas as judicial “activism.”
So maybe they represent the 4% of the CA gay electorate that voted in favor of Proposition 8.
DeanP
They need to have two republican gay groups so each gay republican can have his own group.
Tom in Lazybrook
I find GOProud to be a small group of very right wing partisans that don’t wish to engage in any discussions that don’t fit their narrow talking points. Some of them came out of the Gaypatriot blog. Don’t go there unless you want to be treated to refusals to address major issues in the Gay community, an obsession with Barney Frank on non-Gay issues, and complete hypocrisy when it comes to calling out Dems who don’t support the Gay community 100%, while ignoring those Republicans who demean our community (Virginia Foxx, they got nothing bad to say bout her there).
There’s a use for Gay group that represents the Gay community to those Conservatives that aren’t beyond reach and represents the conservative movement to the portion of the Gay community that is willing to work with them on part of their agenda. Unfortunately, GOProud appears to fail on both counts. Its a shame.
Jason
I guess I fall in the Go crowd. I think special laws for Hate crimes are assinine and likley are un-constitutional. A crime is a crime. There is no worse reason or better reason for committing one. There are laws on the books already to be used during sentencing that judge the level of violence used; no need for additional laws. Our law really should look more to intent not motive. If your intent was to kill someone and you fail you should be punished as if it was murder.
DeanP
@Jason: That’s ridiculous. There are all sorts of special enhancements in sentencing and prosecution for motive, or for the person you harm in committing a crime (e.g. you are punished worse for attacking/killing a police officer/congressman than for attacking/killing a bum on the street.)
DEREK WASHINGTON
“rather a bunch of assholes who just happen to like dick…literally and figuratively.”
Tee. Hee.