“This gathering of the nation’s most influential conservatives gives us an incredible opportunity to deliver our message.”

I’m at a loss what that message might be.  “It’s okay if you need to walk on our throats to get elected!” or “Hey, who needs the same rights as everyone else!”

I have several friends who are politically totally aligned with the right - except for that pesky psychopathic anti-gay bigotry. 

I’m almost compelled to wish GOProud good luck, cuz it’s looking like a lost cause from out here.

Pam, CPAC is sponsored by the American Conservative Union. You’re thinking of the Values Voters Summit, which is sponsored by FRC.

I’ve been to both (the last time in 2008), and CPAC is your run-of-the-mill, mainstream, Romney and Giuliani supporting conservative crowd. It’s Values Voters that is a festival of crazy. Pretty much every exhibit there is anti-abortion or anti-gay, or sponsored by an evangelical church. There was even an exhibit comparing gays to the 9/11 hijackers (I have pictures).

The “Focus on the Anus” thing is hilarious, by the way…and true.

The conservatives are notorious for double-speaking to minority groups.  Remember the “MLK was a Republican!” posters back at the 2006 CPAC?
http://media.photobucket.com/image/MLK was a republican/doublenutz/MLKwasaRepublican-1.jpg
I think it was right beside Malkin’s “In Defense of Internment” booth.  :-p
Or the George Bush bumper stickers that proclaimed “The W is for Women”

But yes, you had guys like Sullivan playing the abused housewife because the conservative principles - on paper at least - seem to support gay rights.  In theory, the conservative principles of civil liberties and personal responsibility seem really great.  In practice, they’re non-existent.

This just looks like another fly drawn into the exotic allure of the bug zapper to me.

This doesn’t seem to be a an actual gay organization that’s being sucked into the conservative orbit. Whois says the domain dates only to March 2009, and the board of directors has all of three people, all republican political-consultant types. The contribution page says “Please support GOProud as we work to build a new organization to represent gay conservatives and their allies. Your contributions are needed at this critical time in its development.” Translated: “We don’t have money, influence or a lot of members, but toss some bucks at us and we might some day.”

From an entrepeneurial point of view, contributing $4K to “sponsor” CPAC is a good way to get visibility that might rake in more contributions.

Hey, hey, hey, let’s not be too hard on Log Cabin Republicans.  They are pretty much the only group within the GOP that gets fucked over by their leaders as often as progressives within the Democratic party.  There should be some empathy there.

Shorter paul: it’s astroturf.

Okay, seeker6079, but at least we progressives who keep getting fucked over aren’t lining up under a banner that says “COME LET US FUCK YOU OVER”. Sure there can be empathy, but in my mind it’s always coupled with aghast incomprehension of what in God’s name leads somebody to be a Log Cabin Republican in the first place.

In other news….chicken sharpens axe.

nuts, Aaron beat me too it!

it’s always been a mystery to me, why LGBT’s would ever, under any of the present circumstances, proclaim affinity with the republican party. are they so self-loathing that just being constantly abused in public isn’t sufficient, they need to go looking for abuse? i just don’t get it.

Aaron @ 7
Thanks for the belly-laugh, I needed that.  I agree, having, in the past, defined them LCRs as a “group of homosexual Americans ...who seek to advance the rights of gays in the USA by becoming members of and working for the victory of a political party devoted in large measure to ending all rights for homosexual Americans…”

paul has it nailed, though, as you correctly point out.

Why is GOProud still clinging to the hope that they can “work from within” to effect change?

Can’t really say without invoking Godwin’s Law.

cpinva (at #6), The attractiveness of the USA right wing lies in the exact issues Pam identifies in her post - privacy and limited government. Of course, as Pam also points out, the right wing is just blowing smoke up their audience’s asses, when they profess those values and embrace religious finger-wagging, an expansive national security state, and endless debt-financed war.

The reality of the USA right wing’s hypocrisy and intellectual poverty, though, does not undercut the theoretical appeal of advocating the hoarding of personal wealth and minimizing taxes, in order to build up fortifications against other people and protect oneself from the hateful rabble. Why negotiate or worry about providing, through higher taxes, for the welfare of those who hate you?

(Lest a shitstorm begin: I, as a defender of the welfare state on the grounds it is morally required, do not hold these positions, but their theoretical appeal to a marginalized and oppressed minority is hard to deny.)

oops, cpinva was at #9

Still, it bugs me that often they’ll say things like how corporatist Obama or Democrats are… And then do that as a reason to support the GOP.  AUGH.

LIBERATION!
....
Sing from the rooftops:

“Atheism is dead!”

http://www.conspiracycafe.net/forum/index.php?/topic/25104-atheist-apocalypse/page__pid__117856_

so luke at #12, what you’re basically saying is that these people are just really, really stupid?

ok, i’ll buy into that.

cpinva at #16, yes, I think they would be definitely wrong in thinking that the GOP today embraces principles of privacy and small government, if that is in fact why they have aligned themselves with the GOP. The GOP just pays lip service to those principles.

Even so, given a choice between trying to protect oneself from predatory other people by keeping taxes low and hence one’s individual wealth and castle walls high, as opposed to buying into the welfare of one’s community through higher taxes and social spending and then insisting on tolerance and equality as prerequisites for democratic rule-making, I think we are obligated to choose the latter, even when the people in a particular community are people one doesn’t like very much.

The GOP basically advocates against the latter, ideal vision of society and community, so they will never have my support anyway. But I can see how a marginalized minority might say, Screw everyone else; the community thinks I am weird and disgusting, so the best way to defend myself is to stay as rich as possible, keep them at as far a distance as possible, and pay as little in taxes for social spending as possible.

Also, aren’t Liberals today the true champions of privacy in the USA - for example, by insisting on curbing moral authoritarian doctrines like religion and peeping into people’s bedrooms to sermonize and scold; by demanding that officials obey constitutional restraints on domestic eavesdropping; and by insisting on measures of sexual privacy as important parts of people’s dignity and autonomy; and by insisting on LGBT equality as important prereqs for democracy? (I have to add that Obama and moderate Dems have been disappointing on some of these principles, but it’s nothing like Bush and the Right).

Jesus Wept.

Guys guys guys guys guys.  If you’re that keen on being Bottoms, could you at least pick a Top that’l show you some respect after they’ve finished using & abusing you?  If not, could you at least not pine for them so hard in public?  Children of all ages are watching & you’re sending out some painfully mixed messages.

For those of you having doubts watch this clip 1000x per day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ci9LVlCNJwM&feature=related

Not being a member of the GLBT community, I find it hard to understand why any self-respecting GLBT would associate themselves with any party incorporating a plank that negates their ever achieving equal rights. Should I assume this effort to establish conservative bona fides by some of our GLBT citizens to be an acknowledgement of their willingness to be accepted as just another tolerated oddity as it was de rigueur for wealthy socialites of the ‘60s to include Black Panther members as dinner guests?