In days of old, “conservative” (within the American context) once described someone who favored small government, minimal government intrusion into people’s lives, and relatively unfettered freedom of speech, religion, and commerce.

A coalition of ex-gay activists apparently hopes to change that.

Exodus Youth activist Mike Ensley, pundit Warren Throckmorton, former Exodus board member Tom Cole, ex-gay activist Stephen Black, and 30 others have formed the Conservative Education Project on Facebook.

The group introduction states:

“Now more than ever, it is vital for true Conservatives to band together to educate and equip ourselves to protect and promote the values that have made the USA great!”

and…

“If you are a true believer in Conservative principles and are willing to take an active role in learning, sharing and and promoting those values, please join!’

The group’s intro page features a portrait of the very weakly Christian big-government president, Ronald Reagan — who spent much of the 1980s expanding U.S. government in both size and debt while extolling a pro-death ideology of runaway nuclear arms proliferation, capital punishment, and guerrilla warfare against liberal Latin American Christians. Reagan parroted the small-government values of Barry Goldwater, but his actions buried an enlarged government in debt, human-rights embarrassments, foreign-policy humiliation, and a painful recession at the end of the decade.

Like Reagan — himself a divorcee — the Conservative Education Project poses as a defender of conservatism even as it erodes conservative values.

These ex-gay activists tend to favor:

  • government regulation of sexuality and religion,
  • government regulation of marriage and church according to religious-right dictates,
  • the looting of taxpayer wallets to fund billions of dollars’ worth of religious-right faith-based initiatives,
  • an assumption that people who disagree with them are not Christian or conservative, and
  • anything-goes partisan half-truths and fear-mongering about Democratic presidential candidates. (Throckmorton and Cole both spent the past several months demonizing the Christian Barack Obama and praising the lapsed Christian divorcee McCain — Throckmorton on his blog, Cole via Facebook.)

Are these ex-gay activists “true conservatives” or are they just waging political warfare to kick real conservatives out of the conservative movement?