This is kind of a damning piece, all the way around. Jeb Golinkin at FrumForum addresses the differences between GOProud and the Log Cabin Republicans, and in a way, exposes just how bigoted groups like the Family Research Council are to back out of CPAC. You see, GOProud isn’t really doing anything. A year ago, it was the Log Cabin Republicans who were holding on to the last threads of their relevance, but that’s changed in a big way:
This year, many social conservative groups are up in arms over GOProud’s return to CPAC, yet the Log Cabin Republicans are conspicuously absent from this entire CPAC fiasco. Why?
The founders of GOProud made a calculated decision to get their name into the public eye and the debate over sponsoring CPAC allowed them to do so at a time when Log Cabin Republicans was floundering. But GOProud may have hitched its wagon to the wrong movement, and at times the wrong candidate. In a September 2010 story on the group, Ben Smith quotes one of GOProud’s founders as saying “We’re Joe Miller; Log Cabin is Lisa Murkowski.” We all know how that turned out, with Murkowski winning reelection and voting to repeal DADT. (During the vote on DADT, GOProud praised the votes of Senators Mark Kirk and Scott Brown, but was silent on Murkowski and other GOP senators it did not endorse.)
The LCR v. GOProud “feud” has gone much the same way as the Alaska Senate race. If GOProud’s star was on the rise at this time last year, this year it is much more desperate for attention. LCR spearheaded the lawsuit which led a federal judge to overturn DADT and it played a vocal role in pushing Republicans to support repealing DADT. Its new executive director, R. Clarke Cooper, became a regular guest on cable news over the course of the year. Under his leadership, LCR probably helped deliver the biggest year that gay Republicans have ever had.
[…]
Conservatives tolerate GOproud precisely because they know the group won’t actually push them to address substantive issues involving gay rights. GOProud’s motto might as well be: “Gays should not ask what the Republican Party can do for them. Gays should ask what they can do for the Republican Party.” But for those gay conservatives who would like their organization to speak for their own interests too, little is to be gained at an event like CPAC. LCR realizes, I suspect, that it doesn’t need to fight such public wars as the tides of progress flow in a pro-gay direction. LCR’S absence from CPAC is a sign of LCR’s strength. GOProud may have provoked social conservatives into a petulant and self-destructive display, but CPAC remains as hostile as ever to a gay civil rights agenda. GOProud’s participation does nothing to correct that offense.
Ouch! The whole piece is worth reading, as it captures a lot of what I’ve noticed about the gay Republican groups over the years. In short: I may not agree with them on many, many things, but at least LCR is doing something.
