Look, I appreciate groups like GOProud to a point, just because watching people like Tony Perkins pull their hair out and have temper tantrums is hilarious, no matter who’s causing it.  But I’ve got to say, it’s really kinda weird to me that these people are so willing to beg for an embrace from people who don’t respect their fundamental dignity as human beings, and no, people who do not support equal rights for gay people do not respect gay people’s fundamental dignity as human beings.  This isn’t 1965.  There is no legitimate excuse for a sentient person to “agree to disagree” on these issues.  You either view us as lesser, or you do not.  Dan Blatt at Gay Wingnut:

That said, as is, [Ben Smith’s] word choice suggests that gay Republicans have adopted a confrontational tone with the GOP. That may have been try in Log Cabin’s early years, but today, we’re not so much demanding acceptance as finding a welcome.

Yeah, there still remain social conservatives loath to include us in conservative conclaves, but, by and large, we’ve found a welcome.

And yet, the GOP still can’t run a presidential candidate who doesn’t perform the Stations of the Anti-Gay Cross for the frothing morons who make up their base. Some “welcome.”

Conservatives today are more concerned with the size of government than they are with the private lives of individuals — and pretty much have been for the past forty years, only the media do seem to dwell on the presence of religious conservatives in the movement as if said indviduals define it, rather than represent one aspect of it

Uh, maybe in New Hampshire. Not in Alabama or Georgia or any of the other GOP strongholds.  Oh, and the House GOP is hellbent on defending DOMA right into its grave.  What a hill to die on.

With the first primary debate last night, the GOP, as Matt Taibbi said yesterday, “kick[ed] off the long process of burying their party as a mainstream political force for the next decade or so.”  [Read Taibbi’s whole piece, by the way.]  The standard-bearers for the party are, with two exceptions, wingnuts so extreme that they couldn’t appeal to anyone beyond the True Believers if their lives depended on it.  And of course, the exceptions [Pawlenty, Romney], as Taibbi points out, are so painfully boring — and decidedly doubleplusungood when it comes to catering to the wingnuts who will vote in the Republican primaries — that they have little chance of making it out of the primaries, much less having a decent showing in the general election.

In a way, I feel gay conservatives’ pain, because it must be alarming to watch their beloved party go even further into Bachmann-land, but at the same time, since they don’t seem to be asking for dignity or respect, maybe it’s just as well.  I mean, Michele Bachmann’s family watches Glee, right?  As long as she’ll let the gays watch it with her [I mean, they have to sit outside and peer in through the window, of course], and as long as they can shriek the word “diva!” at Ann Coulter, it’s not like they need to be treated like first-class citizens.