CPAC and the Gays

By Julia Rosen

The far right is holding their annual conference called CPAC. They are perhaps best known for their straw poll of presidential contenders to get a sense of how the conservative base feels at the moment. The event is packed with speeches and vendors. And yes, the homos have been a topic of conversation.

HRC managed to grab this video of a press conference about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

It’s hard to pick the most ourageous moment of that press conference. Is it Elaine Donnelly saying Admiral Mullen let down the troops? No, though I do love that she is wearing a rainbow pin. What about Tom Minnery from Focus on the Family calling the potential repeal of DADT a “social engineering debacle” and claiming that it will result in a bunch of “severely disappointed gay men”. To which I say: what about the lesbians? Or Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council who said this was not an issue of “two men or two women holding hands in camouflage”. Huh?

An even bigger head-scratcher was David Keene from the American Conservative Union to tried to draw analogy to health care reform and wall street reform, claiming that people who don’t know anything about the military are “telling us how it ought to be run.” This comes of course from a guy who has absolutely no military experience himself and has been a political hack nearly his whole life. Penny Nance of the Concerned Women of American thinks that repealing DADT means Obama is not serious about the War on Terror!!!

Last but not least is Admiral James “Ace” Lyons (ret.) who incredibly starts talking about 19th century history, claiming that there were so many gays in the military that mothers tried to keep their sons out of the service “rampant” he says, just “rampant”. That’s not something I ever learned in history class. My favorite part is when he starts comparing gays to “drug pushers”. Yes, really.

But this video is not all of the fun to be had at CPAC, when it comes to the gays. A new group GOProud (get it, they are Republicans who haven’t let their fellow party members make them hate themselves) signed up for a table, causing the Liberty Council (Jerry Falwell’s group) to throw a hissy fit and threaten to pull out. CPAC called their bluff. GOProud came and so did the Liberty Council. Mother Jones has the full story, but this was my favorite bit.

GOProud already sports 2,000 members and is apparently growing. Its CPAC booth, separated by a single table from the National Organization for Marriage, the anti-gay marriage group, drew some curious looks from conference attendees, but LaSalvia says people had been friendly.

I wonder if Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown’s heads exploded, when they saw their neighbors.