Take that, gay Republicans:

[h/t Think Progress]

As Joe said, this is unreal. Here is Rick Santorum’s former chief of staff, Robert Traynham, who is a black gay man, defending Santorum’s bigotry.

This past week hasn’t been good for GOProud. And now, this: GOProud Co-Founder and Board Chairman Chris Barron announced today that he was stepping down as head of the masochistically self-loathing conservative LGBT organization:

Today GOProud, an organization of gay and straight Americans seeking to promote freedom by supporting free markets, limited government, and a respect for individual rights, announced that they were restructuring their Board of Directors. “Given the tremendous growth and success of GOProud in our first two and a half years of operation, we are restructuring and expanding our Board to meet the needs of a bigger organization,” said Christopher R. Barron, co-founder and outgoing Chair of the GOProud Board. Barron’s term as Board Chairman expires on December 31, 2011.

But don’t go crying in your soup just yet:

“My role in the day to day management of GOProud will continue as the organization’s Chief Strategist and I will remain on the Board as Chairman Emeritus,” continued Barron. “It is with great excitement that I announce that conservative coalition builder and former CPAC Director Lisa De Pasquale has been elected interim Chairman of the GOProud Board of Directors. Lisa brings a lifetime of experience within the conservative movement and is the perfect person to oversee the expansion and restructuring of GOProud’s Board, as well as to help in refining GOProud’s mission and to aid in building a bigger, better and stronger organization.”

So it looks like Chris will still be around, but he’ll be taking orders from De Pasquale, an event planner and former CPAC chair.

What do you think: is the sun setting on GOProud, or will they be back, better than ever, and ready to fight in 2012 under their new board chair?

h/t: Joe

For some reason, gay wingnuts think that any time a law is passed which allows people more freedom to play with guns, it’s a victory for gay rights. Now, I’m a Southern liberal, which means I have no problem with guns in general, but that I also support sane gun control laws. But this, a measure passed in the House Judiciary Committee to allow conceal-and-carry reciprocity between states, has absolutely nothing to do with gay rights:

On Tuesday, the House Judiciary Committee approved a measure which would give gay Americans a tool to help us defend ourselves against gay bashers.

[...]

It’s unfortunate that Democrats, to paraphrase Joe Biden, have no notion what it’s like for a gay man or lesbian to be on the other side of a thug intent on beating him up — with no means to defend himself. Let’s hope that organizations concerned with the welfare of gay Americans, like the Human Rights Campaign, will denounce House Democrats for their insensitivity to gay bashing.

Yeah. Um. The writer of that quote lives in West Hollywood, which is totally the Wild West of gay bashing.

I don’t feel the need to address the fundamental dishonesty of the suggestion that, by opposing the expansion of gun rights, Democrats are being “insensitive to gay bashing” — that’s just one of the trademarks of the garden variety wingnut blogger. “Stick it to ‘dem lib’ruls at all costs!,” is their mantra. And to their credit, even his regular commenters are going “what the hell does this thing have to do with that thing?”

But I’ve seen this argument before from gay wingnuts, and every time I see it, all I can see is abject fear of the outside world. Sad.

A mayoral election in the Republican stranglehold stronghold of San Diego is underway, and two of the Republican candidates for mayor are also openly gay. Voters don’t care:

Two of the top Republican candidates for mayor of San Diego are openly gay and voters have barely registered it. According to the Associated Press, the issue just doesn’t come up at campaign appearances or in local news coverage. That’s because lesbian district attorney Bonnie Dumanis and gay city council member Carl DeMaio haven’t made their marks as LGBT activists, which, say political watchers, may help explain why their sexual orientation has been a non-issue even among social conservatives.

The article goes on to point out, though, that the question that remains is whether or not the Republican party will actually give one of the gay candidates their full backing. Supporting gay candidates is not historically one of the GOP’s strong suits.

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.

Dealing with a dog who Feels Under The Weather [perhaps knocking down the trash can and treating the mess as a buffet is not smart?], so here are the other things I haven’t blogged about:

1. The first marriage equality case is hitting Chile’s highest court.  Gay activists are calling it a historic moment.  [Link goes to "lifesitenews," so get ready for some hilarious Christian scare quotes.]

2.  Fred Karger, the gay Republican presidential candidate [unicorn chimera from space...] is not being allowed to participate in one of the earliest Iowa Republican debates.

3.  This story isn’t funny, but the headline is:  “Woman alleges Gophers fired her because she’s gay.”

4.  Finally, Rachel Maddow interviewed the amazing Daniel Hernandez last night.

Dear gay Republicans:  keep repeating your crap victim line about how it’s harder to get dates be accepted as a Republican in gay circles than it is to come out a gay among wingnuts, but we’ll still stick with the folks who are at least a bit more likely to respect our fundamental dignity as human beings. Think Progress:

During today’s RNC debate, all four candidates vying to replace current RNC Chairman Michael Steele reiterated their opposition to expanding marriage rights to gay and lesbian people, insisting that marriage can only be defined as a union between one man and one woman. The frontrunners for the position — Steele and Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus — also walked a tight rope of sorts, arguing that while marriage formed the foundation of American society, culture and history, excluding gay people from that all-important institution did not deny “dignity” to the LGBT community.

It’s sort of interesting, though, because none of the candidates are saying outright bigoted things anymore — at least not in the naked way they used to. They know that, even though their party is committed to sustaining its bigotry as long as it can, their views on the subject are no longer socially acceptable, especially among the segments of the population that are expected to live more than a few more years. So they say coded things meant to serve as dog biscuits whistles for the bigoted base, and hope that suffices until the arc of history requires them to embrace equality and rewrite history so that they can tell their kids, like they do now with desegregation, that it was Democrats who fought the hardest against equality. *

Watch a round-up of the comments:

*And what did those Southern Democrats all become later? REPUBLICANS! Why? RACISM! God!

Unbelievable.  Short-sighted.  But it’s significant to see that this sort of logic exists, regardless of how wrong it is.

A new Research 2000/Daily Kos poll of self-identified Republicans was released this morning, and the results, which expose the actual beliefs of many of our neighbors, are stunning. It’s hard for thinking people to wrap their heads around results like this, but here are highlights:

Should Barack Obama be impeached, or not?

Yes 39
No 32
Not Sure 29

For what? Dunno.

Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist?

Yes 63
No 21
Not Sure 16

The next question, of course, should have been “define socialist.” These people, after all, think that the terms socialist and fascist are interchangeable. The next two are stunning:

Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win?

Yes 24
No 43
Not Sure 33

Do you believe ACORN stole the 2008 election?

Yes 21
No 24
Not Sure 55

So over half of Republicans at least think it’s possible that Obama wants terrorists to win, and that ACORN is such a frightening boogeyman that they could steal ten million votes for Obama. Stunning.

What about gays? What do Republicans really think about gays?

Should openly gay men and women be allowed to serve in the military?

Yes 26
No 55
Not Sure 19

Should same sex couples be allowed to marry?

Yes 7
No 77
Not Sure 16

Should gay couples receive any state or federal benefits?

Yes 11
No 68
Not Sure 21

Should openly gay men and women be allowed to teach in public schools?

Yes 8
No 73
Not Sure 19

OUCH. So only a quarter of them have wrapped their little heads around the idea that gay people defend their freedom to be as ignorant as they want, only seven percent think we should have equal rights, only eleven percent think we should have any rights AT ALL, and only eight percent think we should be able to teach school.

Yeeeeeeah. There’s some major knuckle-dragging going on here.

And the fact that gay Republicans even exist, and that some of these gay Republicans try to defend their party against (correct) charges of homophobia, of bigotry, of abject stupidity continues to be a stunner.

One more, and then go read the rest of the results (don’t miss their fact-free beliefs on reproductive rights) for yourself:

Should public school students be taught that the book of Genesis in the Bible explains how God created the world?

Yes 77
No 15
Not Sure 8

Sheesh! The fact that opinions like this still survive in this country and that people who hold them go through their lives without being laughed at every day is frightening.

Conservatives often complain that the elitist coastal liberals are condescending to them, and really, I think that’s a valid complaint. But we shouldn’t change that. We should be condescending toward these sorts of opinions, because they’re not valid opinions. People are free to hold them, because, hey, it’s America, but we shouldn’t lower ourselves to such a level that we pretend that opinions like this deserve equal time, because they’re not formed based on equal facts or equal reality. None of the above Republican beliefs can be justified with evidence. In fact, only by sustained ignorance can they stand.