This past week hasn’t been good for GOProud. And now, this: GOProud Co-Founder and Board Chairman ChrisBarronannounced 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?
I support this idea from GOProud’s Chris Barron wholeheartedly, as it would continue and amplify the sideshow of failure that is the GOP primary process, to the amusement of normal people everywhere:
I love Herman Cain. I have spoken with him at length and I believe he is a good and decent person. I believe he is someone who speaks from the heart, someone who hasn’t been a product of our broken political system and someone who brings decades of real world business experience to this race. For me, however, this race has always been about the message and not just the messenger – and none of these allegations, true or false, about Cain’s personal life change the message one iota.
[...]
Every other candidate in this race is just another politician. Nominating any of them would do nothing to fundamentally transform the GOP and do nothing to strengthen the GOP. Herman Cain’ s campaign remains the only hope for Tea Party conservatives to show that politics as usual is over in the GOP.
It’s funny because Herman Cain not only seems to be a serial adulterer, but also because he’s a really, really bad candidate who would lose gloriously to Barack Obama while shouting “9-9-9!”
So please, yes, Herman Cain, stay in the race, to make your wanna-be wingnut gay lover happy, and to amuse America.
We’ll close with these words from Roger Ailes [the good one]:
The fact that Herman Cain spent 13 years trying to “help someone financially” and failed to do so should tell you everything you need to know about the Cain Presidency. “The economy just might turn around beginning about five years after my second term.”
Meant to post this earlier… For those of you who haven’t read it, please read the excellent piece by my friend (and fellow homocon) Bruce Carroll (aka GayPatriot)… Bruce’s endorsement of my man Herman Cain means another homocon is on the Herman Cain Train!
Talk about real diversity – gay conservatives backing a black conservative for President! Put that in your pipe and smoke it liberals!
Yeeeeeah, buddy, way to go! Way to stick it to the liberals, by saying, in essence, “Look, we have a black too!”
It’s difficult to parody them, as they make a mockery of themselves so effortlessly.
But it’s okay, you guys, because gay wingnuts aren’t like those whiny liberal gays who think the rights laid out in the Constitution apply to them! Silly liberals.
“Ann’s position on this clear, and so is GOProud’s,” says GOProud chairman Chris Barron. “We respectfully disagree. We aren’t the pod people here at GOProud. We can disagree among ourselves. Unlike the left and their RINO enablers we don’t believe that every person who opposes DADT repeal is anti-gay. Indeed Ann has done more for gay people — courageously speaking out at CPAC, for example — then most of the gay organizations here in D.C.”
The people who oppose gays in the military are not anti-gay, you guys! They just think that the military should be open to only some of the most qualified people in this country, not all. The fact that the ones they want to keep out are gay people doesn’t mean they’re anti-gay! Not in the slightest! Why, I bet some of those anti-DADT-repeal people would piss on gay people, if they were on fire!
But as I said weeks ago, Barron and Coulter look like they just might share a plastic surgeon, so we can understand why he would want to keep Waiting Room Time from getting awkward.
At Thursday night’s Fox News/?Google Republican debate, one question, posted to YouTube, came from a U.S. Army soldier serving in Iraq. Stephen Hill, donning a gray tee-?shirt emblazoned with the word “ARMY” on the front, asked Rick Santorum if he would try to “circumvent the progress” that has been made in allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly, effectively reinstating Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The audience actually booed him. Hill, apparently, is gay, and was concerned for his future. The idea that anyone would actually “boo” a U.S. service member, serving his country, risking his life in Iraq, is beyond comprehension.
“Do you plan to circumvent the progress that has been made for gay and lesbian soldiers in the military?” The crowd booed.
Morons. Santorum’s answer makes it even worse. He clearly has no respect for or understanding of our military, but that’s to be expected:
Answering Hill, Santorum said that “sexual activity has absolutely no place in the military,” and said the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which took effect this week, was injecting “social policy into the military.”
“What we’re doing is playing social experimentation with our military right now, and that’s tragic,” Santorum said.
Asked how he would answer soldiers like Hill, Santorum said he would not “throw them out.”
“But we would move forward in conformity with what was happening in the past, which is, that sex is not an issue,” he said. “Leave it alone, keep it to yourself, whether you are a heterosexual or a homosexual.”
Oh god, he is so stupid. First of all, DADT has nothing to do with “sexual activity in the military.” Moreover, it’s not social experimentation when pretty much every single one of our first world allies allows openly gay soldiers to serve without incident. And on top of that, is he saying that he would put a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy in place for straight soldiers?! I know that Santorum doesn’t consider or understand a damn word that comes out of his own mouth — that’s where his funny Google problem came from — but does he not realize that when a male soldier mentions his wife, he is implicitly stating that he is a heterosexual? With DADT gone, a male soldier is also free to mention his husband or put a picture of said husband on his desk, or in his quarters off in some war zone that we wouldn’t be in in the first place if pansy-ass Republicans like Rick Santorum didn’t support going to war willy-nilly in order to prop up their own fledgling manhood.
To their credit, the gay wingnut group GOProud actually decided to take the gay guy’s side in the argument for once, releasing this statement:
“Tonight, Rick Santorum disrespected our brave men and women in uniform, and he owes Stephen Hill, the gay soldier who asked him the question about Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal, an immediate apology.
“That brave gay soldier is doing something Rick Santorum has never done?–?put his life on the line to defend our freedoms and our way of life. It is telling that Rick Santorum is so blinded by his anti-?gay bigotry that he couldn’t even bring himself to thank that gay soldier for his service.
“Stephen Hill is serving our country in Iraq, fighting a war Senator Santorum says he supports. How can Senator Santorum claim to support this war if he doesn’t support the brave men and women who are fighting it?”
Because he’s a moron who cares more about his bizarre, uncomfortable obsession with homosexuality than really anything else in this life.
As I said the other day, in reference to Ann Coulter joining GOProud’s advisory board, nothing about it is surprising. I’ve never thought that she believes anything she says, but rather knows that wingnuts will lap her incendiary bigotry and ignorance up like feral cats.
Exhibit A: The brain trust at the American Family Association, who are oh-so-confused by this move and questioning Ann Coulter’s commitment to the Evangelical Christian lifestyle:
Vitagliano: Ann Coulter is hard to read but if you’re a Christian, I think you should take more care to tailor your commitments in things like this to your Christian views. I don’t know whether she just hasn’t thought this through or what, but this is kind of disappointing to me.
This is not an issue, I don’t think, that you clown around with. This is a very serious issue. I know she likes to laugh, she likes to have fun with her politics, but this is not an issue that you clown around with. It has serious real-world repercussions.
Jackson: I think it begs the questions then Buster: how must Ann Coulter feel about the authority of Scripture? How can you join a group like this and allowed to be called the honorary chair and gay icon of the group and still feel comfortable calling yourself an evangelical Christian? There’s a gap there in the reasoning.
Wilson: I don’t know. It raises a huge red flag for me. The Bible has got to be the standard and it’s not.
Earlier today John mentioned that GOProud announced their appointment of Ann Coulter to their advisory board.
There are obviously so many jokes that can and will be made about this, but here’s what I think:
I have long suspected, based on what I’ve read and heard about her, that Ann Coulter hardly believes a word she says or writes, but rather has found a niche where she can exploit the bigotry and bitterness of wingnut shut-ins in order to pad her bank account. It’s a schtick, a business strategy. As Kathy Griffin memorably noted one morning when they were both booked on the Today Show and Ann showed up that morning in what looked like last night’s little black cocktail dress, she looked like she had come directly from the club.
GOProud is a motley crew of bitter, mostly white, male, allegedly homosexual men who value their white male privilege and their tax cuts far more than they value anything resembling principles. They’re willing to advocate against the equality of their fellow LGBT people because, you see, they don’t see the rest of the gay community as their “fellow” anything. Like other country club wingnuts, they’ve got theirs and screw the rest of you.
So let’s see: devoid of principles? Check. Willing to throw whomever and whatever in front of a bus to protect their own paychecks? Check.
Oh, and Chris and Ann look like they just might share a plastic surgeon.
No, folks, you’re not reading an Onion article: in a press release today, the folks at GOProud announced the appointment of polemicist Ann Coulter to the post of “Honorary Chair and Gay Icon” of that organization’s Advisory Council. Coulter joins other wingnuts notable conservatives including Andrew Breitbart and Grover Norquist on the council.
Apparently, as far as the self-loathing conservative gays at GOProud are concerned, being on the wrong side of every major LGBT rights issue (opposing the repeal of DADT and DOMA and the passage of ENDA and hate crimes laws, endorsing “reparative therapy,” etc.) presents absolutely no impediment to a person being arbitrarily declared a “gay icon.”
For a refresher course on Ann Coulter’s long history of homophobia, check out this list compiled by Media Matters.
Ann Coulter, gay icon? Who’s next, Anita Bryant? If anyone out there still believes that GOProud serves any function other than being a shill for the extreme anti-gay right wing, today’s insanity should put those misguided views to rest. Perhaps it’s time to break out the straitjackets for Barron & Company.
So you heard that the gay wingnut group GOProud, which really doesn’t do jack in terms of advocating for things which will help the LGBT community, has been disinvited from the next CPAC. Last year’s slapfight involved hate groups like the American Family Association throwing temper tantrums, gathering up their pitchforks and going home, due to the presence of the gays.
Now pretend journalist Andrew Breitbart, who is on the GOProud board, has melodramatically decided to take his hidden cameras and video doctoring equipment and stay home from the next CPAC. So has another wingnut called Roger Simon.
This is all very important stuff!!
Breitbart, a prominent conservative blogger and member of GOProud’s advisory council, has announced he won’t attend CPAC if the group is excluded, and another right-wing commentator, Roger L. Simon, has joined him. Meanwhile, GOProud leaders met with ACU chairman Al Cardenas Wednesday, the day after antigay comments by Cardenas’s wife, Diana, were publicized on a Miami Herald blog.
Herald blogger Steve Rothaus quoted statements Diana Cardenas made on her Facebook page, including her assertion that homosexuality is “not nature’s way” and is comparable to a disability or an illness. She also said, “I always wondered why homosexuals are referred to as ‘gay,’ kind of an oxymoron? Nothing really ‘gay’ about them or their movement.”
Oh, Diana Cardenas…who are you, again?
In related news, American Family Association spokestroll Bryan Fischer commented on the situation on his radio show. Here are the words Bryan hath pooped:
“Homosexuality is not a conservative value.” GOProud – their agenda is to put open homosexuals in the military and promote gay marriage. So they are as relentless and as far left as you can get on the issues of human sexuality. And we said look if CPAC is going to treat that as a conservative position we’re not going to be a part of this thing.”
Well, DADT repeal has been certified already, Bryan, so that’s not really their “agenda.” And honestly, they’re not really strong advocates for marriage equality. You just don’t like them because they’re gay and that makes you feel uncomfortable, for some weird reason.
Bryan also said something stupid about the ban on gay men donating blood, a policy which medical experts recognize as outdated and unnecessary. But Bryan’s not a smart or an honest man, so he’ll keep barking up that tree until the policy is gone, and for a little while after.
Lastly, Tintin at Sadly, No! has a brief little smackdown of some wingnut from Red State called “Neil Stevens,” who is really glad GOProud won’t be at CPAC because he just wants one happy place where he doesn’t have to be scared by gays. Or something like that.
The Washington Blade’s Chris Johnson reports that GOProud, “a gay Republican group….has been barred from full participation at CPAC, an upcoming prominent national conservative convention.” (I sure bet they will miss the cruising at the event)
Well, at least they are not alone, the nutty and dangerous right wing group, the John Birch Society, was also dumped — which highlights what little regard the modern conservative movement has for the jesters at GOProud. (Given this decision, maybe they should rename themselves GOPout). A GOPout board member weighed in on the fiasco:
“For the last two years, GOProud has sought to support CPAC and keep the conservative movement united. Unfortunately, elements inside and outside of ACU have pushed their own narrow, divisive and sometimes personal agenda. They have done so at the expense of the conservative movement. GOProud has been and will continue to be an outspoken proponent of conservative values and conservative policy. This organization will continue to work to bring conservatives of all stripes together to save this country and defeat the left. Obviously, that work will no longer be done at CPAC, but it will be done.”
Defeat the left? You mean the good people keeping the entire country from treating LGBT Americans the way CPAC treats GOProud? God only knows what would happen to our families if GOProud ever accomplished its stated goals.
This group has always been as ridiculous as a clown raffle — and their current statement is just as absurd. In vain, they search to “bring conservatives of all stripes together” — which is useless when you are dealing with predatory leopards unwilling to change their anti-gay spots.
I truly wish we had a legitimate two-party system in America. I desperately want to find a silver lining and a legitimate reason to support Republicans. Without a normal two-party system, the LGBT movement has to keep placing all of its eggs in one basket — which gives us virtually no political leverage. We are only succeeding in this climate due to the moral high ground, which occasionally does move conservatives, as we recently saw in the New York marriage vote.
Unfortunately, the increasing insanity of the modern GOP gives one little hope. Anti-gay zealots continue to use the party as a platform. This weekend, for instance, Texas Gov. Rick Perry will hold a stadium prayer rally in Houston that can only be described as “Loonypalooza.” Virtually all of the GOP presidential candidates are kissing up to the extreme right and seem terrified by intransigent, tantrum-throwing Teabaggers that came within in a hair of crashing the world economy this week.
GOProud, it is time to stop the charade and become Democrats. Or, use the deep pockets of a few of your key donors to help start a new center-right political party that accepts LGBT people as actual human beings and believes in the reality-based community. To continue to allow yourselves to get used, humiliated and sacked by the teabaggers, is just embarrassing and does nothing to advance or further our movement.
