The feuding on the right continues over the gay conservative group GOProud, with two more social conservative groups announcing that they won’t attend the big Conservative Political Action Conference this February — in part because the gay group is participating.
As the right-wing World Net Daily reports:
“We’ve been very involved in CPAC for over a decade and have managed a couple of popular sessions. However, we will no longer be involved with CPAC because of the organization’s financial mismanagement and movement away from conservative principles,” said Tom McClusky, senior vice president for FRC Action.
“CWA [Concerned Women for America] has decided not to participate in part because of GOProud,” CWA President Penny Nance told WND. [Ed. note: Penny Nance’s title is chief executive officer of CWA. Another individual, Wendy Wright, holds the title of president.]
A few other social conservative organizations — including the National Organization for Marriage, which was at last year’s conference — have also withdrawn from the event.
TPM asked GOProud executive director Jimmy LaSalvia for comment.
“GOProud is excited to once again be a part of the nation’s preeminent gathering of conservatives. We’re going to be there for the second year at the same level we were last year,” said LaSalvia.
“And we hope that all conservative organizations would participate, because it takes a broad-based conservative organization to come together to work, to offer solutions to the problems facing our country, and we think it takes everybody. And we hope all conservatives will participate in CPAC. It’s an enormous event, and it brings people from all over the country, and we’re excited to be a part of it.”
At last year’s CPAC, the bubbling dispute on the right about GOProud’s role came to the surface when speaker Ryan Sorba openly condemned CPAC for allowing GOProud to the event — after which the college-age audience of that particular function booed him.
Then this past September, World Net Daily blasted Ann Coulter for agreeing to speak at GOProud’s Homocon event, and dropped her from its own event in retaliation. (As it turned out, Coulter’s speech at Homocon consisted of her strongly opposing gay marriage before a gay conservative audience: “Marriage is not a civil right. You’re not black.”)
Eric Kleefeld
Eric Kleefeld joined TPM as an intern for the final months of the 2006 midterm elections, and then kept showing up for work. His other interests include guitars, old comic books and the politics of various English-speaking countries.