As The GOP Doubles Down On Homophobia, Do Gay Republicans Have A Role To Play Any Longer?

Right wing hedge fund operator and vulture capitalist Paul Singer may be best known as one of the money bags behind Mitt Romney but the ardent defender of the prerogatives of the one percent and their right to rule without interference from government (he's been on an anti-Dodd Frank jihad, for example) is also one of the biggest supporters of bombing Iran and of gay equality inside the reaches of the Republican Party and its right-wing satellite groups. Odd combination? His son is gay and married his husband in 2009 and Singer is a Zionist... and a billionaire. Its all about him-- always.

Just under two years ago, late simmer, 2012, Singer gave his last check to GOProud, the extreme right-wing-- and very divisive-- gay organization he had been funding. As the Republican Party digs in its heels on gay reparative therapy, GOProud, which unofficially died when Singer pulled the financial plug, has now made it official. A group backing equal right for the LGBT community can't thrive among the bigots and hate-mongers that utterly dominate the right-wing of the Republican Party.

Although sane states have followed the lead of progressives like California state Senator Ted Lieu in banning the quackery of conversion therapy, no one has been able to get a straight answer if gay Republican political elites themselves have undergone conversion therapy. Since the Texas GOP is lining up behind it, maybe someone should ask closet case Rick Perry for an answer. Other tragic Republicans who may or may not have undergone conversion therapy who should comment on its effective include the two U.S. senators from South Carolina, lifelong gay bachelors Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, not to mention Wyoming's John Barrasso, Mark Kirk, Miss McConnell and a dozen House members from gay wingnuts Aaron Schock (R-IL), Trent Franks (R-AZ) and Patrick McHenry (R-NC) to Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Adrian Smith (R-NE).

Under the new proposed plank, the Texas GOP would "recognize the legitimacy and efficacy of counseling, which offers reparative therapy and treatment for those patients seeking healing and wholeness from their homosexual lifestyle."

The American Psychological Association and other major health organizations have condemned such counseling, which generally try to change a person's sexual orientation or to lessen their interest in engaging in same-sex sexual activity. The groups say the practice should not be used on minors because of the danger of serious psychological harm.

But trying to strip the language from the Texas GOP platform could set off a contentious fight and result in altering the language even more. The therapy phrasing survived a key committee vote late Thursday, but hardliners had sought to change "homosexuality" in the platform to "sexual sins."

Also on the table is removing decades-old language that states, "homosexuality tears at the fabric of society." Davis said that was the only language his group sought to change at the convention, and that he still wanted to go home with that win.

The therapy language was inserted at the urging of Cathie Adams of Dallas, leader of the influential tea party group Texas Eagle Forum and a onetime chairwoman of the Texas Republican Party.

Adams, whose group backed tea party outsiders who dominated Texas Republican primary races this year, said she simply promoted language proposed by a man she said was helped by such therapy, which has been defended by some smaller groups, including the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality.

"He knows what he's talking about. He is one of those who has benefited," Adams said. "I think the majority of Texans feel that way too. It's not like this is mandatory. This is only a voluntary program."

Yesterday, Tim Mak, writing for the Daily Beast, covered the sad, messy GOProud implosion. "The decline of GOProud," he writes, "is a prime example of what happens to an organization that rises to prominence through confrontation-- and never bothers to do the grunt work needed to sustain the outfit, once the outrage dies down. It was feisty and controversial-- a Tea Party, of sorts, to the more establishment-minded Log Cabin Republicans." They may have decided to make it "official" this week, but what was left of the organization has been moribund since Singer, who had given them close to $600,000-- informed them they'd better find a new sugar daddy. Thegroup's founders, Christopher Barron and Jimmy LaSalvia, quit.

In the summer of 2013, LaSalvia and Barron sold GOProud’s brand name, one of the organization’s computers, a contact list, and some posters to three former interns, and stepped away from the day-to-day management of the group.

Matt Bechstein, now the executive director of what is left of GOProud, said they purchased it for less than three figures. Barron said it was a nominal amount, $1. “It certainly wasn’t fair market value,” Barron said.

In a way, GOProud had already died last summer. The former interns only filed the necessary paperwork to organize “GOProud 2.0” in January 2014. Bechstein had purchased a brand that was in bad shape.

“There was donor discontent, the organization was broke, they were having difficulty raising money, and they ruined just about every relationship possible,” Bechstein said, referring to the former management.

The future of GOProud, once a leading voice for gay conservatives, looks bleak. The organization still exists in theory, but it now faces the possibility of shutting down, changing its name, or changing its organizational type. “There’s high amounts of chaos and confusion,” he said, since any remaining donors have been spooked by reports that the group is closing down.

There’s no love lost between the former leadership and the current leadership.

“Most people assume GOProud died a year ago. GOProud was constantly part of the conversation, shaking things up. Over the last year… I never heard from GOProud. Quite frankly, I don’t know what they’ve done over the past year. I’ve seen nothing,” Barron said.

Countered Bechstein, “They’ve been antagonistic to me since Day One… we came to be the antithesis of Jimmy and Chris, who ruined the organization.”

GOProud first elbowed its way into the conservative movement in the spring of 2009, but struggled in its early days as a startup. Really, it was nothing more than Barron and LaSalvia and a Twitter account, crammed into a Capitol Hill basement office for which they paid $800 a month. The group’s first acts were small. Fundraising during its launch netted only about $3,000, LaSalvia said.

But GOProud’s prominence really emerged in 2010, after conservative activist Ryan Sorba denounced them from the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

“I’d like to condemn CPAC for bringing GOProud to this event,” Sorba told the audience at the annual conservative gathering, to a smattering of boos. “The lesbians at Smith College protest better than you. Bring it.”

LaSalvia, sitting outside the room, looked down at his phone. Just moments after Sorba’s rant, a $500 donation came into GOProud’s account. Many major news outlets at CPAC, eager to write about something other than the typical rotation of politicians coming up to speak on stage, covered Sorba’s outburst.

“That’s really when we got famous,” LaSalvia said. Momentum flowed from controversy. They spent their last few hundred dollars on a trip up to New York City, obtaining donor commitments that kept them alive.

That summer, they held a prominent event with Ann Coulter and some 150 supporters at the New York City apartment of billionaire PayPal founder Peter Thiel, which attendees nicknamed “Homocon.” Months later, GOProud targeted four congressional districts with an ad parodying the television show Real Housewives, targeting gay men and women on Bravo and Lifetime, even running the ad during the Project Runway finale.

The 2012 presidential cycle smothered GOProud, LaSalvia argued, saying that the organization’s endorsement of Mitt Romney was a low point. The support of a candidate who opposed same-sex marriage-- and the noise of the presidential campaign-- combined to make them feel sidelined.

“We were following, we were falling in line… no one was out front that year,” he said.

The highlight of that year, LaSalvia said, was when more than 900 people showed up to GOProud’s 2012 Republican convention party in Tampa Bay, at a gay bar.

Gay Republicans Splitting Into Spatting Factions-- God's Plan?

Right-wing radio host John Batchelor's funeral oration over the rotting corpse of the Republican Party was my favorite read of yesterday. And as he points out, the Democrats, alas, had nothing to do with it; it was malicious suicide. I'd recommend you read the whole thing-- which is why I have that link up top. But here's a taste:

The Republican Party is dead like Lehman Brothers and Robert E. Lee, not to be revived by TARP, Rupert Murdoch, or a surge of feverish nationalism. The present financial collapse makes it plain to see that the Republican Party did not die recently at the hands of the clever Democrats, but rather in 1933 at the hands of cowards, sycophants, and snobs who regarded the awesome Democratic victories in 1930 and 1932 as a “smear” of Herbert Hoover and a “panic.” Since the Great Depression I, the Democrats have been the electorate’s default choice, the politicians who rule as if America was simultaneously a school district, a union hall, a junior-year-abroad seminar, and a PAC. The Republicans who pop up now and again thrive in the empty-quarter counties of the West or in the so-called Old South, which is better understood as Confederacy Lite.

...Vigilant Democrats worry today that the Republican Party is only playing possum, or that it can be revived by extraordinary means such as a Martian invasion. In fact, the GOP is a mummy-wrapped skeleton sitting in its own chilly mausoleum of bilious resentments and creepy sentimentality. What remains to call themselves Republicans are baldly badly educated or just prankish Confederate re-enactors-- chubby men in gray and butternut suits with gold buttons and feather-tipped hats, clanking down stairs with shiny sabers. A handful of them are just boors from the South who look poorly on horseback and wave unread Bibles while calling for Billy Sunday to rise like the gold market.

...The party’s death 76 years ago was never more obvious than over the last six months of the financial crisis. The Democrats sensibly blamed the feckless, bootless Bush administration for the collapse of the markets. Tongue-tied Bush and dyspeptic Cheney defended themselves with grunts and sarcasm before they surrendered to Congress by sending out the plutocrat Hank Paulson with a plan called TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program). A breathing Republican Party would have brought out the flintlocks, boarded the windows, and settled down for a defense of the republic. Instead, the Republican leadership in the House and Senate rushed to grab the pork bribery and vote with the Democrats. John Boehner, Roy Blunt, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, and Judd Gregg distinguished themselves as dhimmis and were later rewarded by the victorious Democrats by being granted parakeet cages for offices in the new Congress. The House Republicans now boasts that they voted a goose egg against the stimulus package, but this was just the twitching of the corpse. The truth about the House Republicans-- cowards, sycophants, and snobs just like 1930’s lot-- is illustrated by the fact that 85 of them voted for the ludicrous AIG bonus-confiscation bill written on the back of a parking ticket.

If you've ever heard more than 10 minutes of Batchelor's show, you know he's a right wing fanatic. But he's hardly the only one who's sickened by the Republican Party these days. New polling shows that while President Obama's approval rating has climbed from 67% to 68%, the Republican Party is viewed even more unfavorably than it was last week. Last week only 65% of Americans thought they sucked. This week it was up to 66%. And while 18% still view the Republican congressional caucus favorably, John Boehner's and Miss McConnell's unfavorable ratings have continued to climb-- 58 think Boehner is the worst person in the world and 56% think Miss McConnell is.

Of course if you're a free mouseketeer marketeer and you don't believe in polls, you might prefer to read the tea leaves presented by the market itself. This list comes from Amazon.com and relates to hard-covered autographed copies of the books:

• Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope ($2,000)
• Ronald Reagan, An American Life ($900)
• Bill Clinton, My Life ($300-$500)
• Hillary Clinton, Living History ($300-$500)        
• Joe Biden, Promises To Keep ($300-$500)
• Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith ($300-$500)
• John McCain, Faith of My Fathers ($300-$500)
• Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth ($150-$250)
• George H.W. Bush, All The Best, George Bush ($150-$250)
• Bill Richardson, Between Worlds: The Making of an American Life ($75-$100)
• Colin Powell, My American Journey ($75-$100)

But here's the best part... signed copies of Bill O'Reilly's The O'Reilly Factor and Newt Gingrich's Lessons Learned The Hard Way, go for just $25, or the same as the list price of the book, so the autograph is essentially free. In fact, there's a huge glut of $23 signed O'Reilly books. The list for the book itself is exactly $23.

 
Another sign o' the times for the right is that a dissident faction of gay conservatives is launching a rival group to the traditional voice of gay Republicans: the Log Cabin Republicans. Yes, there's a gay break-up in the GOP. And while Charlie Crist (R-FL), David Dreier (R-CA), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Mark Foley (R-FL) will probably stick with the traditionalists at the Log Cabin, don't be surprised if the more extremist closet queens in the GOP-- your Patty McHenrys (NC), Aaron Schocks (IL) and Adrian Smiths (NE) find it more comfy with GOProud the drooling neo-nazis a bit further to the right.

They won't officially come out til Wednesday but gay Republican Washington-- between 20 and 30% of Capitol Hill-- is all atwitter over the new organization which claims to better represent the fringy far right elements of gay Republican world. Apparently Tim Gill, a progressive, has been providing the Log Cabin queens with about one-third of their budget an, like all good Republicans, they sold out immediately. One disgruntled gay wingnut who left the Log Cabin queens for the GOProud queens said gay Republicans need an organization that spends more time talking about tax policy and how the traditional GOP greed and selfishness agenda is a perfect fit for gay Republicans. “There hasn’t been a voice for … gay conservatives for the last five months, really, in Washington. And so as that time has lapsed, that was when we made the assessment and determined the need for an organization in Washington and put the pieces in place to make that happen.” He said GOProud plans to fight Congress' and Obama’s push for higher taxes and work for the repeal of the estate taxes. Perhaps they need to meet Blanche Lincoln. Many gay Republicans, especially DC closet queens, love the name Blanche. People close to Mitch McConnell have been calling him Blanche for years., although the Kentucky closet case prefers them not to do that in public places-- and never when Senator Lincoln is around, which these days is very often. Anyway, the new gay Repugs say their priority will not be gay legislation, just the greed and selfishness stuff. Our own gay art director in West Palm Beach found the perfect little film clip for the unveiling of the new Republican gays. Enjoy:



Meanwhile, McCain's daughter is urging the GOP to get more gay friendly-- for their own good. (And not the Mark Foley-Larry Craig-Patrick McHenry kind of "gay friendly.") I wonder if she's made any headway with dad.