Three socially conservative groups have
announced they won't attend February's Conservative
Political Action Conference (CPAC) convention because of the
presence of a group of gay Republicans.
The three-day convention to be held at
the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC will feature such
anti-gay figures as media personality Ann Coulter, South Carolina
Senator Jim DeMint, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, former
Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick
Santorum.
The inclusion of gay Republican group
GOProud as a co-sponsor of the event has rankled several socially
conservatives groups.
“We've been very involved in CPAC for
over a decade and have managed a couple of popular sessions,” Tom
McClusky, senior vice president for FRC Action, the political arm of
the Family Research Council, told World
Net Daily. “However, we will no longer be involved in CPAC
because of the organization's financial mismanagement and movement
away from conservative principles.”
Penny Nance, executive officer of
Concerned Women for America (CWA), echoed a similar sentiment.
“CWA has decided not to participate
in part of GOProud,” Nance said.
The nation's most vociferous opponent
of gay marriage, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), has
also backed out of this year's event.
Liberty University Law School, the
Christian-based university founded by the late Jerry Falwell, bailed
on last year's event due to GOProud's presence.
But the mostly college aged crowd the
convention draws does not appear to have much of an interest in
social issues.
When Ryan Sorba, a member of the
California chapter of the Young Americans for Freedom, condemned CPAC
for including GOProud in last year's event he
was booed off the stage.
“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,” Jimmy LaSalvia,
executive director of GOProud, told Talking
Points Memo.