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.