Family and Property

Earlier this year when it was announced that the conservative gay group GOProud would be serving as a co-sponsor of this year's CPAC conference, some Religious Right groups threatened to boycott though, in the end, only Liberty University Law School actually followed through.

Now that the event is underway, CNN is reporting everyone is playing nice:

GOProud has a booth at CPAC just two spaces away from the exhibition for the National Organization for Marriage, which wants the government to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

...

Chris Plante, who is running the booth for the National Organization for Marriage, said being two booths away from GOProud wasn't an issue.

As cameras rolled, he introduced himself to Barron.

"I hope we'll have more time to talk over the next four days. Maybe we can have a beer later," Plante said.

"We can have a beer summit later. It worked for Obama," Barron joked.

A meeting, yes. But don't expect a meeting of the minds.

"Gays and lesbians have the right to live as they choose, but they don't have the right to redefine marriage for the rest of us," Plante said.

But off camera, things look a little different, as NOM felt it necessary to send out a far less friendly statement to reporters on GOProud's participation in CPAC:

Many reporters, including Politico, have asked us how we feel about the fact GOProud is just a few booths over from us. We welcome everyone's right to participate in the democratic process, but we have a message for GOProud on marriage: If you try to elect pro-gay-marriage Republicans, we will Dede Scozzafava them. The majority of Americans, and the vast majority of Republicans, support marriage as the union of husband and wife, and NOM is here to make sure these voters and their voices are heard loud and clear.

Time's Jay Newton-Small also reports that GOPround had a run-in with representative of American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property which, just the other day, released a report defending Don't Ask, Don't Tell on the grounds that homosexuality is fundamentally evil and allowing gays to serve openly would destroy the military's honor.  Needless to say, TFP was not every welcoming of GOProud: 

These days, the group is particularly concerned with gays in the military. Beyond opposing the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, the organization of lay Catholics would like to see all homosexuals banned from the military, according to a white and green pamphlet they were handing out. The case against gays in the military is laid out in a book, displayed prominently, called An American Knight: The Life of Colonel John W. Ripley, USMC, yours for just $14.95.

While I was flipping through the autobiography, a woman approached the booth. Catherine Sumner, it turned out, was part of GOProud, a group of openly gay Republicans and conservatives that for the first time is taking part in CPAC. “Is this your flyer?” Sumner demanded, waving the white and green pamphlet. Thus launched a debate about gays in the military that pretty much ended when the booth attendee told her that homosexuality is a sin and she's going to hell.

“It's insulting,” Sumner, 31, who edits a military magazine, said turning away. “Across the board the reaction to GOProud's presence here has been positive, but then you have guys like this. Even Dick Cheney came out and says he supports us. Conservatives have to be more inclusive, they have to be.” In fact, just one group, Liberty University, boycotted CPAC over the inclusion of GOProud, though the Catholic crowd weren't the only ones unnerved by their presence: one booth down from GOProud's set up in the fourth row, those manning the National Organization for Marriage, which works to ban gay marriage, kept casting nervous – and slightly envious – glances at the somewhat larger crowd surrounding GOProud's booth.

Considering that a who's who of right-wing leaders, including David Keene of the CPAC-founding American Conservative Union, joined TFP for a press conference yesterday supporting DADT at CPAC itself, its hard to imagine that GOProud or its supporters could have felt particularly welcome at the event:

UPDATE: Via Sarah Posner we see that GOProud's Jimmy LaSalvia is not at all impressed with NOM's tactics: 

UPDATE II: This video from Media Matters is absolutely remarkable: 

Every so often, an obscure but well-heeled group called the American Society for Tradition, Family and Property pops up on the scene to make its case for ... well, tradition, family, or property.

Today it is out with a press release announcing a press conference tomorrow where it will release its lengthy defense of keeping gays out of the military

Reacting to the current push to force the U.S. military to accept open homosexuals in the Armed Forces, the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) published a well-documented study today, providing hard-hitting reasons to reject the proposal.

The group's statement is titled "To Keep Our Honor Clean: Why We Must Oppose the Homosexual Agenda for the Military."

News Conference: Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, and leaders of several major organizations will participate in a Thursday press conference to announce their support for the 1993 law regarding homosexuals in the military. The news conference will be held at the Marriott Wardman-Park Hotel (room 8216) in Washington, D.C. at 2:00 PM.

The document itself has already been posted on the TFP website and it is something to behold:

[D]uring wartime, men are in continual contact with each other’s blood. Therefore, the well documented increased disease rates of homosexuals would cause them to be perceived as a risk rather than an asset to unit survival.

This increased disease rate should not be underestimated. As Colonel Ronald Ray pointed out: “Despite the fact that they account for less than 2 percent of the total American population, a compilation of recent health studies shows that homosexuals account for 80 percent of America’s most serious sexually transmitted diseases.”

This increased disease rate has led some to refer to the homosexual lifestyle as a “deathstyle.” Inclusion of this deathstyle in our Armed Forces is a dangerous proposition, indeed.

TFP's citation for that 80% figure is "Colonel Ronald D. Ray, USMCR, Gays: In or out? (Washington: Brassey’s (US), 1993) p. 46."  I can't find the report itself ... but it doesn't matter because it is obviously nonsense.  To get a picture of the sorts of insanely anti-gay things Ray has written, just check out this essay he wrote entitled “Lifting The Ban On Homosexuals In The Military: The Subversion Of A Moral Principle,” especially the conclusion in which he warns to any effort to allows gays to serve in the military will cause God to destory America just like he did to Sodom and Gomorrah.

But the real reason that TFP opposes the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell is because it would destroy the honor of our military: 

It is these values of uprightness, self-sacrifice and strength that project the military into a superior order of things. In a word, they confer an honor upon it, which is so identified with the archetype of the American soldier that our nation’s highest military decoration is called the Medal of Honor.

However, homosexual vice represents the opposite of this military honor. It violates natural law, epitomizes the unleashing of man’s unruly passions, undermines self-discipline and has been defined as “intrinsically evil” by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church on numerous occasions.

That is why, in order to advance, the homosexual movement must blur the distinctions between virtue and vice; truth and error; good and evil. If this vice is imposed on our Armed Forces, it will necessarily bring this relativistic spirit with it.

In turn, this mentality would undermine the direct and straightforward mindset, so necessary to the military.It would sully the honor of all who serve and weaken society’s notion of the incompatibility between good and evil, so well represented by our Armed Forces.

I am really looking forward to seeing who those other "leaders of several major organizations" will be that will be joining TFP and Elaine Donnell at their press conference releasing this document tomorrow.

Not surprisingly, the Religious Right is upset at the failure of an effort to block California’s recent same-sex marriage decision from going into effect. “[N]ationwide legal chaos,” predicted the Alliance Defense Fund. The decision “abolishes the meaning of motherhood and fatherhood,” opined Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. A “further extension of their judicial activism,” said Pacific Justice Institute’s Brad Dacus.

At the same time, readers of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Times were confronted with an enormous advertisement urging them to “join the Crusade” of “conscientious resistance” to “the homosexual ‘moral revolution.’”

An obscure but well-heeled group called the American Society for Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) ran ads today covering two full pages in those newspapers, warning of the threat of same-sex marriage. The ad echoes the now-common Religious Right theme that equality for gays and lesbians would lead to the “persecution” of Christianity, but with 4,600 words in some of the most expensive print around, TFP apparently tried to make the argument in the least succinct way possible, discoursing on Nazism, the definition of truth, various Vatican publications, and Joan of Arc.

By legalizing same-sex “marriage,” the State becomes its official and active promoter. It calls on public officials to officiate at the new civil ceremony, orders public schools to teach its acceptability to children, and punishes any state employee who expresses disapproval. …

Left unchecked, this anti-Christian trend will become an unprecedented assault on the First Amendment and our American way of life that we do not hesitate to call persecution. …

As the homosexual revolution’s anti-Christian intolerance makes itself felt through increasingly persecutory measures, a terrible problem of conscience arises in any who resist: Should we follow our consciences? Should we give in?

For Catholics like ourselves, the condoning of same-sex “marriage” would be tantamount to a renunciation of Faith. …

This is a battle for the soul of America. The so-called Cultural War is gradually becoming a Religious War.

Tradition, Family and Property is an unusual group. Founded in 1973 after the anti-Communist writings of a Brazilian dissident Catholic activist, TFP brought a unique style of protest—serious young men with red capes, heraldic banners, and brass bands—to issues ranging from abortion, homosexuality, and contraception to anti-Communism, water subsidies, flag burning, and the Gulf War. While the group doesn’t have the name recognition of the more media-savvy Catholic League, it still brought in $6.8 million in donations and sales in 2006.