The American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), one of the largest gatherings of right wing activists and a platform for Republican presidential candidates, continues to lose participants as a result of GOProud’s sponsorship of the event. GOProud is a conservative organization that supports gay rights that broke off from the Log Cabin Republicans for allegedly moving “way too far to the left.”
In November, the far-right American Principles Project instigated the CPAC boycott over GOProud’s involvement back in November, and groups such as American Values, Capital Research Center, the Center for Military Readiness, Liberty Counsel, Liberty University, and the National Organization for Marriage followed the APP’s lead in boycotting the conference.
Today, WorldNetDaily, which has provided support for the boycott movement, reports that the Family Research Council and Concerned Women For America have decided to boycott CPAC. FRC and CWA are easily the largest groups to join the boycott movement, and FRC hosts a similar conference that is geared to Religious Right activists, the Values Voter Summit. WorldNetDaily reports on their decision and the ensuing praise from anti-gay rights activists Peter LaBarbera and Mat Staver:
“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 has decided not to participate in part because of GOProud,” CWA President Penny Nance told WND.
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“Excellent. It is gratifying to see FRC and CWA respond appropriately to CPAC’s moral sellout of allowing GOProud as a sponsor,” said Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, the nation’s best-known organization dedicated exclusively to opposing the homosexual political agenda.
“By bringing in GOProud, CPAC was effectively saying moral opposition to homosexuality is no longer welcome in the conservative movement,” said LaBarbera. “Would CPAC bring in an organization specifically devoted to promoting abortion and pretend it’s conservative?” LaBarbera has formerly participated in CPAC, but said he may protest the conference this year.
“Shame on CPAC for defending the absurd proposition that one can be ‘conservative’ while embracing moral surrender – in this case the idea espoused by GOProud of the government granting ‘rights’ and benefits based on sinful sexual conduct long regarded as anathema to biblical and Judeo-Christian values,” LaBarbera added.
“[ACU has] gone libertarian, that’s their focus,” said Mat Staver, president of Liberty Counsel, a public interest law firm. “Libertarianism is right on the economy, often wrong on national defense, and doesn’t care about social conservatism. Libertarians only respect one leg of the Reagan revolution, and you can’t stand for long on one leg.”
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“We said GOProud is not a conservative organization,” said Staver. “They are undermining the military” by promoting open homosexuality, and “undermining marriage” by opposing the Defense of Marriage Act, which preserves the traditional definition of marriage by limiting it to one man and one woman.
“Anything that undermines marriage also undermines our freedom and economy,” said Staver. “It is contrary to our fundamental values to have as a cosponsor an organization that promotes same-sex marriage.”
“GOProud doesn’t fit in any of the areas of conservatism within CPAC,” Staver continued. “We asked CPAC to disassociate themselves from GOProud, but they refused to.
“The only way we would return to CPAC now is if CPAC openly disassociated itself from GOProud and carried on a pattern of activity that convinces us they are truly broad-based conservatives.”
The decision by Family Research Council and Concerned Women For America may spur other groups and speakers to join the boycott, although others could take the path of Ryan Sorba of Young Americans for Freedom who used his speech at CPAC to attack homosexuality and condemn GOProud’s participation:
