HUFFINGTON
09.30.12
THE PINK ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
didn’t care about the problems
that Log Cabin was trying to solve;
but they believed that the best
solutions were to be found further
to the right. Take their views on
anti-gay violence, for example.
Last summer, after Jimmy LaSalvia was reportedly attacked
by a gang of teenagers who called
him a faggot, he didn’t see the incident as an argument in favor of
the 2009 hate crime bill signed
by Obama that extended the law
to protect gay people — legislation that Log Cabin applauded.
“Now I know I should own a
gun,” he wrote in an op-ed for
The Advocate at the time. For the
group’s first legislative campaign,
it tried, unsuccessfully, to help
pro-gun Republicans pass a concealed weapons amendment to
Obama’s hate crime legislation.
The conflict between GOProud
and Log Cabin also has something
to do with culture. One of their
early disagreements centered on
Ann Coulter, the scourge of the
left, whose extensive commentary
on gay issues includes the remark
that Rick Santorum’s comparison
of gay sex to bestiality is “indisputably true.” LaSalvia and Barron
see Coulter as “fabulous and beautiful,” a “right-wing Judy Garland,”
WE DON’T LISTEN
TO WHAT A
CANDIDATE
ACTUALLY SAYS.
WE TRY TO FEEL
WHERE THEY
SEEM TO STAND.
and they pushed Log Cabin to invite her to speak at an event, without success. “It was clear that Log
Cabin was moving in a very different direction,” said Barron.
Coulter now serves as an honorary chair on GOProud’s advisory board. “Ann is not there on
gay marriage,” said Barron. “But
she’s not a bigot, far from it. I
tell people she’s done more for
gay people than a dozen Rachel
Maddows will ever do. Rachel
Maddow’s preaching to the choir.
She’s talking to the totally convinced. Ann is talking to people
who never thought about these
issues.” At the first Homocon
party in 2010, Coulter told the
crowd, with her trademark irreverence, that “not only can
gays be conservative, you pretty
much have to be.” She ticked off
a few reasons: gays are the “high-