HUFFINGTON
09.30.12
THE PINK ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM
est income demographic,” radical
Muslims want to kill them, and
if scientists find the gay gene,
“guess who’s getting aborted?”
While Log Cabin tries to play
down the tensions between gay
conservatives and their opponents
on both sides of the aisle, GOProud revels in drama of all kinds.
Around 10:30 the following night,
as the guests trickled into their
party, a phalanx of protesters assembled outside, holding up signs
reading “Ask Me Why You Deserve
Hell” and “Homosex Is Sin.” Barron leaned over the club’s secondfloor balcony, a gleeful smile plastered to his face. “This is fucking
awesome!” he said. “This is the
cherry on the sundae!”
LaSalvia paced back and forth
across the main floor, checking
his cell phone, brushing back his
hair, hugging people. Barron went
over to a clutch of reporters, who
seemed to outnumber delegates by
a large measure. One Orlando delegate did agree to a brief interview.
“There are lots of gay members of
the party from my county,” he said.
Was he one of them? “I’m not officially gay,” he replied with a smile.
Another guest, Michael Carr, a gay
Republican running for Colorado
state senate, half-jokingly pro-
claimed that whatever he did that
night was “off the record.”
As midnight approached, LaSalvia and Barron took the stage
and declared the event “historic.”
With nearly 1,000 people in attendance, this ranked as the largest gay conservative party in history, they claimed, no matter that
the presence of reporters and local
gay liberals accounted for a good
percentage of the tally.
“Not that size matters, but ours
is the biggest,” said LaSalvia in a jab
at Log Cabin. “Obama and the left
would have you believe that conservatives hate gay people,” he went
on, “the conservative movement
embraces gay people.” The crowd
cheered and LaSalvia turned serious. Marriage might be important,
LaSalvia continued, but “before you
can get married you have to have a
date, and everyone knows you can’t
get a date without a job.”
TOKEN
REPRESENTATION
Members of Log Cabin generally
don’t share GOProud’s enthusiasm
for eviscerating their fellow gay
conservatives, at least not in public. Robert Kabel, a member of the