**Post UPDATED at bottom.
In the weeks leading up to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last week, there was a sidebar skirmish involving two of the CPAC sponsors. The new gay conservative group, GOProud.org, which was formed in 2009, wanted to make a splash at CPAC and introduce itself to the conservative movement. But long-time sponsor, Liberty University, would have none of it:
Obviously as an exhibitor or participant, you don’t necessarily have to think that everyone agrees with you, and some people might even work against you [notes Liberty Law School Dean Mat] Staver. But as a co-sponsor, even though not everybody would have the same mission, not everyone would agree with the same tactics, and some would actually focus on economics whereas others might focus on social issues and others might focus on national defense – the fact is they’re all conservative in nature. You wouldn’t expect, however, a co-sponsor to actively work to undermine another co-sponsor, and that is in fact what GOProud does.
Liberty dropped, GOProud stayed, and CPAC took some heat. So coming into CPAC, GOProud knew its presence would be controversial and their members were prepared to address opponents at the exhibit booth. But last Friday, when a series of student activists spoke at the podium, no one imagined the undercurrent would erupt the way it did.
[youtube HVBQOoXXYLw nolink]
Alexander McCobin addressed the GOProud/Liberty sponsor issue head-on and praised CPAC for being inclusive and standing up for the principles of freedom and liberty. McCobin was met with praise and applause for his remarks.
A few minutes later, Ryan Sorba from the California Young Americans for Freedom got to the podium and started a bizarre tirade against CPAC, gays and lesbians, and the audience itself. Following the incident, information quickly turned up that Sorba has been trying to peddle a manuscript called “The Born Gay Hoax” for a few years now. In his post-outburst interviews and encounters, Sorba hasn’t revealed whether his CPAC rant was planned in advance or the result of McCobin’s previous praise of GOProud.
[youtube zFNezndrSII nolink]
The conservative crowd quickly turned on him and forced him to walk off the stage. The ironic part of the crowd support of GOProud is that none of its leaders were even in the room at the time, but in the exhibit hall. This was a spontaneous rejection of Sorba’s anti-gay rant by the CPAC grassroots. They drove him off-stage in a moment that quickly became the talk of the conference and the internet.
The reaction from the mainstream media and Gay Left blog community was swift and predictable: CPAC boos the gays. Most delivered their verdicts without being at the conference itself, talking to anyone there or even watching the earlier video where Alexander McCobin was applauded. The idea that the conservative movement would actually rally behind GOProud at the CPAC conference was completely unimaginable to those on the Left as news of the event spread. Some examples:
Media Matters for America: Commenters all jumped to the conclusion that it was CPAC rejecting GOProud, not CPAC rejecting Sorba.
Democratic Underground: Immediate headline: “Your Homophobic CPAC Moment, Featuring Ryan Sorba”
Mother Jones: “So while CPAC organizers might have shown some backbone by resisting calls to kick GOProud out of its event, it’s hard to give them much credit for providing a guy like Sorba such a prominent platform.”
Left-wing gay extremist Wayne Besen: “I guarantee you that, for a lot of people in that room, their issue is not the content of Sorba’s tirade, but rather the unfiltered nature of it, because they know that their bigotry is not acceptable in intelligent society.”
Gay left wing radical Michaelangelo Signorile: Wow. Just played this on show. RT @CPAC speaker “condemn[s] CPAC for bringing” gay GOP group “to this event”
But then a funny thing happened. The conservative bloggers who were actually at CPAC and who actually witnessed the Sorba tirade went ballistic on him immediately. From Ace of Spades, to HotAir, to Michelle Malkin and across the entire center-right blogosphere, especially via Twitter, the reaction was one of complete and utter disdain – not for Sorba’s lack of etiquette, but for his message of intolerance.
Suddenly the mainstream media and liberal bloggers couldn’t hide the truth. The first video of Alexander McCobin was now on YouTube, going viral, and creating the contrast with how Sorba was booed off the CPAC stage. It was undeniable; facts truly are stubborn things. And this all happened at the speed of the internet in 2010.
The change in the reaction on the Left came when Keith Olbermann at MSNBC, in the midst of a rant on the “crazies” at CPAC, conceded that the conservatives turned on Sorba and stood up for GOProud. If Olbermann is defending CPAC, you know there’s a break in the Maginot Line. Fast-forward to 4:50:
John Aravosis, long-time gay liberal internet activist, was the first and most prominent voice on the Gay Left to grasp what had happened about three hours after Sorba’s CPAC explosion: “To the White House, the DNC, and our leadership in Congress: You are messing with people’s lives, and we know it. And the day that an anti-gay bigot gets booed at CPAC, you all better start being very afraid.”
He got it. And so did all of the conservative bloggers at CPAC and especially the gay conservatives both in person at CPAC and keeping in touch in real-time via the internet. We were a part of one of those moments. Another telling piece of evidence is that of the 15 issues that CPAC 2010 straw poll participants said was important to them, only 1% named gay marriage. It’s also worth noting, according to the results of the straw poll, the amount of participants who listed “stopping gay marriage” as their most important issue was statistically insignificant.
And though it took a while, formerly-conservative gay blogger Andrew Sullivan – never one to miss a chance to hammer the alleged intolerance of American conservatives – finally weighed in. Sullivan was completely silent about Sorba on Friday. And Saturday. But two days later, when he found a new angle, Sullivan couldn’t help himself. The story was too juicy for even him to ignore and he joined the blogosphere left-wing media bandwagon since he knew the way the winds were blowing. Nevertheless, Sullivan labeled Sorba “a glimpse into the future of Republicanism.” While Keith Olbermann is defending conservatives, Andrew Sullivan is tearing them down.
This moment at CPAC is even more important for the conservative movement as it happened at an important time when there is already a generational change going on in America. Boomers are fading, Xer’s are ruling, and Millenials are finding their way. Forty-eight percent of those who participated in the CPAC straw poll last week identified themselves as students. They are the future of conservativism. And they shouted down an anti-gay bigot.
There will surely be other homocon-related clashes within the conservative movement, just as the Democrat Party has regularly used the gay community as pawns in their re-election schemes for decades. But as the late gay political icon Harvey Milk, who started out as a Republican, famously said:
Gay people, we will not win our rights by staying silently in our closets… We are coming out. We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions. We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I’m going to talk about it. And I want you to talk about it. You must come out. Come out to your parents, your relatives.
Last week at CPAC we saw the many years of work by dedicated conservative gays and lesbians standing up for their values and the principles of freedom and liberty finally pay off. There was a tipping point for gays in America last week at CPAC. It happened because they have been coming out to their parents, friends and relatives over time… as American conservatives who just happen to be gay.
**
UPDATE: I have been informed by a number of folks who were at the CPAC Blogger’s Lounge that indeed one liberal reporter did “get” the Sorba-GOProud moment correct. Tommy Christopher from Mediate.com wrote, right after the incident last Friday:
Just when it looks like this country can’t get any more divided, there comes a tiny glimmer of hope. Just mi,nutes ago here at CPAC, California Young Americans for Freedom’s Ryan Sorba launched into a denunciation of the conference for inviting GOProud, and as he railed against gays, he was roundly booed off the stage.
The difference between Tommy and the other liberal bloggers and media is that Tommy was actually in the room and present for the outburst, while the others were pontificating from outside the hall.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.