Boycotting CPAC Over the Presence of Gay Conservatives

CPAC, or the Conservative Political Action Conference, is scheduled for February in Washington, D.C. However, a gay conservative organization, GOProud, has become a co-sponsor of CPAC. This has resulted in some socially conservative organizations boycotting the CPAC conference for 2011.

To those boycotting organizations, I have a simple message: grow up.

People who are gay are born that way and can't help it. They don't become gay merely for the purpose of pissing you off.  It is a question of biology, not ideology; the latter can be changed with persuasion but the former cannot.  The social conservatives who are so adamantly hostile to gay conservatives seem to operate under this erroneous assumption:  you could be straight if you really wanted to be.

Further, ostracizing gays and treating them like lepers will absolutely NOT turn them into heterosexuals. This doesn't mean you have to approve of gay marriage or men wearing dresses to social events (I don't), or public displays of gay intimacy (barf), or gays in the military, where there may be sound reasons for your disapproval (e.g., its effects on military morale and cohesion).

However, there are some very good conservatives who happen to be gay. Tammy Bruce is one of them. GOProud believes in a lot of conservative principles that I support (with the exception of the repeal of DADT, which I opposed). Per Wikipedia:

GOProud's mission is to represent gay conservatives and their allies, emphasizing conservative principles such as limited government, individual liberty, and national defense over what are usually considered bedrock issues of gay politics such as same-sex marriage, criminalizing targeted violence against gays and lesbians, and recognition of sexual orientation as a protected civil rights class.

GOProud supports repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell,[5] promotes broader Second Amendment rights [6] and opposes a Federal amendment defining marriage. GOProud "focuses strictly on federal issues which means that, institutionally, they don't take a position on state policy issues like same sex marriage."[7]

Robert Stacy McCain has stated that you should never give your enemies a stick to beat you with.  The so-called social conservatives boycotting CPAC are doing just that.