Continuing on, let’s turn to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) being held this week. Kathryn Jean Lopez wrote an excellent article for National Review titled “CPAC’s Culture Club; Sex and the boycott,” and opened with this:
“‘Is conservatism a three-legged stool or not?’
In his question, Princeton politics professor Robert P. George hearkens back to the Ronald Reagan-era metaphor for the concept of the Right as an integrated whole of foreign-policy, economic, and social conservatism.
And it’s the question at the heart of a controversy surrounding this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference…
George is the founder of the American Principles Project, which is leading a boycott of CPAC this year. George believes conservatism absolutely involves core tenets about economics, about foreign policy, and about the family. And when a conference calls itself conservative, that should mean ‘that core social conservative causes – life and marriage – should have the same standing as core economic and national security conservative causes,’ George explains.”
The reason for the boycott is the participation of GOProud, a homosexual activist group. GOProud claims to support two of the three legs (econ & foreign policy), but it is unquestionably hostile to the third leg. In typical immature homosexual fashion, GOProud’s Christopher Barron refers to that third leg as the “crazy social issues.”
Last November four leaders of conservative organizations sent an excellent letter to the CPAC chairman about the boycott and in it said this (emphasis is mine):
“We do not make this decision lightly. We believe that, in general, the conservative movement is strengthened by the presence within it of organizations that give priority to particular, even single, issues. It is not necessary for each group within a political movement to embrace the fullness of a detailed and defined philosophy. But it is necessary for each group within any coherent movement not to stand in diametrical opposition to one or more of its core principles. It is our conviction that the institution of marriage and the family qualify-historically, philosophically and empirically-as such core principles. An organization committed to the ultimate abandonment of the legal and social meaning of marriage by definition disqualifies itself from recognition as a partner in the conservative cause.
We have examined closely GOProud’s mission and its behavior since its inception, and can only conclude that the organization’s purposes are fundamentally incompatible with a movement that has long embraced the ideals of family and faith in a thriving civil society. Needless to say, we are deeply persuaded that a thriving civil society is an indispensable bulwark against the relentless expansion of government, a phenomenon that has gripped much of the Western world and helped to fuel the present fiscal and economic crisis.
GOProud states prominently on its web site that it supports a ‘traditional conservative agenda’ that includes ‘limited government,’ ‘individual liberty,’ ‘free markets,’ and a ‘confident foreign policy.’ This is a traditional conservative agenda, minus one – traditional values. The issue is not that GOProud works on only four of the five traditional items on the conservative agenda – rather, it omits – because it actively opposes – one part of the core. It is no more acceptable as a participant at CPAC than a group that said it embraced the “traditional conservative agenda” but actively worked for higher taxes and greater governmental control of the economy.”
