Anyway -- other things happen here as well. Symposiums, awards, vendors set up booths, the list could go on and on. The end result is that there's a fairly large mix of conservatives descending on Washington for the week. With the news on the 9th Circuit Court's overturning of Prop 8 fresh, some GLBT and liberal media sources and bloggers have decided to check out the rather large amount of Craigslist "m4m" (male for male) personal ads from admitted CPAC attendees.
Queerty -- Cruising CPAC
But as HyperVocal points out, the conservative cabal is also a hotbed of homo cruising (presumably of the closeted kind). Slade Sohmer trolled recent Craigslist postings in the DC area and came up with quite a few CPAC-related M4M ads.The irony, of course, is the less than friendly platform the Republican Party has taken towards GLBT equality, especially at a convention where moderate positions on much of anything are not tolerated at all. The qualifier from the Queerty article was what I wanted to hit on:
And we’re genuinely rooting for this lot, hoping all these guys score—it doesn’t matter what side of the aisle you sit on, or what you sit on, everyone’s entitled to some lovin’ they prefer.”Of course they are -- but if it "doesn't matter what side of the aisle you sit on" then why are we even posting childish taunts about CPAC attendees on Craigslist anyway? The fact is that many young conservatives -- even conservatives that might be considered "fringe" in most other ways -- have come around to supporting marriage equality and some other GLBT rights. Even on the far right, trends have continued to show that support for GLBT equality is not driven by the "Right V. Left" mind frame but is actually driven by a generation gap, with younger Americans generally friendly towards equal rights.
As a movement that is beginning to come into it's own at a fairly rapid pace, I think it's incredibly important that we behave in a mature manner. The post that I mentioned read like a nasty high school gossip letter, and if I were a closeted, gay Republican male who was considering offering my support, or even coming out of the closet, I would feel distinctly less comfortable after seeing things like this.
While there are a litany of other issues that pro-equality conservatives are dead wrong on, the movement for equality is not so inevitable that we can afford to pick and choose whom we are taking on as supporters. Belittling, childish behavior will never help gay Americans get the equality that is rightfully ours. While the humor of things like the Larry Craig incident is never going to be lost on me, at some point, I think we have to grow above it.
