Western Conservative Summit disinvites GOP gay group

From the Denver Post:


Western Conservative Summit disinvites GOP gay group


The increasingly influential Western Conservative Summit has disinvited a gay Republican group to attend its event this summer — a message that sends exactly the wrong message, members of the Log Cabin Republicans say.

 The Colorado Log Cabin Republicans had paid a $250 fee to be able to set up a table at the event, but then received a message from John Andrews, head of the Centennial Institute, which is affiliated with Colorado Christian University and sponsors the summit.

 “You and your members are very welcome to get tickets and attend, but we can’t officially have the organization as a partner, exhibitor, or advertiser,” Andrews said.

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“It is a pretty common issue we face. They’ll take our money, but want us in the closet,” said Michael Carr of Denver, a former state Senate candidate and secretary of the state chapter of Log Cabin Republicans. “This is the most important time for us to be reaching out to all types of groups and people, all types of Republicans, all types of conservatives. 

Young people especially want to see a robust political debate and this dis-invitation is the exact opposite of that. Being perceived as anti-gay turns young people off even more than it does the general public.” Andrews told the gay group that the Log Cabin Republicans’ “worldview and policy agenda are fundamentally at odds with what Colorado Christian University stands for, so it’s just not a fit. I’m sorry it has to be that way.”



See those Western Conservatives with deeply held religious beliefs will take the gay moNAY but don't actually want the gays who are attached to it.  Now that's sticking to one's god-belief, innit?


Damon Linker of The Week explains these culture war issues and their impact on presidential politics:



More than ever, presidential politics is about something other than politics. It's about culture, identity, signaling, and symbolism. 

In a country of 318 million people, in which there is no shared religious conviction, no shared ethnicity, and increasingly no common culture or moral consensus about marriage and sex, and in which the burden of what is typically a nation's greatest act of collective endeavor and sacrifice (war) has been offloaded to a tiny segment of the population that voluntarily bears the burden largely out of public sight and mind — in such a centerless country, with a media culture that fixates on image, style, and symbolism, a single nationwide quadrennial election in which every adult citizen can participate has taken on existential overtones. 

More than affirming his or her ideology or policy proposals, we want to be able to look at a presidential candidate and say: "That's me. That's who I am. That's how I see America." 

Democrats are used to making this kind of point about Republicans. With their swaggering gait, ostentatious denials of evolution and climate change, and gratuitous references to God, guns, grits, and gravy, GOP presidential candidates do nothing to conceal their cultural signaling. Unless it involves race. In that case, Democrats point out, Republicans will speak in subtly camouflaged terms about wanting to "take our country back" from the likes of "Barack Hussein Obama." 

What Republicans mean when they talk this way is that they want a president who looks like them, which means white. (Many Democrats assume that this unedifying display of prejudice will be repeated in gendered terms should Hillary Clinton become the first female president in 2016.)