What Happens in Vegas: A New Gay Republicans Group?

Image from source, Las Vegas City Life

This morning on my short drive to work, I listened to part of an interview between the leader of a new gay Republicans group and Alan Stock of KXNT. Stock and I tangled a few times, back when the station's online message board allowed such things. I can say from personal experience that a) Alan Stock is a staunch Republican and b) he is not a fan of gay people. When I got to work, I couldn't help but write a short email (sorry, boss) expressing my befuddlement with the new group, Right Pride. How could they claim that the Republican Party is open, accepting and tolerant?

If you've landed at this blog, you have undoubtedly also stuck a toe in the rest of the vast internets, and have seen for yourself that by-and-large, the Republican Party is none of those things. In fact, if you seek out members of "the base" of the party--say, at a site like FreeRepublic.com--you'll find outright hostility. And that is putting it very, very mildly. Ordinarily, I'm a champion of underdogs, and Right Pride would seem to fall into that category. But there are underdogs, and then there are hopeless causes.

Several years ago, when we were in the thick of the Bush era, I was friends with a gay couple who were steadfast Republicans. I enjoyed their company, but whenever conversations would stray into politics, things would get prickly. "Well, we don't vote on social issues," was the common excuse. Hmm. Okay. So you only vote your pocket book then (or purse, as the case may be. . .ha!). I'm not sure that is very noble, and it surely seems self defeating. Especially when this particular social issue affects our pocket books in a very real way.

So, I'm once again going on record to state that I simply don't understand gay Republicans. The Democratic Party may not be 100% behind us--and the Obama Administration has been greatly disappointing on a great many of "our" issues. But they're a damned sight better than the GOP. I don't feel the need to site specific cases to back myself up here, as they're all over this blog, and all over the web. Recently. But if you're interested, here's a little more about Right Pride.

[Excerpt]

Whose right is it anyway?
State's newest gay rights group could shake up the GOP

. . .Decades after groups like the Log Cabin Republicans began to shake up the right and yank it away from Christian conservatives who hijacked the party in the '80s, the ranks of gay Republicans continue to swell.

The latest group here in Nevada? Right Pride, the brainchild of Massachusetts native turned Las Vegan Mark Ciavola, an activist and college student who says he thinks his gay and lesbian brothers and sisters should, at last, have a permanent seat under the Grand Old Party's supposedly big tent. . .

Read more at: Las Vegas City Life