Earlier this year that gay conservative group GOProud set off a controversy by co-sponsoring the annual CPAC conference, much to the dismay of anti-gay Religious Right groups who threatened to boycott the event if GOProud was not dropped.
In the end, only Liberty Law School dropped out, but controversy has continued to erupt seemingly with every announcement GOProud makes.
Earlier this summer, Grover Norquist agreed to join the group's board and he immediately came under fire for betraying the conservative movement and the same thing has been happening to Ann Coulter, who agreed to speak at GOProud's Homocon 2010, leading WorldNetDaily to drop her from its own upcoming Taking Back America conference:
Conservative superstar Ann Coulter today was dropped as a keynote speaker for WND's "Taking America Back National Conference" next month because of her plan to address an event titled "HOMOCON" sponsored by the homosexual Republican group GOProud that promotes same-sex marriage and military service for open homosexuals.
Joseph Farah, editor and chief executive officer of WND, said the decision was a gut-wrenching one for his team because of their fondness for Coulter as both a person and writer-speaker.
"Ultimately, as a matter of principle, it would not make sense for us to have Ann speak to a conference about 'taking America back' when she clearly does not recognize that the ideals to be espoused there simply do not include the radical and very 'unconservative' agenda represented by GOProud," said Farah. "The drift of the conservative movement to a brand of materialistic libertarianism is one of the main reasons we planned this conference from the beginning."
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"Earlier this year, GOProud was permitted to sponsor the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, the biggest event of its kind," said Farah. "This bad decision resulted in consistently conservative groups dropping sponsorship and withdrawing from participation – much to their credit. GOProud is about infiltration of the conservative movement and dividing it from within with twisted and dangerous ideas way out of the mainstream of American public opinion. Ann Coulter is, I'm afraid, validating this effort for money. I support her speaking to people with whom she disagrees on college campuses. That's a good idea. I do it, too. But if you see the way GOProud is exploiting its coup in getting Ann Coulter to speak to its HOMOCON event, you begin to understand what a mistake this is for a conservative icon like Coulter."
So while Coulter is being dropped for supposedly being too "gay friendly" (which is itself hilariously ironic) WND's conference is still stocked with other virulently anti-gay speakers like Robert Knight, Matt Barber, Gary Cass, Molotov Mitchell, and Gary DeMar:
While DeMar insists that homosexuals wouldn't be rounded up and systematically executed under a "reconstructed" government, he does believe that the occasional execution of "sodomites" would serve society well, because "the law that requires the death penalty for homosexual acts effectively drives the perversion of homosexuality underground, back into the closet."
Another "long-term goal," he writes elsewhere, should be "the execution of abortionists and parents who hire them."
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In 1993, American Vision helped county commissioners in Cobb County, Ga., pass an anti-gay resolution so strongly worded that it sparked a national controversy. Cobb County Commissioner Gordon Wysong spoke at American Vision's annual fundraising banquet the following year, saying of gay people, "We should blame them for every social failure in America."
Oh, and did I mentioned that Rep. Michele Bachmann is also speaking at the conference?
