When Will They Ever Learn?

Pity the poor Log Cabin Republicans who have been back-handed again by the own party, this time in North Carolina.

The state Republican party has banned gay GOP members from setting up a booth this weekend at their state convention.

"I am extremely disappointed that the leadership of the North Carolina Republican Party is attempting to so narrowly define who can be a Republican," Ed Farthing, a retired Hickory lawyer who requested the booth, said Tuesday.

"It appears to be you must be a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant and married for the Republican Party to pay any attention to you. I think that is a good 1950s voter profile."

The state party leadership backs a proposed constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriages and said it plans to denounce homosexuality as "not normal" at its convention. Its stance was prompted by intense national debate about same-sex marriages stemming in part from a Massachusetts court ruling allowing such unions. Gay and lesbian couples began marrying there Monday.

The Log Cabin Republicans applied a month ago for a table at the state GOP convention, which begins Friday. The group is holding a meeting to organize a chapter in conjunction with the convention.

Last week, state GOP chairman Ferrell Blount returned the group's $75 check and said the booth would not be allowed.

Ed, Ed, Ed. Are you a masochist? Not that there's anything wrong with that. But if you are, there are much better ways—and lots more fun too—to satisfy that yearning than flinging your face into the fist of your state Republican party. When are you going to get it? They don't like you. They are never going to like you. In fact, they hate you. They would rather you just didn't exist. Have you even read your own party's platform? Have you seen their vision for this country? There is no place for you in it.

What is it that you don't get about the way things are?

Comments

[Patrick]

I somewhat understand the argument that it helps to effect change from within a political party, rather than from the outside. And I also think it's not in the best interests of the gay community to be beholden to just one major political party. Unfortunately, the Republican party has time and time again made it clear that they don't want to include us. Given the President's and his party's position on a host of issues, including gay marriage, I can't imagine how any self-respecting gay man or lesbian can remain a Republican.

[trey]

I somewhat understand that argument too (having did it for 6 years in the Mormon church), but there is a time when it just becomes self-destructive.

I think it is that point for gay Republicans. It's just getting too horrible to watch as their party consistently slaps them around to a bloody pulp.

If I had Republican sensibilities in the fiscal or other issues, I think I'd be looking for another party. Perhaps Libertarians, Reform? Anything but the abusive party the Republicans are becoming.