In 2005 the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) officially recognized, for the first time, the gay group Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) as a co-sponsor of their annual gathering in Washington DC. At the time then political director of LCR Christopher Barron told ABC News that the American Conservative Union, coordinator of CPAC, “were very accommodating and were eager to put the group's willingness to participate to use.” Five years later, CPAC organizers appear less “accommodating” to GOProud, the new gay conservative Republican group Barron helped launch in early 2009, over concerns that LCR had become too “liberal.”

The CPAC event has never been particularly welcoming to LGBT people. In 2005, the Family Research Council refused to participate in a debate with LCR's executive director, Patrick Guerriero. Later in the conference, Guerriero was added to a panel discussion about marriage with a little known group. At the 2007 CPAC, author and Republican pundit Ann Coulter referred to former Senator John Edwards as a “faggot.”

Yet after investing $4,000 to be a sponsor, GOProud is expressing high hopes for this year's February 18 – 20 conference. In a December interview with the DC Agenda, Jimmy LaSalvia, executive director of GOProud, said he did not expect their sponsorship of the CPAC conference to be controversial: “I mean, we're conservatives just like other participants of the conference, and so we'll be there as part of the conservative movement. LaSalvia told the DC Agenda he was not sure if the sponsorship would allow for a GOProud member to be able to speak at the event, noting, “that information should emerge in the coming weeks.”

The information has emerged. Not only have the organizers of CPAC made it clear that GOProud will not be given a formal role to discuss or debate gay issues, but some social conservatives have expressed discomfort, and a few outright hostility, towards the new group that labels itself, “the only national organization for gay conservatives and their allies.”

Helping to lead a campaign to oust GOProud from this year's list of CPAC sponsors is Adam McManus, a religious-right radio talk show host with KSLR Radio in San Antonio, Texas. McManus told WorldNetDaily, “I would have hoped the American Conservative Union would have had a higher standard for groups that co-sponsor their pivotal annual event.” McManus brought his complaints directly to David Keene, the head of CPAC's main organizing group, regarding GOProud's involvement in CPAC.

Keene responded by email to McManus, assuring him that nobody from GOProud would have a speaking role at the conference, nor would gay issues be open to debate: “GOProud has signed on as a CPAC co-sponsor, but will have no speakers and we told them that, in fact, since opposition to gay marriage, etc. are consensus positions (if not unanimous) among conservatives, these topics are not open to debate…I know that there are those who are opposed to the sinner as the sin, but our view is that CPAC is inclusive and welcomes all of those who agree with us on most issues.”

By referring to the GOProud members as “sinners,” Keene spoke McManus's language. The Texas radio personality has a website citing bogus death rates for both HIV-positive and negative gay men, calls homosexuality “unnatural deviant behavior” and refers to the GOProud relationship with CPAC as “sodomite sponsorship.”

Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis for the American Family Association, is blunt in his assessment of GOProud: “A Republican homosexual activist group doesn't belong at the popular conservative political conference in February.” Jerry Falwell, Jr., Chancellor of Liberty University, Matthew Staver, founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel, and others on the far right have joined together to give CPAC organizers an ultimatum: if GOProud is allowed to participate, they are threatening to urge all social conservatives to withdraw from the event.

For their part, GOProud has overlooked Keene's offensive anti-gay email to Texas radio host McManus. Bruce Carroll, treasurer of GOProud and creator of the conservative blog GayPatriot, writes that board chair Barron said, “We haven't been muzzled at all by CPAC. No one has told us that there are things we can't talk about and no decisions have been made about speakers.” LaSalvia asserts that GOProud is being treated like everyone else, “with the same benefits as the other co-sponsors.”

If GOProud's participation in this year's CPAC conference and in the conservative movement in general is effective in bringing their party towards support for gay youth, soldiers, individuals and couples, with the same rights as heterosexuals, then they will gain grudging respect from many on the gay left. If, however, GOProud merely gives cover to conservative Republicans for their bigotry while helping to elect politicians who ignore the inequities the gay community faces, or worse, politicians who exploit and spread irrational fear and hatred of LGBT people, then they will have earned, and will deserve, the ire and disdain of our entire community.