Guest column by Ron Hill: Michelangelo Signorile is Right About GOProud, (Regretfully)

Ron Hill bills his site Republicans 4 Freedom as "Advocates For The Rational Wing of the Republican Party." And that he is. Hill wrote for conservative CNN commentator David Frum's web site, and has advocated for repeal of "DADT" and for marijuana legalization. In error I printed another piece yesterday; this is Ron's response to Mike Signorile's Advocate commentary, "Lessons Learned," about GOProud, the Tea Party and the grip of the fundamentalists on the Republican party.

Michelangelo Signorile is Right About GOProud, (Regretfully)

By Ron Hill

God this post is hard to write.

I'll lose some readers over this I'm sure.

I'm reluctant to criticize GOProud. On the one hand, any visibility for gays in the GOP is a good thing: we must be out and active if we want to change hearts and minds within the conservative movement. GOProud's visibility, I believe,  is helping to increase acceptance of gays and of equality within the GOP.

Yet on the other hand, GOProud seems to be in favor of everything conservative while also ignoring (or at least, strongly downplaying) anything related to human rights for GLBT Americans.

Perhaps GOProud believes they cannot take a vocal stand for equality right now and are focusing on quietly gaining acceptance and allies at this time. I can understand that, but also feel frustration with this strategy.

I also find GOProud's support of Ann Coulter and Donald Trump disappointing, particularly when Ms. Coulter is part of the problem with her toxic rhetoric rather than being part of the solution. She contributes nothing to enlighten debate and apparently exist to throw verbal grenades to the cheers of her hyper-partisan readers.  

People like Ann Coulter cheapen public debate and create an "us versus them" mentality that makes it easy to demonize people for merely disagreeing with one another.

Honorable ladies and honorable gentlemen should be able to disagree without being disagreeable - and this goes for gay activist on both the left and on the right.

GOProud's criticism of liberal gay activist is both unnecessary and distasteful - it also makes it hard to focus on the real enemies of freedom. My quarrel is not with liberal activist who are also agitating for my freedom - and I will work with them if it will help secure freedom for all Americans.

 Fighting legal discrimination is neither a liberal nor a conservative cause - it is an American cause.

I'll work with just about any American, including democrats, when doing so will advance our common cause of freedom and liberty for every American.

And then I'll agree to disagree with them on the other issues. I admire how Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neil could fight each other tooth and nail on the issues but then sit down and have a drink together after 5 pm.

Civilized people do not always have to agree 100%.

But GOProud has not been behaving like civilized people. GOProud's Chris Barron once tweeted "The Gay Left = The American Taliban. Hateful, angry and dumb as shit." Chris Barron has also tweeted personal insults about fellow pro-gay rights conservatives Andrew Sullivan and Meghan McCain.

Honestly, what did Meghan McCain do to deserve a personal smear from Chris Barron? Couldn't he just disagree with her statement without attacking her on a personal level? Such behavior is uncouth, unbecoming and ungentlemanly. We conservatives expect better behavior from our own.

It's one thing to criticize someone's positions on the issues. It's another to criticize a person as "dumb", "fat" or to compare them unjustly with the Taliban.

By the way, having served in Afghanistan, I know a thing or two about the Taliban. I may disagree with democrats on most issues, but no democrat wants to make it a crime to be gay, none of them want to imprison me for being gay, and none of them want to execute me for being gay. However, many social conservatives on the American right have called for exactly these steps -  steps which are also supported by the Taliban.

As I've said before, the greatest external threat to American freedom is Islamic fundamentalist, while the greatest internal threat to American freedom is also from religious fundamentalist - this time of the Christian variety.

Michelangelo Signorile is also right about the Tea Party claiming to be only about fiscal issues and downplaying social issues - they did this only until they were elected - now the Tea Party is busy trying to use government to impose private religious belief onto everyone in society - just like the Taliban. These are not "conservatives", they are authoritarians who claim to oppose big government only to use more government as a means of imposing their faith on society.

And Michelangelo Signorile is also right that gay equality will increasingly become a wedge issue that Democrats will use against Republicans. The country has moved much farther in support of gay rights much quicker than anyone anticipated. Increasingly, being against equal rights for GLBT Americans will be viewed just as negatively as being in favor of Jim Crow. On this issue, we Republicans are clearly on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of freedom.

Chris Barron has become a serious liability to GOProud's being accepted as a legitimate, credible, professional organization. It's time for Mr. Barron to go. GOProud is in need of a serious reorganization. One simply cannot build coalitions when someone is tweeting personal attacks on our natural allies in the struggle for equality.

As much as it upsets me to write this, I have to admit that sometimes Democrats are right - and Michelangelo Signorile is right in his current Advocate column. I wish it wasn't so.

For the rational wing of the Republican Party,

Ron Hill

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