CPAC:They roll out the red carpet for angry Islamaphobes but gay conservatives have to sneak in

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Attendees at this weekends Conservative Political Action Conference — especially those with an interest in diversity within the conservative movement — were greeted this morning with a surprising addition to Saturday’s schedule: sponsor Breitbart News Network announced it would be hosting a panel discussion on Saturday afternoon called “The Uninivited: A series of controversial speakers and panels.” Those who noticed the fliers might have wondered what could be more controversial than the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s late decision to host a (well-attended) panel on gay conservatives and the important of inclusivity featuring CPAC exiles GOProud.

Despite the fact that Andrew Breitbart himself was an enthusiastic supporter of GOProud, the panel held in his honor doesn’t exactly feature a line-up of panelists calling for diversity within the conservative movement. Instead, it features a veritable who’s-who of right-leaning Islamophobic writers and anti-Muslim activists expected to talk about the importance of persecuting and isolating Muslims — especially within CPAC and its parent organization the American Conservative Union.

The Breitbart News Network decision is particularly controversial because no less than three of the speakers — Frank Gaffney, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer — were themselves earlier barred from officially participating in CPAC because of their personal attacks on ACU Board Members Grover Norquist (the head of Americans for Tax Reform) and Suhail Khan (a former Bush Administration appointee) as instruments of global jihad. Such personalized criticism is what was said to have sparked the speakers’ original banishment, but criticizing ACU board members was also behind the banishment of GOProud (which continued in 2013).

In 2011, the then-new head of the ACU Cardenas told the gay conservative group GOProud that they wouldn’t be allowed back as a sponsor or as speakers after co-founder Chris Barron called ACU board member Cleta Mitchell “a nasty bigot” for her efforts to have the group barred from the conference. Though Barron apologized, Cardenas said he didn’t plan to welcome them back in 2012 and that he would instead focus on racial diversity at the conference, adding “There are not enough African-Americans, Hispanics and other

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/15/cpac-where-they-roll-out-the-red-carpet-for-angry-islamaphobes-but-gay-conservatives-have-to-sneak-in/

[COLGATE4]

1. Reminds me of nothing so much

as two groups of monkeys throwing shit at each other. Entertaining for a few moments.