Gay Old Panic party proceeds apace

First, for all the denigration the Right does of gay Americans, a cautionary tale:

The hero intern is Hispanic and gay. This means he could be stopped anytime in Arizona and asked to produce proof of citizenship. And, until a few weeks ago, he would have been barred from military service. 

While I'm scanning The Daily Dish, here's a thoughtful challenge to the gay-panic wing of the GOP- which includes not just the mainstream GOP in SC but swings over into dangerous turf with a couple of the local hate bloggers- about how the otherwise kinda nutty GOProud is causing all kinds of fractures in the Borg.

David Link notes the unexpected impact of the splinter gay Republican group:

Today, there are simply too many examples of decent, moral, public and powerful homosexuals to sustain the notion that “they” are evil or harmful or much of anything other than fellow citizens, friends, coworkers, neighbors and family members. Republican leaders have suppressed their party’s best instincts about this for too long, and GOProud is, as ACT-UP did before it, unleashing the power that’s been there all along.
GOProud can be as juvenile and theatrical as their predecessors, but they are also, like ACT-UP, a deeply serious group – as this reaction to their existence shows. Maybe the timing is better for them than it ever was for Log Cabin. Or maybe Log Cabin’s political strategy wasn’t what was needed to blow up the party’s entrenched hypocrisy. But either way, GOProud is now forcing their party to have a public conversation about a fundamental question that has been kept at the margins: What would Republican conservatism look like if it weren’t anti-gay?

That's a very good question. Here's how FRC answers it:

We recognize that some organizations represented at CPAC are silent on the issue of homosexuality. But organizations whose whole reason for existence is to promote the forced public affirmation of homosexual conduct should not be welcomed at CPAC, because that is not-by any stretch of the imagination-a "conservative" agenda.

[Their italics.] The key phrase, it seems to me is: "promote the forced public affirmation of homosexual conduct." Unpack it.

It seems to me that no one can physically force public affirmation of anything without being subject to criminal charges (unless you're Dick Cheney). As for "conduct", is GOProud forcing Christianists to say that non-procreative sex is moral? Please. What they are doing is simply being there - evidence that even among the most die-hard GOP activists, there are gay people who simply reflect reality, i.e. that gay people do not "choose a lifestyle" but emerge in life as gay as others emerge straight. FRC and the Christianist right cannot handle this because it undermines their core case about gayness as entirely immoral conduct. They cannot handle it because it is true. So their response is to take their marbles and go home:

The suggestion that conservatives should debate marriage on our own turf is demeaning and downright deceptive. This is a fundamental principle that shouldn't be up for debate in any conservative gathering. If the policy is not up for discussion, why foster the impression? If it is, then make that clear upfront.

Should not all sorts of positions be up for discussion among an unruly coalition of partners? Isn't that partly what a movement is actually, you know, for?