Dan Savage, the sex advice columnist
who founded the It Gets Better Project, believes gay Republican
group GOProud is being used to attract moderates and independents to
the fold, but the party remains “rabidly anti-gay to its core.”
In a Wednesday segment titled Pride and
Prejudice on MSNBC's Countdown, Savage disagreed that the
Republican Party is easing up on its anti-gay agenda.
Guest host Sam Seder offered Ann
Coulter's appearance at GOProud's September gathering of gay
conservatives, Homocon, as evidence of an increasingly gay-friendly
GOP.
“Ann Coulter was invited by GOProud
to their event where she said intensely bigoted things,” Savage
said. “She's against marriage equality. GOProud describes
marriage equality – gay marriage rights – as a state's rights
issue, which is what interracial marriage once was.”
Several
socially conservative groups have announced they won't attend
February's Conservative Political Conference (CPAC) convention
because of GOProud's involvement.
But Savage denied the group offered
much cover for the Republican Party.
“GOProud isn't a pro-gay rights
organization, they're an organization of gay quislings and useful
idiots that help to window-dress the Republican Party, which is
really still rabidly anti-gay to its core. It's a little window
dressing, a little gay window dressing, that allows them to appeal to
moderates, perhaps, and independents as being less bigoted than the
Republican Party in its current iteration actually is,” he said.
(The video is embedded in the right panel of this page.)