Submission by A.M. Bowen, TNG contributor

A.M Bowen came from Anne Arundel County, Maryland. According to Bowen, “When I read The Grapes of Wrath in my eleventh grade English class,the class discussion did not involve socialism, but rather how the Joads pulled themselves up by the bootstraps. I don’t dig those politics but I’ve been met by nothing but love and acceptance from the locals, including my friends and family, so that makes me dig complexity. I currently live in Washington, D.C., which is a wonderfully progressive mess, and hopes to keep on writing about messy, fascinating things.”

The Horror, The Horror

I swapped coming out stories with an archconservative. I tell you this because I believe we must try to empathize with those whom we disagree. And this archconservative in question—Gay conservative group GOProud’s Executive Director Jimmy LaSalvia—was not just a person I disagreed with, but a person who said things that terrified me.

LaSalvia and GOProud’s Chairman, Chris Barron, used to work for Log Cabin Republicans, the classic gay conservative lobbying and advocacy organization. After interviewing for and failing to get the Executive Director position at Log Cabin, LaSalvia and Barron started GOProud, a 527 directed toward influencing federal policy and, apparently, showing that gays can be as conservative as Sarah Palin or Newt Gingrich. GOProud has criticized Log Cabin for being liberal, for supporting things like the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. I asked LaSalvia about this criticism, and he said, “I think that the old agenda of the Gay Left is stale and outdated.”

I replied, “Yeah, but look at it this way. The Employment Non-Discrimination Act hasn’t passed yet, which means that people are still getting booted out of jobs. I can give you an example—”

“Are they?” LaSalvia said, his tone incredulous. “Really? Honestly, the Democrat Congress, and this shitty economy have done more to cost gay people jobs than not having an Employment Non-Discrimination Act…. I think that there are many many things that come before that, and why is that the be-all-end-all? There might be perfectly good arguments for passing that piece of legislation. But I think we need to be realistic and pass what we can pass and work on the issues that affect the most people. That’s my opinion, honest. And our organization does not have an opinion on ENDA and I just—I think it’s a colossal waste of time.”

I tried arguing a little more—again noting personal knowledge of people who had lost their jobs because of their identities—and he still had more to say. “And so honestly,” LaSalvia said, “I think the government’s the one that discriminates. I have no problem if you want to pass a government-only ENDA. I just have a problem with mandating on business something that’s not necessary when the free market is already taking care of that. It’s a theory of government at that point, you know?”

I asked some boring questions after that, but the interview was basically over after the ENDA exchange. My brain ceased processing effectively enough to ask or respond to anything substantively. I thanked LaSalvia for the interview, and went about some other business stunned—bemused, really, with the same mechanism that brings about nervous giggles, inappropriate laughter. GOProud had animated several severe reactions in its short existence, and I found myself ready to join the detractors. Really—who goes against ENDA?

A Boutique Conservative Messaging Operation for the Glee Era

Moving back a bit, I started the interview from a place of suspicion. I had read up on GOProud, whose agenda is long on justifying how standard conservative policy demands help gays, and short on items that explicitly bring about equality. When I asked LaSalvia what specific bills he wanted to see go through in the 112^th Congress, he gave me conservative talking points, which were what I expected him to give me.

“I think that saving our country from financial collapse is number one…,” LaSalvia said, “and keeping us safe from terrorists…is up there…. I think that specific policies that I’d like to see the Congress attack and tackle are the Social Security system, for example. We need to overhaul that system with a system that includes private accounts, private inheritable accounts, and ensure that we have a solid system for future generations. I think that taking another look at health care to provide a free market approach to health care reform will benefit all Americans, but I also think that gay people will uniquely benefit from a free market approach. There are a number of issues that the Congress is likely to deal with in the lame duck, and some of them may or may not get resolved, like the estate tax, that may carry over into the next Congress. And I think that we will see a Congress that hopefully is responsive to the message of the voters, and the message of the voters in this cycle is ‘Stop the growth of government, and stop spending our money.’”

In short, GOProud’s agenda for the 112th Congress is a grab-bag of conservative demands. Digging beyond the legislative priorities gives me the strong impression that GOProud isn’t much of anything but a boutique conservative messaging operation for the Glee Era. GOProud is, after all, a 527 group, so it’s oriented toward getting people angry enough to take some sort of political action (“Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” being the classic 527). GOProud doesn’t maintain registered lobbyists like Log Cabin does. It supports the issues that LaSalvia mentioned, but when I asked LaSalvia what legislators GOProud was working with on these proposals, he said, “[W]hen we announce the specific proposals, we’ll likely announce who we’ll be working with on them.” I asked if he thought he had entrée with Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), the presumptive Speaker of the House, or Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), who will also likely hold a leadership post in the 112^th Congress. LaSalvia resisted: “I think that unlike other groups, we’re not an organization that publicizes who we meet with…and I just prefer to keep our behind the scenes dealings exactly that.” LaSalvia ultimately left a message on my voicemail, where he emphasized, “We’re a 527. We’re a Washington based, web-based, social-media-based organization, and we’re just not an old-style organization.” Standard lobbying: out; some sort of organizing with social networking: in.

But if GOProud is oriented toward getting the base excited, as 527s can do effectively, it hasn’t proven itself as an impressive operation. The big ad buy that it touted in the weeks before the 2010 General Election was a sorry-looking Powerpoint-turned-TV spot about the “Real Democrats of Washington, DC,” targeting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)—two of whom had no chance of losing their elections, all three of whom won.

This is hardly an original analysis, but at the end of my initial conversation with LaSalvia, I worried that GOProud existed to beat up on pro-LGBT politicians, while pushing conservative talking points—and even opposing entirely positive measures, like ENDA. The implications of such a group are terrifying: LGBT people (if there are transgender people in GOProud) standing in the way of other LGBT people.

Trying to Understand

But I have a literary inclination that makes me want to understand why people do the things that they do. I didn’t like what LaSalvia said, but I wanted to know where he—a real person with real feelings—was coming from. I think it’s worth empathizing with a person as much as possible. If you start off with the position that you’re sympathetic toward a person—not agreeing, just agreeable—then if that same person revolts you eventually, then he/she/ze has really done something worth noting.

This might make me more suited toward being a talk show host than any sort of serious journalist, but I decided to get back in touch with LaSalvia, and ask him about his upbringing. I wanted to know: what made him a conservative? I emailed him with a query into his life story, and he called me back.

Stay tuned for part II, where LaSalvia lays out the conservative mythology of the Mountain West, A.M. Bowen and Jimmy LaSalvia share coming out stories, and the first and current Executive Directors of Log Cabin Republicans take GOProud sort-of seriously.

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