HUFFINGTON POST: “I’m embarrassed to call myself a Republican right now,” Jimmy LaSaliva, co-founder and president of the gay conservative group GOProud, said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md., on Thursday. The gay Republican was referring to GOProud’s exclusion from participation at CPAC for a second year in a row, banned as an official sponsor. LaSalvia attended CPAC as a guest of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a sponsor of CPAC which hosted a panel Thursday on which LaSaliva appeared, “A Rainbow on the Right: Growing the Coalition, Bringing Tolerance Out of the Closet.”…
“How do we have a winning coalition in the future, in a world that has gay people in every single family,” LaSalvia continued, a day before GOP Senator Rob Portman reversed his position and came out for marriage equality because his son had come out as gay. “It’s broader than marriage equality. It’s about, ‘Do you support my loved ones?’ I think that a lot of the establishment leaders are out of touch with America and with their own base. There are a few folks in the establishment that don’t like gay people.”… (more)
