Posted on 11/14/2010 3:38:40 PM PST by kristinn
A gay conservative group and some Tea Party leaders are campaigning to keep social issues off the Republican agenda.
In a letter to be released Monday, the group GOProud and leaders from groups like the Tea Party Patriots and the New American Patriots, will urge Republicans in the House and Senate to keep their focus on shrinking the government.
"On behalf of limited-government conservatives everywhere, we write to urge you and your colleagues in Washington to put forward a legislative agenda in the next Congress that reflects the principles of the Tea Party movement," they write to presumptive House Speaker John Boehner and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell in an advance copy provided to POLITICO. "This election was not a mandate for the Republican Party, nor was it a mandate to act on any social issue."
The letter's signatories range from GOProud's co-founder and Chairman Christopher Barron — a member of a group encouraging Dick Cheney to run for president and who has been known to post images of his bare torso to Twitter — to Tea Party leaders with no particular interest in the gay rights movement.
As of Sunday evening, the letter had 17 signatories. They include tea party organizers, conservative activists and media personalities from across the country, including radio host Tammy Bruce, bloggers Bruce Carroll, Dan Blatt and Doug Welch, and various local coordinators for the Tea Party Patriots and other tea party groups.
"When they were out in the Boston Harbor, they weren't arguing about who was gay or who was having an abortion," said Ralph King, a letter signatory who is a Tea Party Patriots national leadership council member, as well as an Ohio co-coordinator.
King said he signed onto the letter because GOProud seemed to be genuine in pushing for fiscal conservatism and limited government.
"Am I going to be the best man at a same sex-marriage wedding? That's not something I necessarily believe in," said King. "I look at myself as pretty socially conservative. But that's not what we push through the Tea Party Patriots."
That indifference is essentially the point of the gay conservative group.
SNIP
TEXT OF LETTER
Dear Senator McConnell and Representative Boehner
On behalf of limited government conservatives everywhere we write to urge you and your colleagues in Washington to put forward a legislative agenda in the next Congress that reflects the principles of the Tea Party movement.
Poll after poll confirms that the Tea Party’s laser focus on issues of economic freedom and limited government resonated with the American people on Election Day. The Tea Party movement galvanized around a desire to return to constitutional government and against excessive spending, taxation and government intrusion into the lives of the American people.
The Tea Party movement is a non-partisan movement, focused on issues of economic freedom and limited government, and a movement that will be as vigilant with a Republican-controlled Congress as we were with a Democratic-controlled Congress.
This election was not a mandate for the Republican Party, nor was it a mandate to act on any social issue, nor should it be interpreted as a political blank check.
Already, there are Washington insiders and special interest groups that hope to co-opt the Tea Party’s message and use it to push their own agenda – particularly as it relates to social issues. We are disappointed but not surprised by this development. We recognize the importance of values but believe strongly that those values should be taught by families and our houses of worship and not legislated from Washington, D.C.
We urge you to stay focused on the issues that got you and your colleagues elected and to resist the urge to run down any social issue rabbit holes in order to appease the special interests.
The Tea Party movement is not going away and we intend to continue to hold Washington accountable. Sincerely,
Christopher R Barron
Chairman of the Board, GOProud
Andrew Ian Dodge
Coordinator, Maine Tea Party Patriots
Pam Stevenson
Coordinator, Arizona Tea Party Patriots
Dianna Greenwood
Executive Director, New American Patriots (Ashland, OH)
Jim Mason II
Chairman and State Coordinator, Nebraska’s Tea Party Patriots
Ralph King
Co-coordinator Cleveland Tea Party Patriots
Co-coordinator State of Ohio Tea Party Patriots
Jack Lien
Coordinator, Tea Party Patriots of Great Malls (Montana)
Tammy Bruce
National Radio Talk Show Host
JP Weber
Coordinator, Annapolis (Maryland) Tea Party
Doug Welch,
Blogger and member Southern Illinois Tea Party
Bruce Carroll
Conservative Activist and Blogger
Pam Stout
Coordinator, Sandpoint Idaho Tea Party Patriots
Dan Blatt
Conservative Activist and Blogger
Everett Wilkinson
Coordinator, Florida Tea Party
Jimmy LaSalvia
Executive Director, GOProud
Paul Crockett
President Santa Clara (California) Tea Party
David Thor Andreasen
Cumberland County (Maine) Tea Party
Someone has to make the rules. If people don’t accept God’s rules, then it’s all over but the shouting, and whoever shouts the loudest will make the rules.
That’s why Libertarians are always rude and shouting. They just want to be the Big Dogs.
Whew, busy day today. The trolls are thick as flies.
BFL.
“Those immoral behaviors will not directly affect me to any noticeable degree because i will not engage in them. I will try to win those people over to my way of thinking.”
That is so much the exact problem! That is the faulty thinking that got us here! That will be the reason we fail. Our whole culture has changed because the ‘conservatives’ are trying to outdo each other in the ‘none of my business’ fallacy!
What happens in somebodies bedroom has transformed into what happens on TV, in our schools, in our marriages, in our laws, in our financial support and health system, our government, our military, our churches, so in-our-faces constantly!!!!! And oh my goodness how fast it went when they overturned those sodomy laws!!!
The arguement it doesn’t effect me is SO increadably lame!
It is beyond comprehension anyone can say that anymore!
Nope. And I won't buy one either. And?
“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”... John Adams
Right, work with them up until the night of the long knives, uhuh. They can not be trusted. Sorry, but that's the nature of moral degenerates who hide in the closet with a spinning moral compass.And what do they bring to the table anyhow? Nada. They jump out of a cardboard Trojan Tea Cup and the first thing they do is issue a command not to interfere with their queer agenda. Ef'em.The Tea Party is composed of American Individuals - not a bunch of PC sheeple who can't think for themselves, who these lying Pirates are trying to speak for.
The only attention that should be spent on them between now and 2012 is to DESTROY any legislative albatross they try to launch - such as a repeal of DADT.Other than that, just a loud assertion to make it very clear they're not calling any shots and are being IGNORED.
If you value the same moral absolutes as those who you get so angry at, why are you so angry?
I’ve said repeatedly (for instance) that the states should be allowed to make laws against porn, sodomy and so on.
So what’s got you so upset?
Still don't get that either do you...
And you are all over those threads.
The last time you leveled this accusation I asked you for a link and quote where I said that. In that thread I was talking about state rights and YOU kept saying FedGov. No one says that but YOU. When I asked for proof, I received no response. Give it now or shut up.
Libertarians want legal prostitution, porn, and sodomy.
The push to do those same things at the Federal level. It doesn't belong there and it is dangerous. We give the FedGov that level of power and it WILL be used against us when the Dems take power.
Not that hard to understand. It's what I THOUGHT all this "limited Federal government" talk was about.
So you’re okay with such books being illegal, then?
Just trying to figure out what you’re actually upset about.
Yep!
No they are not. We're simply tying to stop and REVERSE the damage already done and being done to our Liberty by the Marxist socialist/liberal/progressives!!
The homosexualist/abortionist/environmentalist, anti-Christian, anti-Jew, gun-grabbing, open-borders, big government, big spending, big taxing repressive progressive/socialist agenda is all one huge massive worldwide Marxist totalitarian movement. We have to fight and defeat the whole enchilada on all fronts or lose our asses (and our freedom)!!
As for illegal, there is that pesky First Amendment thing. Find me a way to reason around that one and I'll agree. A lot of things in print out there that probably shouldn't be. Doesn't mean I want to see book burnings come back in vogue.
Although, yeah... this book belongs on that burn pile if we do.
"So we become a Christian Theocracy. We wouldn't be a 'free' Nation, but we'd certainly be 'moral'. Right?" --Dead Corpse
So that's where you get your talking points, Comrade Corpse?
I and others have repeatedly said that laws against porn and sodomy, just to give a couple of examples, should be state laws. Not fedgov laws.
I said that numerous times.
So what are you so upset about I still don’t get.
One problem is this - for instance, Amazon selling the how-to pedophile manual. It’s not a bookstore in one state. So laws have to be enacted to stop that kind of crap.
Where they do their deed matters to me once they remove it from their closet and bring it onto the street, and require children and society to accept their sexual preferance. Yes...take it back into the closet...I can live quite nicely knowing their sexual preferances are hidden. And yes, I see nothing wrong with people taking a stand against this behavior...becuase it is a behavior they are trying to make into a lifestyle, which it is not.
Until IIRC the late 1960s, obscene and pornographic materials were not considered protected speech under the Constitution. The framers and signers of the Constitution and Constitutional scholars for generations agreed.
A leftist leaning SCOTUS, commie founded ACLU and porn producers thought otherwise.
There is actually no Constiutitonal protection for such material. It’s just the leftists/porn producers’ viewpoint. They are wrong, and such materials should not receive Constitutional protection and states should be free do ban such books or other materials. And thanks to the leftists and porn/strip/owners even nudity and sex shows are considered “speech” to be protected.
So erroneous SCOTUS decisions have forced this stuff on all the states.
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