RNC Chief to Meet With Ex-Homosexuals
By Steve Brown
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
May 08, 2003
(CNSNews.com) - After pro-family leaders criticized Republican National Committee Chairman Marc Racicot for meeting with what they call "gay pressure" groups, Racicot has now agreed to a meeting with a group of people who used to be homosexual.
"We thought it was bad politics and not the right thing to do to meet with a homosexual activist group," Peter LaBarbera, senior policy analyst for the Culture and Family Institute, a part of Concerned Women for America (CWA), told CNSNews.com.
LaBarbera was referring to Racicot's early March meeting with the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), one of the nation's largest groups advocating special rights for homosexuals.
"They support gay marriage, gay adoption, taxpayer-funded transgender sex change operations," LaBarbera said.
Racicot met Tuesday with leaders from CWA, American Values, the Family Research Council and numerous other pro-family organizations in deciding to meet with former homosexuals.
The time and place of the planned meeting has not yet been announced, and officials did not return any of three telephone calls to the RNC seeking comment.
According to a report by the Culture and Family Institute, Racicot said, "I meet with everybody," and he explained that he was trying to execute "the directive that the president gave me...to carry our message, our principles, to everybody and anybody."
LaBarbera said a lot of "educating" for Racicot went on at the meeting over the HRC's agenda, as well as wondering why the Republican Party would "risk alienating the pro-family base by trying to get the votes of gay activists."
The Institute report said Racicot acknowledged being "naive" about how homosexuality activists might use the meeting with him to advance their causes.
"I think this is really where one of the main battles over where the whole gay rights thing is at right now in the GOP," LaBarbera said. "On the one side, you've got people who say, 'Oh, we've got to go out and get the gay votes,' and you've got a whole other side saying, 'Wait a minute; you're going to risk alienating far more GOP voters than you could gain.'"
Meeting with ex-homosexuals is another way to further the education of Republican Party leaders to the gay activist agenda, LaBarbera said.
"I wish President Bush would meet some of these people, too," LaBarbera said. "Once you meet persons who've come out of the lifestyle, it puts the whole issue in a different perspective for you."
Many homosexuality advocacy groups try to press their case by comparing sexual preference to race or ethnicity, a tactic LaBarbera said has "outraged" some minority Republicans by "this equation of gay activists groups with race.
"They're saying if you're not pro-gay, you're the moral equivalent of a racist," said LaBarbera. "It's a bogus analogy, and if the GOP goes down that road, we're going to see a lot of alienation, and I fear a lot of people won't be going to the polls."