Jimmy LaSalvia, Former GOProud Founder, On Republican Party's 'Cultural Disease,' Aaron Schock

[mfcorey1]

Jimmy LaSalvia, Former GOProud Founder, On Republican Party's 'Cultural Disease,' Aaron Schock

In a fiery interview, the co-founder of the conservative gay group GOProud, which made headlines in recent years after it was banned from the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), lashed out at the GOP days after announcing he's left the Republican Party, having registered as an Independent.

Jimmy LaSalvia said that among the reasons why he fled the party was that the Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman Reince Preibus told him that he was afraid of getting “a phone call from Tony Perkins [of the Family Research Council]” if the party spoke out against anti-gay rhetoric. La Salvia charged Preibus, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), and other Republican leaders with lacking “the backbone to say to the forces of intolerance, ‘You either change or you can’t come with us on this journey.'”

Former GOProud founder says GOP wants to change, but doesn't have a backbone:

LaSalvia said the GOP suffers from “a cultural disease that can’t be fixed,” and charged that the recent crop of GOP presidential contenders, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R), refuse to confront the problem. He also spoke out on the recent controversy over attempts at outing GOP Congressman Aaron Schock (R-IL.), saying if Schock is gay, he has "lied about it repeatedly."

LaSalvia says GOP has a cultural disease that cannot be fixed:

“Intellectually, they know that the party has to change and modernize,” La Salvia said in an interview with me on Friday on SiriusXM Progress. “It’s kind of like the drug addict who knows they have a problem, who knows the drug is not good for them, but can’t [get off the drug].”

La Salvia, who last year at CPAC said he was “embarrassed” to be a Republican after GOProud was banned again from official participation, discussed his efforts to try to change the party.

“I did say I was embarrassed to be a Republican,” he said. “The 2012 election is when I really came to the realization that no matter how hard we tried, no matter how fast support grew, there were still the anti-gay forces in the Republican Party. While I thought they would dissolve over time, the truth is they’re tolerated. They tolerate anti-gay people and that shows a cultural disconnect and they’re so out of touch that I think you can’t fix it.”

He was hopeful, he said, that the post-mortem on the party after the 2012 loss would change it, but he said on many other issues in addition to marriage equality, extremists are still not challenged. He specifically pointed to the statements of Michigan Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Agema, who on Jan. 9 posted an email to his Facebook page that asked, “Have you ever seen a Muslim do anything that contributes positively to the American way of life?"

“It’s not just about the issue of marriage,” La Salvia said.”It’s bigger than just a single issue. It’s about a cultural disease that just can’t be fixed. The fact that last week when [Agema] went on an outrageous anti-gay Muslim rant — unless that kind of behavior is denounced it, it stains everyone.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/20/jimmy-lasalvia-republican-party-_n_4626851.html?utm_hp_ref=politics&ir=Politics

[MNBrewer]

1. Jimmy Who?

[calimary]

2. WHEN do people like this fellow finally open their eyes?

What does it take? What is it finally gonna take?

I'm still waiting for somebody on "that" stage (one of the debates during the GOP primary season in 2012) to denounce those who booed that soldier IN the field, IN the battle zone, IN harm's way, who asked a question involving discrimination against gays - and admitting he's gay as well. And dammit! People in that audience BOOed him!!!!!! Wonder how many of them served? How many of them put their own asses in harm's way for their country? How many of them saw combat as this man did - even while he was asking his question - FROM in the field of battle.

Further, and even more outrageous, those GOP candidates - ALL of them, every last miserable one of them - stood there and said nothing. NOT ONE of them asked for silence, interrupted to tell the audience to shut up or AT LEAST show some respect, not ONE of them even thanked this soldier on active duty in THEIR war for his service and his sacrifice. Not ONE. Ooooh can't do that! Mustn't touch! The Gay, after all, dontchaknow. Not ONE of them bothered to make a statement of how we DON'T do that to our soldiers in harm's way, and we don't judge - gay or not, or how shocking and disgraceful that was.

Yep, I'm still waiting for somebody - anybody there that night, either audience member OR debate moderator(s), OR candidates, ANYBODY to step forward and comment on that and apologize.

Yep. Lotta crickets chirping out there. Still.

[matt819]

3. Anyone else fed up with independents?

Why don't they have the balls to call themselves Democrats. Let's face it, in 2014, if you're not voting R, and until there are viable third parties, then you're a Democrat. Face up to it. Donate if you can. And vote D, because the alternative is chaos, nihilism, and anarchy. So man up, FFS.