On a cold, rainy Saturday inside a Victorian home in Marietta, Ga., recently, several Tea Party groups were gathered to address a number of issues. One of which was an image problem. The specific image proving problematic was one commonly associated with the typical Tea Party member ― an older, angry, bigoted white male. Some would call this more of a reality problem than an image problem. Organizers of the Third Annual Tea Party Conference were attempting to change that, with help from gay Republicans.
It’s been regrouping time for the Tea Party. A quick rise and a successful election year in 2010 was followed by a rough 2012, in which they lost 12 of 16 Senate races and roughly one-fifth of their House races, and Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin famously introduced the country to the term “legitimate rape.”
Hence the inclusion of an afternoon session at the Tea Party Conference called the “Diversity Dialogue & Debate.” It featured feminist Libertarians, students for marijuana legalization, Tea Party environmentalists, conservative African-Americans, young Jewish conservatives and the aforementioned gay speakers ― GOProud co-executive director Ross Hemminger and Bruce Carroll from conservative gay blog GayPatriot.net.
There were roughly 30-40 people in attendance, roughly 75 percent of which were white men. The ages ranged from late teens to late 70s, but the majority of the group looked to be barely in their 20s.
This was the first year that journalists were allowed inside the conference, which in past years had been smaller scale and based on inviting a few select national leaders, according to event organizer and Tea Party Students chair Danny Oliver.
“This year we decided it was important to get beyond that, because the Tea Party’s youth and student movement is small and that’s a big problem,” Oliver told GA Voice.
Another problem was the logistical issues that tend to occur with Tea Party events. According to Oliver, the location of the conference wasn’t revealed until days beforehand due to fears of protesters, which per their contract would have caused the site owners to cancel the event.
‘They need to hear some of the things we’re going to talk about’
GayPatriot.net’s Bruce Carroll is a rare breed: a gay conservative who is against gay marriage. He cites concerns over religious liberties being jeopardized.
“I think conservatives blew it a decade ago,” he tells GA Voice. “Republicans could have won the gay marriage issue if they had jumped on civil unions and tied it to strong religious protections similar to what I think New Hampshire settled on. But they blew it.”
This was the first Tea Party event at which GOProud’s Ross Hemminger, 23, was invited to speak, and he didn’t hesitate to accept.
“They need to hear some of things we’re going to talk about,” he told GA Voice before going in front of the group. “They need to know and understand that the majority of Americans support gay marriage, and this is a losing issue for them, and it’s a losing issue for Republicans.”
Aliens land in the Tea Party living room
The crowd had thinned out significantly by the time Hemminger and Carroll went up to speak. After a brief introduction, Hemminger and Carroll opened up the floor for a Q&A. For a brief moment, it appeared like the Tea Party crowd was staring at aliens who had suddenly landed in their living room.
But then the questions slowly began.
Someone asked if either speaker works with the Log Cabin Republicans, who were invited to the conference but could not make it, according to Oliver.
Carroll, a GOProud co-founder, was critical of Log Cabin, claiming he discovered that Democratic organizations were funding the group in the early 2000’s. This led him to help form GOProud.
Hemminger was uncomfortable with the close relationship between the Democratic party and another national organization.
“One of the problems that I have with a lot of the national gay organizations like the Human Rights Campaign is that they become more like arms of the Democratic National Committee than they actually do about caring for the safety and security and future of the gay community,” he told the group. “They’re concerned with electing Democrats. Pretty much all of them [national gay organizations] are just Democratic activists.”
The two speakers were quick to answer a question from the group about why they felt the need to segment themselves as gay Republicans.
“Because I think that gay Republicans, and there are a lot of them, need representation,” Hemminger said. “My personal viewpoint is that as a conservative I believe in smaller government, and I don’t believe that the government in any state, or the federal government, has the right to come in and specifically ban same-sex marriages. I think it’s wrong on that viewpoint, it’s wrong on a moral viewpoint. It’s just wrong.”
Carroll was more blunt.
“The reason that I want to identify myself as a gay conservative is because I’m not an anti-war, flaming liberal communist progressive,” he said. “I’ve studied where the gay rights movement comes from, and they’re radical, progressive Marxists. And I’m not. I support economic liberty and freedom and national defense policies that the well-funded national gay rights organizations specifically oppose.”
‘What about pedophiles? We’re talking about tolerance for everyone, right?’
Tea Party Conference organizers touted the event as “historical” in a press release, saying it “will mark a turning point in Tea Party history, when the next generation will rise up to clarify that bigotry is not a Tea Party value.”
As to whether that reputation for bigotry is fair or not, it depended on who you asked.
“I think that it is unfair statistically and demographically speaking,” event organizer Oliver said. “But I think it is very fair when there is a case of obvious bigotry that is answered only by apathy and silence.”
GayPatriot.net’s Carroll thinks it’s an unfair reputation, at least based on his experiences speaking at Tea Party events. “I don’t know how that narrative has come about, but perception is reality.”
Hemminger believes the reputation is deserved, mostly due to the candidates the Tea Party supports.
“We [GOProud] want to win. That’s the point, that’s our job, is to make candidates win. And with candidates like Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell, we don’t win and we end up looking like morons. And that’s a problem, that’s a significant problem,” he says.
“When your most public faces are people like that, that’s what you deserve for putting them forward,” Hemminger continues. “So yeah, I would say that is what [the Tea Party] deserves.”
Oliver looks forward to correcting the mistakes that led to the reputation.
“People are responsible for building up that stereotype,” he says. “And the next generation of the Tea Party needs to be responsible for tearing that stereotype down.”
But his elders in the Tea Party movement can’t seem to help getting in the way of ridding that image of bigotry within their ranks.
During a GA Voice interview with Oliver, a conference attendee in his mid-50s ambled up to listen in. After Oliver answered a question about the Tea Party doing more outreach to the LGBT community, the man broke in.
“What about us pedophiles? I mean, we’re talking about tolerance for everyone, right?” he said.
Oliver became visibly uncomfortable and was quick to point out that the man was not affiliated with his group. The man said he was joking, but the comment hung there, the damage done.