The Conservative Political Action Conference begins in Washington, D.C., Thursday. The conference is the largest annual conservative gathering and attracts attendees from all parts of the conservative movement. This year is different. The gay conservative group, GOProud, has been barred from sponsoring the event. It has sponsored it for the previous two years.

This summer, after two years of protest from social conservative and family values groups, GOProud was informed it would not be allowed to attend. Many who support CPAC’s decision argue GOProud is not a conservative group and therefore should not be included. There have been questions raised about certain parts of the group’s leadership and some associations it has had in the past. But this is certainly not representative of the entire organization.

Beside this omission, one would be hard-pressed to call GOProud anything but conservative. Its mission statement reads as follows: ‘… GOProud is committed to a traditional conservative agenda that emphasizes limited government, individual liberty, free markets and a confident foreign policy. …’ This could be any conservative group and arguably the scope of the GOProud’s focus on conservative issues is more encompassing than those of many of its critics.

GOProud doesn’t advocate for gay marriage in any part of its platform. It advocates every state should pick its own definition of marriage, a federalist stance that our founders embraced through the Constitution. Even if gay marriage was part of GOProud’s agenda, it is not an issue that should be part of a conservative litmus test. If it was, a good portion of the movement, many younger and libertarian-minded conservatives, would be lost.

Disagreement among conservatives at the conference is one of the most valuable parts of the movement. As conservatives, we agree and are united on a core set of beliefs, our founding principles, the rule of law, a strong national defense, limited government and more, and we disagree on smaller issues. Would it have been acceptable in the 2000s, when neoconservatives were especially prevalent, to not allow those who were fighting for less government spending and a more limited foreign policy to attend? Few conservatives would say yes.

The reality is most who attend CPAC don’t mind that GOProud has attended and co-sponsored the event for the previous two years. Well-known conservatives like Grover Norquist, who sits on GOProud’s Board of Directors, Ann Coulter and Andrew Breitbart have all voiced support for the group and its involvement in CPAC. A speaker at last year’s conference was booed off the stage after leading a condemnation of the organizers for inviting GOProud.

People that fought for GOProud’s exclusion from this year’s CPAC need to think about what makes a person a conservative. They’ll find that the beauty of the conservative movement is that it is based on universal ideas and principles. A person’s sexual preference — in this case, religion, sex or race — does not make someone more or less conservative. What matters is what one has to contribute and what one holds as his or her principles.

Patrick Mocete is senior political science and policy studies major. His column appears every Thursday. He can be reached at pdmocete@syr.edu. 

Published on February 8, 2012 at 12:00 pm