GO PROUD The GOP Gay Org is Aimlessly LeaderlessFor Now

 BY JAMES WITHERS

GOProud's two co-founders, Jimmy LaSalvia and Chris Barron, plan to step down from their leadership positions in the gay Republican organization.

As reported by the siteBuzzFeed, the conservative political group has earned a reputation for controversy in its four year history. This has forced US Republicans to, at the very least, consider embracing LGBT equality.

'The reason why GOProud has been so successful is because we have brought new ideas and new energy to the arena,' Barron, the group's senior strategist, said in the BuzzFeed article. 'At some point, what was the outside-the-box thinking all of the sudden becomes the box, and so now, that's the way that GOProud does things. It's our box. It seems crazy to everyone else, but, for us, it's like standard operating procedure. It's time for someone else to come in and shake things up.'

This 'outside-the-box-thinking' earned GOProud ire from certain fellow conservatives, specifically the organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference. The yearly CPAC confab is an important event in the Republican calendar. GOProud participated in 2010 and 2011, but was not invited in 2012 or this year.

However, as Barron told BuzzFeed, GOProud succeeded because it made allies with straight conservatives.

'We've always wanted GOProud to be not just gay conservatives; we wanted it to be people who were conservative and supported gay people,' Barron said.

In an email to Gay Star News, Executive Director LaSalvia noted he and Barron will be on the group's board of directors and their successors should be in place by this June.

'GOProud has been my life for four years and the organization will always be able to count on my help in any way,' LaSalvia wrote. 'I will always just be a phone call away, but I'm not going to be looking over my successor's shoulder every step of the way. I'm actually looking forward to seeing what someone else does with the organization we've built.’

Gay Star News