The letter to Boehner (left) and McConnell asks for an agenda that reflects tea-party principles. GOP is urged to avoid social issues

A gay conservative group and some Tea Party leaders are campaigning to keep social issues off the Republican agenda.

In a letter to be released Monday, the group GOProud and leaders from groups like the Tea Party Patriots and the New American Patriots, will urge Republicans in the House and Senate to keep their focus on shrinking the government.


"On behalf of limited-government conservatives everywhere, we write to urge you and your colleagues in Washington to put forward a legislative agenda in the next Congress that reflects the principles of the Tea Party movement," they write to presumptive House Speaker John Boehner and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell in an advance copy provided to POLITICO. "This election was not a mandate for the Republican Party, nor was it a mandate to act on any social issue."

The letter's signatories range from GOProud's co-founder and Chairman Christopher Barron — a member of a group encouraging Dick Cheney to run for president — to Tea Party leaders with no particular interest in the gay rights movement.

As of Sunday evening, the letter had 17 signatories. They include tea party organizers, conservative activists and media personalities from across the country, including radio host Tammy Bruce, bloggers Bruce Carroll, Dan Blatt and Doug Welch, and various local coordinators for the Tea Party Patriots and other tea party groups.

"When they were out in the Boston Harbor, they weren't arguing about who was gay or who was having an abortion," said Ralph King, a letter signatory who is a Tea Party Patriots national leadership council member, as well as an Ohio co-coordinator.

King said he signed onto the letter because GOProud seemed to be genuine in pushing for fiscal conservatism and limited government.

"Am I going to be the best man at a same sex-marriage wedding? That's not something I necessarily believe in," said King. "I look at myself as pretty socially conservative. But that's not what we push through the Tea Party Patriots."

That indifference is essentially the point of the gay conservative group.

"For almost two years now, the tea party has been laser-focused on the size of government," said Barron, who said his group and the tea partiers are part of the "leave-me-alone coalition."

"No one has been talking about social issues - not even the socially conservative candidates who won tea party support," Barron said.

Economic and social conservatives have sparred for months over the priority of questions like abortion and gay rights even as conservative energy on issues of debt, taxation and, above all, the size of government fueled the Republican Party's dramatic recovery since Barack Obama's election.

And while their agendas often overlap - foes of abortion and big government alike opposed the health care overhaul - the small-government impulses of the new conservative grassroots groups have sometimes come into conflict with the desire of religious conservatives to give the federal government a moral role. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels was recently pilloried by social conservative leaders for calling for a "truce" on divisive social issues.

Polling has shown that Tea Party members hold socially conservative views, but don't consider issues like abortion a top priority. But social conservative grassroots played a key role in a handful of election campaigns, including the ouster of three pro-gay marriage Iowa judges. Exit polls last week also suggested that some gay voters had shifted toward Republican ranks, with about a third of self-identified gays backing Republican House candidates.

Barron and the tea party organizers behind the letter hope to get other tea party groups to sign on after the formal unveiling Monday.

"We're not talking about pushing social conservatives out of the tea party movement. Those people aren't only welcome but they're a critical part of this movement." said Barron.

But ideas like the one Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) floated about banning gay teachers run counter to the tea party ethos, Barron argues. "How is that limited government?" he said.

The alliance underscores many of the tensions and divisions in the freewheeling, leaderless tea party movement. While GOProud is ambivalent on the issue of same-sex marriage, it does openly advocate the repeal of the military's"Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy - something some of the letter's tea party signatories disagreed strongly with.

Tea Party Patriots Maine coordinator Andrew Ian Dodge said that pushing DADT repeal would be a distraction from fiscal issues like deregulation and lowering taxes and he hopes that the letter also reminds GOProud of this fact.

"It is a little bit of a distraction," said Dodge about the possible repeal of DADT. "Why divide our forces?"

Ultimately, the tea party forces sympathetic to the GOProud letter said they just want to focus on fiscal issues, even if they personally hold socially conservative views.

Letter signatory Everett Wilkinson, coordinator of the Florida Tea Party Patriots, said that his group encourages people interested in social issues to find an outlet for their passions - just not the Tea Party Patriots.

"We really don't focus on any social issues," he said.