TAMPA, Fla.–At a Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry brunch Wednesday morning, I asked R. Clarke Cooper, the executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, if he felt welcome at the convention and within the G.O.P. “Absolutely,” he said.

That’s a little surprising. By almost any conceivable metric, the Republican Party has a rotten record on gay rights. After the Obama administration announced that it would enforce the Defense of Marriage Act but would not defend it in court, G.O.P. House leaders enthusiastically stepped in. The 2012 party platform not only calls for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, but also criticizes “the current Administration” for imposing “the homosexual rights agenda” on foreign countries.

But it’s not just Mr. Cooper who asserts he’s right at home. The gay and lesbian Republicans I’ve met at the convention won’t say a bad word about their party or so much as hint that they feel excluded. And they insist that there’s nothing oxymoronic about gay conservatism.



There are two gay Republican organizations here in Tampa: The aforementioned Log Cabin Republicans and the newer GOProud. The latter, actually, isn’t strictly a Republican group–despite the name–so much as a conservative one; it’s the Tea Party to the Log Cabin’s establishment. (Log Cabin dates back to the late 1970s; GOProud is just three years old.)

Related The G.O.P. Convention Dispatches and quick takes from Tampa.

On Tuesday night, GOProud hosted Homocon 2012, a dance party at The Honey Pot nightclub in Ybor City. It was surely the only convention-related event last night–or any night–with informational literature specifying that guests should wear clothes. “Homocon 2012 is not a clothing optional event! We don’t care what you wear, but you do have to wear clothes,” the confirmation email read. The clothes, by the way, varied. Some young men wore “Freedom Is Fabulous” t-shirts, but mostly the attendees wore suits, albeit without ties.

Ruben Sanchez, a button-down shirt member of GOProud, said that “real conservatives don’t care about your sexual orientation. You can be gay, or pro-choice or an atheist and still agree with conservative principles.”

For Jimmy LaSalvia, GOProud’s executive director, it’s logical for gays and lesbians to vote conservative; it’s in their self-interest to reject “big government” and favor free-market policies. “When the government picks winners and losers, that’s not good for us,” he said. “With government-run programs like Social Security, the government decides which couples qualify for survivor benefits. It says straight couples get them, and same-sex couples don’t.”

I interjected that it’s Republicans, primarily, who oppose extending benefits to gay couples, but he waved me off.

He expressed confidence that more gay people would cotton on to the conservative movement, and vice versa, noting that many on the right had embraced his organization. He reminded me that Ann Coulter attended Homocon 2010 (although she wasn’t there last night), and that Grover Norquist was on the “special guest” list.

At the more staid Young Conservatives brunch this morning, on the 42nd floor of a downtown Tampa office building, Mr. Cooper delivered the same it’s-fine-they-like-us message. “I’m expected here. We’re expected here.” He conceded that Mitt Romney’s endorsement of an amendment banning gay marriage “wasn’t helpful,” but he dismissed the anti-gay rhetoric on the party platform and said that the Log Cabin list of “friends in development” (meaning Republican legislators not yet voting in their favor, but sympathetic) was growing.

By way of showing how far the gay Republican movement has come, he introduced me to Kathryn Lehman, a Republican who helped write DOMA. Now she’s lobbying to repeal it. Ms. Lehman said she’s working to instill the idea that while measures like DOMA and Don’t Ask Don’t tell might be culturally conservative, they’re not legally conservative; they’re examples of intrusive government overreach. She said she encounters resistance, but that demographics are on her side. Young people “just don’t see a problem” with same-sex marriage.

It sounded as if everyone were reading from the same playbook. Ignore the headlines and the congressional record: The G.O.P. really is a big tent; gay rights are totally compatible with conservative principles; and it’s only a matter of time until everyone sees the connection.