The List

The blogosphere is providing some insights into attempts to smear gay Republican staffers and goad the religious right into a "civil war" with the Republican Party by disseminating a list of these Log Cabin Republicans to evangelical and other conservative GOP groups.

You can read all about it here.

Money quote:

The version of The List sent to at least some of the conservative organizations originated from the e-mail address hprf@yahoo.com. That is the address of a California-based group, the Health Policy and Research Foundation, an organization devoted mostly to work involving AIDS, that is run by a businessman and former Democratic National Committee staffer named Rick Reidy.

In other words, the source for "the list" being sent to Republican religious nut jobs is not the political right, but the political left. It's a case of the left doing what it always does -- using gays as pawns for its own political purposes. I'm no defender of the GOP on gay issues -- but this is a blatant appeal to homophobia by our "friends" in order to further their own political ends.

Despicable.

And meanwhile, GayPatriot contrasts the response of the Human Rights Campaign:

No one at HRC has this infamous "list"” and furthermore, no one at HRC is aiding and abetting in sending out this "“list"

With the more appropriate response from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force:

“We are unequivocally opposed to the compilation or release of such a list and it doesn't matter to us who is doing it: It's wrong. -- — Matt Foreman, executive director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force