National Organization for Marriage Believes in Gaylord Tolerance

CPAC’s organizers have stirred up some controversy by banning the gay conservative group GOProud from participating, in any official capacity, in this year’s festivities, which, somewhat ironically, are being held at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Maryland.

One group that surely doesn’t mind the decision is NOM, the National Organization for Marriage, which withdrew from CPAC in 2010 after GOProud got an invite. But while they don’t care much for gay rights, NOM is willing, at least, to tolerate Gaylord.

“It’s not awkward,” an unamused NOM spokesman told us this morning at the group’s exhibition booth when we asked about the name. “The word gay existed long before we did.”

Asked whether he would have nevertheless preferred it had the nation’s most prominent gathering of conservatives taken place at the Extremely Heterosexual Convention Center, the spokesman said he’d be happy to answer any serious questions if we had them. Which is not a no.

Correction: An earlier version of this post abbreviated the National Organization for Marriage as NOW. We regret the error.

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via Daily Intelligencer http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/03/now-believes-in-gaylord-tolerance.html

Oh, By the Way, Sally Ride Was Gay

If you know anything about Sally Ride, who died yesterday of pancreatic cancer at the age of 61, it’s that she was the first American woman in space. And, sadly, that’s probably it. But it turns out Ride was a pioneer in another way as well: She was gay. Ride came out of the closet in her website’s obituary:

In addition to Tam O’Shaughnessy, her partner of 27 years, Sally is survived by her mother, Joyce; her sister, Bear; her niece, Caitlin, and nephew, Whitney; her staff of 40 at Sally Ride Science; and many friends and colleagues around the country.

So why is she only coming out now? Blame Norway. “Sally had a very fundamental sense of privacy,” her niece, Bear Ride, tells Buzzfeed, “it was just her nature, because we’re Norwegians, through and through.” We’d never heard that about Norwegians. We’re learning a lot today. 

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via Daily Intel http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/07/sally-ride-gay-lesbian-tam-oshaughnessy.html