GOP Contract Bars King & Spalding Staffers From Supporting Same-Sex Marriage

Over at Metro Weekly, Chris Geidner unearths an interesting stipulation in the GOP's contract with King & Spalding, the legal firm hired to defend DOMA.

All of King & Spalding's employees – lawyers and non-lawyers – are barred from advocating for the Respect for Marriage Act – the bill that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act – in the 112th Congress, according to the terms of the contract to defend DOMA that King & Spalding partner Paul Clement signed on the firm's behalf on April 14. The contract, which was entered into with U.S. House of Representatives General Counsel Kerry Kircher on behalf of the House's Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group to defend DOMA in court, contains a provision that prohibits all King & Spalding attorneys and non-attorney employees from any advocacy to "alter or amend" DOMA.

HRC's Fred Sainz: "This particular provision adds insult to injury. Not only is K&S promoting discrimination, they also are muzzling their own employees from opposing discrimination and doing what's right."

RELATED: As I noted here last week, King & Spalding last year earned a 95% positive rating from the Human Rights Campaign and trumpets their devotion to LGBT equality on their corporate website.

Metro Weekly On GOProud

The Metro Weekly cover story on GOProud and the CPAC boycott has been posted online. Reporter Chris Geidner does a great job delving into the philosophy of GOProud and who their allies and enemies are. You should read the entire piece, but naturally I'll excerpt a bit with a quote from me in it.

''The problem is that the gay left has decided what qualifies as pro-gay and what qualifies as anti-gay, and a whole bunch of the stuff that they think qualifies as pro-gay, I don't think has anything to do with being pro-gay,'' says Barron. "And, a whole bunch of stuff that they think is anti-gay, I don't think is anti-gay at all." Barron sees his mission as changing that. ''I think that, over time, obviously, people's position on gay issues is evolving, and I think it helps to have a gay voice out there that says, 'You don't have to be with them on all the things they say you have to be with them on.'''

Saying that's ''one of the things that drives the left crazy,'' Barron becomes angered when describing the complaint that GOProud is ''providing cover to our enemies,'' as gay left blogger Joe Jervis (leonel gosphar) – a near-constant critic of GOProud – puts it. Barron isn't having it. ''No, we're not giving cover to bigots," he argues. "What we're doing is separating the people who don't agree with the left-wing agenda from the real bigots. You can be against ENDA and hate crimes and federal safe schools legislation and not be a bigot. If you're Tony Perkins, you're a bigot. You're against all of that stuff not because of any federalist reasons, but actually because you're just a nasty, anti-gay bigot.'' Jervis defends his tactics against GOProud, saying, ''What they're actively advocating is blockage of some pretty critical LGBT rights that the movement has only begun to scratch the surface of.''

Read the rest.

Coming Later Today From Metro Weekly

The GOProud/CPAC kerfuffle is the cover story for today's Metro Weekly, which should appear online by the end of the day. Reporter Chris Geidner interviewed me for about an hour on Monday, so we have to see how much of my take was, uh, printable. Here's the teaser, via press release:

GOProud has a fight on its hands. From the left, right and middle, organizations and activists argue with, debate and even ignore the gay conservative group that’s now heading into its second year at CPAC, the annual conservative conference. But – in the conservative arena that is the group’s aim – GOProud is winning, as an attempted boycott because of the group’s CPAC participation fizzled and the group is making serious inroads in the conservative movement. From longtime conservative activists like Grover Norquist to new media names like Andrew Breitbart, GOProud is grabbing attention – and friends – in the conservative movement. Metro Weekly senior political writer Chris Geidner talks with GOProud, allies and critics as CPAC gets under way – and as GOProud looks to the future.