Log Cabin Head: NOM Is Cancer to Conservatives

R. Clarke Cooper, the executive director of the LGBT Republican group Log Cabin Republicans, writes in The Washington Times that the National Organization for Marriage is a "cancer" eating away at his party.

Cooper first refers to NOM's disastrous boycott of Starbucks. The antigay group targeted the coffee chain over its support for marriage equality in Washington State -- the boycott led to waves of support for Starbucks with appreciative letters, tweets, and Facebook messages. Cooper then says NOM's recently discovered tactics of dividing racial minorities and LGBT people are insidious and hurtful to conservatives.

"Putting aside NOM's callous disregard for LGBT families, my party, the Republican Party, cannot afford to be associated with an organization that arrogantly seeks to manipulate African-American and Latino voters, particularly when the Republican Party is working hard to promote our message of economic opportunity and individual liberty among these communities," Cooper writes. "Crude identity politics has no place in today's conservative movement."

Cooper calls on all three major Republican candidates for president -- Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich -- to repudiate their support for NOM's "marriage pledge."

"The debate surrounding the freedom to marry is ongoing, with good and loyal conservatives on both sides," writes Cooper. "However, NOM is a cancer that needs to be removed for the good of the conservative movement. Inclusion wins, and division loses."

Read the full piece here.