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Calif. GOP Dumps Consultant in Gay Flap
A conservative lobbyist has been fired from his new job as an outreach worker with the California Republican Party after his appointment drew criticism from the gay community.
Conservatives had applauded the hiring of Ben Lopez, the chief lobbyist and spokesman for the Traditional Values Coalition – the evangelical advocacy group led by the Rev. Lou Sheldon – when it was made public last week as the state GOP opened its convention.
But gay and lesbian groups condemned the decision to hire Lopez and called on Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to renounce him as "intolerant,” the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Lopez has actively campaigned against a bill that would mandate the teaching of gay history, and in support of a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage. The gay advocacy group Equality California called Lopez’s hiring a "blatant slap to California’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.”
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But Mike Spence, head of the conservative California Republican Assembly, said the firing of Lopez brings "frustration that the governor's organization is not about the whole team effort. We're supposed to be unified behind the governor's staff . . . and yet they fired the only person who could do church outreach."
The Traditional Values Coalition was founded in 1980 as an evangelical lobbying group, and is engaged in fighting what Sheldon has called "the homosexual agenda."
Sheldon has been called on by presidential adviser Karl Rove, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman and others to advise politicians on ways to reach evangelicals.
Editor's note:
Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics: Inside Cover Stories
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