My Right Online Experience.

After a  lot of difficulty and maneuvering I got a ticket for the full event at Right Online, which was sold out this year.

So Friday morning, my family* packed up and headed to Las Vegas.

The conference was held at The Venetian, which is apparently the only non-union business on the La Vegas Strip. Which made it ideal for a meeting of conservatives.

Anyway, I got to the Venetian in time to get registered and get my copy of Culture of Corruption signed by Michelle Malkin.

The Andrew Breitbart Tribute Reception was extremely moving with dozens of stories about Breitbart’s life and how he had affected the lives of those he worked with over the years. In fact, stories about Breitbart were brought up in almost every speech.

It made me incredibly sad to see how many people he had affected in his 43 short years and the fact that I never had to chance to meet him.

I can’t even begin to describe the awesomeness of the speeches at this event or how much they affected me. So I’ll simply include the videos and encourage you to listen to them.

I hope to also implement some of the ideas I got in the breakout sessions, where I heard a lot about making a blog successful and building an audience. Including the possibility of doing a roundtable podcast with other conservative voices and covering more of my city and state local politics.

To the speeches.

Andrew Marcus, Breitbart Tribute

Former Governor Sarah Palin

Michelle Malkin on June 15th

Michelle Malkin on June 16th

Roger Hedgecock

Hugh Hewitt

Congressman Joe Heck

S.E. Cupp

Lars Larson

Jonah Goldberg

Rusty Humphries

Dana Loesch

Who I got to take a photo with.

Ann McElhinney

 

*They wanted to go on vacation and Las Vegas seemed like a good choice.

Meeting Sheriff Joe

My day could not possibly get any better.

(okay, I’m a crazy political fangirl. Getting my picture taken with a political figure is cooler than meeting an actor in my book.)

I had the good fortune to be able to attend a meeting of the ASU College Republicans this afternoon and Maricopa county Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, was the guest speaker.

He is nothing like the papers describe him, and he had more than a few comments on journalistic bias and the press in general.

He is a very funny, personable man, with an extremely “no non-sense” point of view and an awesome tie pin.

He joked a lot, took some (extremely polite) jabs at democrats, and refused to comment on “operation fast and furious” because he doesn’t like to talk badly about other law enforcement agencies.

He cares a lot about his deputies and their families and about his duty as Sheriff, to the people if his county and to the laws of our country and state.

I was amazed to hear how many years he has worked in law enforcement and how diverse his background is. He’s worked in numerous countries and spent many years protecting the Texas/Mexico border.

If I hadn’t been planning to vote for him already, I would be now.

It was a great honor to meet him and I hope that I will get to hear him speak again.

A call to my readers

If you are gay and conservative and you live in the Phoenix Metro Area (or Arizona in general, depending on how far you want to drive), then I and Lori Heine (a fellow gay conservative blogger from the area) are starting up a group to bring us all together.

I know that I, for one, can sometimes feel very alone as a gay conservative. I’m surrounded by people that don’t understand why I’m a conservative and it sometimes seems that I can’t hold a conversation with another gay person, without defending my views constantly. It makes a person feel isolated, even with people like Daniel Blatt at Gay Patriot (who has advertised our group on that blog as well) and groups like GOProud out there, making themselves visible.

Sometimes you just want to go grab a cup of coffee or spend an evening with people that understand you and that you can have a serious political discussion with and not want to scream.

 

So if you are from the area and are sick of being in the closet about being a conservative, then you need to comment here, shoot me a message on Twitter, email me at Sakasamanochou@gmail.com, or check out our facebook group and join us. We already have a few that are interested and we hope to find more in the future.

 

And if you are a gay conservative who is from some other area, there are more of us than you probably think and if you start looking you will find others around you and maybe you can start up a group of your own.