Following an op-ed by Chad Griffin of the Human Rights Campaign, in which he explained why his organization regards the World Congress of Families is “hateful”, the Daily Beast’s Jay Michaelson reports on fallout in Utah:
The World Congress of Families, an umbrella group of forty-odd ‘traditional values’ organizations, announced earlier this month that their 2015 conference will be held in Salt Lake City, thanks to the financial patronage of the Sutherland Institute, a far-right think tank based there.
…Yet there are early signs that not everyone’s rolling out the welcome mat. The conference was quietly taken off the Salt Lake City department of tourism website after HRC Director Griffin’s op-ed was published.
However, a somewhat different official attitude prevails in the State of Victoria in Australia, as the WCF prepares to descend on Melbourne. From The Age:
[Victoria Attorney-General] Robert Clark’s welcome to Melbourne address to a conference organised by a hard-right, anti-gay, anti-abortion group is consistent with the state government’s tourism agenda to attract people to Melbourne, [State] Premier Denis Napthine says.
…Dr Napthine on Wednesday downplayed Mr Clark’s decision to address the event, saying it was “quite common” for the government to have a representative at a variety of events in Melbourne and was partly about promoting the city as a destination for international conferences.
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