One ACU Board Member Speaks Up: CPAC Should Not Have Invited Atheists

Photo Credit: Leadership InstituteMorton Blackwell, a longtime member of the American Conservative Union’s (ACU) Board of Directors, said that American Atheists should not have been invited to participate in the ACU-sponsored Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which will be held in Washington, D.C. March 6-8th.

“My answer is no,” Blackwell replied when CNSNews.com asked him whether, as a matter of principle, the atheist group should have ever been invited to the annual conservative conference in the first place.

“CPAC was originally supposed to represent the conservative movement, and that means the principles of American conservatism in many ways embodied by Ronald Reagan: limited government, free enterprise, a strong national defense, and traditional values,” explained Blackwell, who is also president of the Leadership Institute, an official sponsor of CPAC.

And while “we certainly should not insist that every participant in CPAC is in agreement on every public policy question,” he said, they should “not be openly hostile to any other elements of conservative principles,” including “attacks on traditional values, including religious faith.”

Blackwell was the only one of more than two dozen ACU Board members and CPAC sponsors contacted by CNSNews.com who was willing to go on record opposing CPAC’s decision to allow American Atheists to set up a booth at the annual gathering, which is attended by hundreds of conservative activists from across the country.