Bruce:
I haven't had any interactions with the LPC over these issues, but my experience with the national office has been consistent with what Rob describes. When I first made plans, I think it was 4 years ago, for a booth at the Gay Freedom Day parade, I contacted the national office well in advance to see if they would produce a gay rights brochure for national distribution on that day. The last gay rights pamphlet produced by the Party was by Ralph Raico in 1975--a magnificent pamphlet, but hopelessly outdated with its references to McGovern and Shriver. I made the same attempt each of the next two years (there had been some personnel changes), and each time was told it wasn't a priority. What does appear to be a priority, as Rob says, is right-wing issues, like taxes. When I complained to George Getz about the lack of Party literature on issues that would appeal to liberals, like immigration, he replied that open borders was a non-starter after 9/11. Never mind that there are constituencies for whom it is a huge issue after 9/11, and who would be great candidates for recruitment. I wrote to Getz and others in the national office that I thought they were really blind to their own bias. The vaunted Libertarian Viewpoint, for example, contains two pictures of little girls with flags--charming to the conservative heartland, but so treacly they would keep my liberal friends from even picking up the paper. Most scandalously, the silence of the national LP on the war in Iraq has been deafening. This should have been the base of a major outreach to the left. Starchild also makes a very important point that the bias is not just a matter of content, but of form: the relentless language of marketing and aggression, the culture of suits and four-star hotels. It's possible, so far as I know, that the state leadership lacks the bias of the national leadership, or they may just be similarly blind to it.