MSNBC’s Chris Hayes explained this morning that although he was initially eager to join the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) as a panelist, he would only go if they allowed GOProud – a group of gay Republicans – to come to the conference.

Hayes was invited by CPAC organizers to join the panel “CSI Washington, D.C.: November 2012 Autopsy” with conservative leaders Ann Marie Buerkle, John Fund, the Washington Examiner’s Michael Barone, and Ralph Reed.

Citing the 2011 decision by CPAC organizers to exclude the gay group from co-sponsoring the event, Hayes insisted that “it’s not OK to ban organizations for reasons of pure bigotry.”

“As far as GOProud knows the policy is still in effect,” Hayes wrote. “So I wrote back to Al Cardenas who runs the ACU in a letter yesterday and asked whether the policy is still in effect. If it isn’t, I told him, I’m psyched to go and if it is, well, I’ll wait until it changes, which is, really, just a matter of time.”