I was just noticing this myself. I read LW via feeds, so the contents of the front page are normally irrelevant to me, but I went there this morning and I noticed that the entire visible content was three body-hidden meetup posts; and scrolling down showed a rationality quotes thread, two more meetups, and then some actual LWian content. It's not only not showing anything interesting to newbies at the top, it's also showing a degenerate form of the intended site structure (no post text).
I suggest that even if it is decided that meetup posts should remain on the front page, they be given a more compact format. Specifically, either given them a more vertically compact presentation (e.g. it makes less sense to show the vote/comment/save/hide/report bar when all of the article text is below-the-cut) or put them in a separate column. (Though columns have their own problems.)
I've been browsing LessWrong less often as of late, and I believe that one of the reasons is because I don't want to get all excited all over a new insightful LW post, only to discover that it's a meetup in a city that I'm not even in.
And for newbies to the site in particular, they're not going to see all the awesomeness of this site if they simply look at the frontpage and think it's a community just for meetups.
I'm sure meetup discussions can go somewhere prominent. Maybe a separate section can be devoted to them.