Pence and the Skater

A homosexual male figure skater on the American Olympic team made news this week by announcing he wanted nothing to do with Vice President Pence because he thought Pence supported so-called gay conversion therapy, i.e. therapy to change one’s sexual interests from homosexual to heterosexual.   It turned out that Pence said he didn’t, but why should it matter much if he had?  (It is  interesting that many on the left are in the unusual position of claiming that while wanting or pretending to alter one’s demonstrably genetically determined sex is a fine, admirable, and completely doable thing, any attempt to change one’s conjecturally genetically influenced sexual interests is both impossible and a black sin.) While no one should be coerced into entering any therapy, any adult wishing to change something about himself is free to get any sort of therapy he likes from anyone willing to provide it – quacks, charlatans, or otherwise. It is no one’s business including no other homosexual’s business if a homosexual decides to try such therapy. One may think doing so is pointless, futile, or wrong, but in a free country people get to do things others think are pointless, futile, or wrong.  

For centuries in Europe and for many decades after the founding of this country proponents of traditional Christian moral opinions made homosexuality illegal and homosexuals subject to persecution by officials.  The laws were often ignored or enforced only spottily, but the threat always was present.  Some homosexuals  were punished, and many or most had to be careful in public and lost some of  their freedom of association.  American libertarians and many liberals opposed these laws and supported the right of homosexuals for the same reasons  they supported the right of everyone to live peaceably as he chooses without the interference of officials, and eventually the laws were repealed or overturned. There has also been a change in the culture with many and probably most people now believing that condemning homosexuals as sinners or perverts is wrongheaded or even immoral.

While that cultural change is good, there is now a new problem as illustrated by such things as  attempts to outlaw voluntary conversion therapy or force unwilling florists and bakers to participate in same sex weddings.  Many people, homosexual and otherwise, now believe that  their superior moral  understanding  on such things gives them the right to suppress and punish a new class of sinners – those who either favor the traditional Christian belief that homosexuality is sinful or for reasons of  their own find it undesirable or risible.  This is wrong  for the same reasons punishing homosexuals was  wrong. It is also dangerous.  Homosexuals are a very small minority in this country, and there are many millions of traditional people. Political winds and fashions change. Worms turn. It is both right and safer to defend the right of  all people to think and behave peaceably as they like, whether one approves not, than to attempt to force people to conform.  To paraphrase a great man, those who deny tolerance to others, run the risk of not getting it for themselves.  Diversity of every sort is safer when there is not even the possibility of the power of the government being used to enforce conformity. Libertarians know this, and others should learn it.