PHILADELPHIA — California Lieutenant Gov. and former San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom spoke Wednesday at the Democratic National Convention and repeated a standard Democratic line about Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence:
Pence supported overt discrimination and even advocated diverting taxpayer dollars to so-called “conversion therapy.” That’s not “praying away the gay;” it’s emotional torture against our most innocent citizens, our children. Telling them that to live, they must lie. About who they are, and who they love. That’s fundamentally un-American. The age-old choice has never been more clear: We can live our fears or live our dreams.
Unless Newsom has evidence I don’t know of, this is false — and Newsom’s conflation is an important mistake that elides a crucial distinction. Instead, Pence wrote in an op-ed last decade with this suggestion:
Congress should support the reauthorization of the Ryan White Care Act only after completion of an audit to ensure that federal dollars were no longer being given to organizations that celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus. Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.
Read that again. Pence is writing about “behaviors” and people “chang[ing] their sexual behavior.” This isn’t about people changing their sexual orientation. It’s not about making gay people straight. It’s not about asking gay people to stop being gay.
That’s not to say this isn’t a big ask, or that Pence is correct that this is a good use of taxpayer funds. But the most straightforward understanding of Pence’s suggestion is that he was encouraging celibacy for gay people. I don’t think preaching celibacy education for adults is a governmental function. But that distinction is important: someone can acknowledge that he or she is naturally, to his or her bones, attracted to those of the same sex, and decide that he or she isn’t going to act on those attractions.
I don’t have the experience or the perspective to make this argument. But Eve Tushnet, a Catholic, a lesbian and an old friend of mine has made it at book length.
If Newsom said that preaching celibacy isn’t the role of the government, he would be on strong ground. Instead, Newsom misrepresented the ideas Pence was supporting.
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
