Sorba's Sodomy Obsession

With the world economy in shambles, a war abroad, an exploding debt, and a healthcare fight that just won't die, it seems awfully odd for Ryan Sorba to want to dedicate his life's work to exposing the horrors of gay sex.

Ryan Sorba is a young man who, as Andrew Sullivan and others have put it, is bizarrely obsessed with sodomy. With the world economy in shambles, a fledgling war abroad, an exploding debt, and a healthcare fight that just won't die, it seems awfully odd for a man to want to dedicate his life's work to exposing the horrors of gay sex. Indeed, the CPAC straw poll results confirmed that nobody cares: same-sex marriage ranked as a top-two issue for only one percent of straw poll respondents -- that is, about 25 people. So what's the issue, here?

FrumForum contributor John Guardiano and many others have criticized me for accusing Sorba of being a closet homosexual. Growing up gay, I know what it's like to want to hide it -- and I know every trick in the book that's used to go about doing so. There are certain behaviors that only those of us who have been there can really pick up on -- it's a dog-whistle kind of thing. When I was closeted, I opposed same-sex marriage, figuring that it was the ultimate way to hide my sexuality. When I was 14 and 15, I would spout the typical anti-gay lines, albeit less eloquently than Sorba. All of the gay men I showed the transcript to were laughing their asses off, recognizing exactly what was going on.

But the greater, more important point is this: my insults and Ryan Sorba's are not morally equivalent. He is wrong about what he is telling me: homosexuality is not a "lifestyle," and it is not an ideology. This is not an opinion. And when he tells me that he wants to use the force of the state to ban sodomy -- including oral sex, anal sex, and fetishistic sex among consenting married couples -- he is advocating a regressive, authoritarian policy that has no place in conservatism, libertarianism, or any belief system that honors freedom.

As I told a radio host earlier: even assuming Sorba is right, he hasn't a clue how to go about reversing homosexuality. In the meantime, he wants not for us to engage in loving, monogamous relationships, but to condemn us to loveless, sexless lives, devoid of passion, romance, and sexuality. I cannot fathom the warped sense of life that a person must possess to want to tell his fellow beings to deny such an essential part of what makes them human. So yes, I absolutely rained down ad hominem attacks on Ryan Sorba: for there can be no respect toward the disrespectful, no kindness to the cruel.