[BRIEF NOTE] More from Spokane
Jun. 1st, 2005 01:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldSpokane mayor Jim West, who last appeared here as the mayor of Spokane notable for anti-gay policies who was chatting up teenagers-cum-journalists online, is trying to defend himself.
It's quite possible to be gay (or bisexual, or lesbian, et cetera) and to be conservative. West's acceptance of a definition of conservative that excluding individual conscience and objective morality, I fear, still strikes me as being as morally useless and self-destructive as a Jew in 1920s Germany accepting race theory as suitable first principles for public life. As a rule, it's good not to adopt ideologies requiring one to hate oneself.
"I am a conservative. I am not a closet liberal pretending to be a conservative," West said. "What is wrong with somebody having an alternative sexual orientation being a conservative? Can a...gay or black be conservative? I think they can."
It's quite possible to be gay (or bisexual, or lesbian, et cetera) and to be conservative. West's acceptance of a definition of conservative that excluding individual conscience and objective morality, I fear, still strikes me as being as morally useless and self-destructive as a Jew in 1920s Germany accepting race theory as suitable first principles for public life. As a rule, it's good not to adopt ideologies requiring one to hate oneself.
