Townhall Political Editor and author of “End of Discussion,” Guy Benson argued that “there is an element of the left, not the entire left, but there is an element of the left that believes that they are entitled to sort of wield control over the thought and attitudes of certain people because of who those people are” in an interview broadcast on Monday’s “Kelly File” on the Fox News Channel.
Benson stated, “I mentioned in the book that I’m gay, and I hadn’t disclosed that publicly before, and the reason that we decided to make the disclosure in the book is because [co-author] Mary Katherine [Ham] and I go through a nearly 10,000 word chapter, really dig our teeth into the issue of gay rights and religious liberties and sort of the silencing that goes on in a number of these debates and I felt like I owed it to readers to give them that piece of information. I thought it was relevant context, and I wanted to make sure that they could have that at their disposal, and then sort of, make their decisions based on that moving forward. So, I thought it was the right thing to do.”
Benson added, “there is an element of the left, not the entire left, but there is an element of the left that believes that they are entitled to sort of wield control over the thought and attitudes of certain people because of who those people are, and I look at that, and I just politely, but pointedly decline to enable that whole mindset. You know, I am a free thinking, free citizen of a free country, and I am entitled to think and believe however I so choose, and just because I’m gay doesn’t mean that I have to: A. Obsess with that, my politics doesn’t have to be grounded exclusively in that. It’s part of who I am, it is not the totality of who I am.” And “Mary Katherine, my co-author, in ‘End of Discussion,’ she talks about this. Because she’ll get hostile questions sometimes, ‘how can you believe this as a a woman, a young woman, self-respecting woman?’ And her answer is awesome, she’s like, ‘look, I didn’t get liberated, we as women didn’t get liberated so that we can think exactly what you want us to think.'”
He concluded by speaking about how to reconcile gay rights with religious freedom, stating, “I think that what the gay rights movement has been very successful at, I just want to acknowledge quickly that I recognize that I am so fortunate to live in a country, in an era, where we can be having this exact conversation on national television. And I recognize a lot of that is due to the fact that I’m standing on the shoulders of people who’ve worked very hard for a very long time who probably don’t share my political persuasions. So, I just want to give them some credit in this. But, I think when that crosses some threshold into punishing and purging dissenters, and trying to exact punishments on people for not agreeing, that is not what we should be about in this country. I think we’re better than that in this country.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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