Here We Go: Sean Buckley, Grandson of the Founder of Modern Conservatism, James L. Buckley, Comes Out as a Homosexual

A college-age grandson of modern conservatism’s founding family comes out in The Daily Beast and makes the case for the freedom to marry.

If you had asked me a few years ago if I supported the freedom to marry, I’d have been one of many young Republicans at the time who’d have given you an unequivocal “no.”

As the grandson of former Conservative Party New York Sen. James L. Buckley and great-nephew of National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr., I believed that gay rights were inherently anti-conservative and anti-Catholic.

But I began to reexamine my views after acknowledging a part of myself that I’d suppressed for years—I am gay.

My family is loving and compassionate but they have been active in the fight to keep marriage limited to heterosexual couples. Because of their influence and the views expressed by so many in my religious community, I grew up with an extremely negative view of gay people.

I was taught a “hate the sin, love the sinner” approach to moral issues while always being told to respect those with whom I disagreed. But given that you can’t separate yourself from who you love, teaching someone to hate their sexual orientation inadvertently teaches them to hate themselves. For me, this led to an intense self-hatred and a reflexive rejection of anyone that resembled the part of me I was so desperately trying to fight.

As early as high school I felt that my current university, Georgetown, had betrayed its Catholic faith by supporting an LGBTQ organization. But as the fact that I’m gay became increasingly difficult to deny, I struggled to identify with a conservative political community that disdains who I am, and a gay personal community that largely disagrees with what I believe.

Because I refuse to sacrifice my faith in God or conservative values, I had to find a way to reconcile these conflicts through a conservative lens.

American conservatives hold many different views but there are some core principles that help guide us toward specific policy prescriptions. Conservatives reject the idea of moral relativism and believe there are certain eternal truths regardless of time, place, or culture. We believe the collection of laws and institutions in place today are an amalgamation of human trial and error pursued in the effort to reach those universal truths. Finally, conservative thought demands recognition of our fallible human nature amid the understanding that we are all limited in our pursuit of truth and virtue.

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Source: Daily Beast | Sean Buckley