While conveniently neglecting to mention Sullivan's HIV status, Postrel takes pains to equate ex-gay living with pain. Thousands have successfully changed their behavior. Americans for Truth is one of 15 pro-family groups that sponsored the Truth in Love ads featuring former homosexuals. To argue for restricting personal freedom in the name of public health requires a high threshold for what is considered public health. Otherwise, as my colleague Jacob Sullum has argued so well in For Your Own Good and elsewhere, there is no stopping point for tyranny.
Any risk becomes subject to legal sanctions.
Mr. Cooper's hypothetical of incurable tuberculosis, which presumably would be contagious to anyone, is the conservative extreme. Mr. LaBarbera claims more detailed knowledge of Andrew Sullivan's sex life than I can. But assuming Sullivan has in fact strayed from his ideals, that says nothing about the worth of those principles. Encouraging men, regardless of sexual orientation, to settle down and live committed, bourgeois lives seems to me a worthy crusade. I merely pointed out that such life choices involve tradeoffs and that religious individuals have, throughout history, been willing to suffer for their beliefs to a much greater degree than is at issue here.