This is a Cato Special Podcast. I'm Caleb Brown. Do gay people have a place in

conservative politics? Nick Herbert, a British MP and Shadow Secretary of State for

Environment Food and Rural Affairs for the Conservative

Party says yes. Further, he argues that gay people are not the property of the left or of any party,

and gay people are not vessels for votes. He spoke at the Cato

Institute yesterday. I'm delighted to be here at Cato, the guardian of true

liberalism.

Thank you for hosting this event.

And I'm especially honored to be sharing a platform with one of Britain's most valuable exports,

Andrew Sullivan.

On the way over I read Andrew's book, Virtually Normal.

He ends by calling for a new politics with a simple principle that all public discrimination

against homosexuals should end and every right and responsibility

enjoyed by heterosexuals should be extended.

But I also read Hearnshaw's conservatism in England written before my father was born in 1932.

He concludes,

to Conservatives above all others falls the task

of defending the menist citadel of civilization and maintaining the eternal

sanctity of the moral law. Professor Hernshaw's misguided

revolutionaries were not gay rights activists. Hanshaw's misguided revolutionaries.

We're not gay rights activists,

but his clarion call for a faith-based conservatism

...