AN OFFNER I COULDN’T REFUSE

Several readers have asked why I believe Paul Offner. I should have said so, but I regularly ran pieces by him on the mid 1990s on health-care reform in The New Republic. He worked for Pat Moynihan back then, and was a reliably sane, moderate, and clear-thinking neo-liberal on all those tangled areas. I came to trust his judgment. I see no reason why he would make this up. To answer some other points: a) Why have no others come forward? Well, few straight guys are exactly happy to enter the national media circus on the grounds that they were once asked if they were gay or not, and I don’t blame them. Many potential Ashcroft hires were probably conservative enough not to have been offended by the gay question and may not even remember it today. Closet-cases who were asked equally don’t want to come out now to say so; so no big surprise Offner is the only one; b) Is there a way in which Offner can be right and yet Ashcroft didn’t commit perjury? First off, if Ashcroft had said he couldn’t remember whether he had ever asked that question, it would be one thing. But he said he couldn’t imagine ever asking such a question. I think that’s hooey on the face of it. Ashcroft has a long history of deep animus against homosexuality, and has never been reluctant to say so. If I were being charitable, I’d say that Ashcroft doesn’t mind gay people as long as they never bring it up, are prepared to deny it publicly and are prepared to support policies which would criminalize their own relationships. Since Ashcroft believes homosexual sex is a sin, then association with open homosexuals might violate his sense of purity. Some evangelicals take seriously the injunction to avoid even the appearance of consorting with sinners. (How they get that attitude from the example of Jesus is a mystery I will leave to the theologians.) So maybe Ashcroft feels pity for homosexuals, but doesn’t want to be associated with publicly identified ones. But if that’s the case, he should say so, instead of lying to the Judiciary Committee. I don’t think I’m on a witch-hunt here. I’ve tried hard to give Ashcroft and Bush the benefit of every doubt; and I still support Bush’s right to pick whichever Cabinet members he wants. But it would be a dereliction of judgment for me not to say that the evidence is very strong that Ashcroft perjured himself last week. If that no longer matters to some conservatives, then they have some hard rethinking to do about their conduct in the Clinton years.