Blackwell Calls Homosexuality a 'Compulsion'

Another candidate for the position of Republican National Committee chair may have put his foot in his mouth: Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio secretary of state, told gay radio host Michelangelo Signoreli that gays and lesbians suffer from a “compulsion” that they “can choose to restrain.” Blackwell reiterated several times in an interview that homosexuality can be "contained, repressed, or changed."

It's a matter of choice, he said. “I think you can choose not to be homosexual. You don’t have to give in to the compulsion to be homosexual.” Not that this belief is based on personal experience—“I've never had the urge to be other than a heterosexual,” Blackwell added, “but if in fact I had the urge to be something else I could have in fact suppressed that urge.” (More J. Kenneth Blackwell stories.)