The City Club of Cleveland is defying LGBTQ activist pressure to cancel or substantially alter an event featuring a conservative Christian leader next month, and Ohio’s attorney general is standing with the venue.
“We’re not canceling, and we have never had any intention of canceling this,” Dan Moulthrop, the City Club’s CEO, told The Daily Signal in an interview Wednesday. “We’re gonna continue to do what we always do, and have done for 113 years, which is convene conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive and do that with the leadership of relevant organizations who are shaping our communities.”
Moulthrop confirmed that he has no intention of changing the Jan. 16 forum in which he will interview Aaron Baer, president of the Center for Christian Virtue.
The center says it “seeks the good of our neighbors by advocating for public policy that reflects the truth of the Gospel.” It advocates for religious freedom, free speech, educational freedom, and pro-life and pro-family policy.
The Letter
Yet more than 100 LGBTQ leaders and organizations across Ohio signed an open letter denouncing the City Club for hosting Baer and urging the venue to “cancel or modify this forum in a way that does not platform an organization that has been designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBTQIA2S+ hate group.”
The letter makes four demands: cancel the event or include an LGBTQ activist; replace Moulthrop with a likely pro-LGBTQ “external moderator;” “disavow platforming hate speech;” or “structure the event so that diverse and impacted perspectives are not only present but also meaningfully centered.”
More than 20 organizations—including HRC Cleveland, the LGBT Community Center of Greater Cleveland, Equality Ohio, GLAAD, and Plexus LGBT & Allied Chamber of Commerce—signed the letter, which aims to “prevent extremism from going unchallenged” and suggests a distinction between “facilitating dialogue and platforming organized hate.”
