Watching the fascinated reaction of my 14-year-old sports-mad son to the Jason Collins story last week underlined for me the continuing potency of “coming out” in changing values about homosexuality — what one activist has called the “gay superpower”.

Now that an active NBA player has come out, there are rumours that a group of NFL players may soon follow. And inevitably the trend will reach the NHL, and eventually cease to amaze us.

In Canadian politics, the first gay MP to speak openly about his sexual orientation was Svend Robinson in 1988. Since then, there have been openly gay MPs in every party in Parliament — every party but one, that is. Although we can presume from statistics that the Conservative caucus has some gay members, none has yet come out.

To Canadians it may seem obvious that there is an irresovable conflict between being conservative and being gay, much less openly gay. But if you look internationally, that’s less apparent.

In the Netherlands, Pim Fortuyn, who was openly gay, led a right-wing populist party that flourished in the 1990s.

In England there has long been a subterranean High Tory homosexual sensibility nurtured in upper class boys schools and the Oxbridge universities, and most memorably captured in Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisted. Christopher Hitchens, of all people, claimed to have had affairs while at Oxford with two men who later became ministers in Margaret Thatcher’s government, though no one owned up — and you can imagine all sorts of reasons why they didn’t.

What was once behind the curtain at the Palace of Westminster is now much less so. Currently, there are roughly a dozen British Conservative MPs who are openly gay (one of whom was implicated in scandal this week). North of the border, the leader of the Scottish Conservative party is an out lesbian.

Still, the issue is hardly resolved in British conservative circles, as we were reminded this week through a faux pas by the Anglo-American conservative academic superstar, Niall Ferguson. He reportedly told an investors conference that John Maynard Keynes did not understand the economic long run because he was a childless homosexual. (Ferguson subsequently apologized.)

But in the United States, there has has been very little nuance in the conservative view of same-sex relationships. Fear and hatred of homosexuals was a core element of the the anti-communist strain of conservatism propagated by Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950s. Among those persecuting anyone with a whiff of homosexuality about them was McCarthy’s oleaginous aide, Roy Cohn — himself a closeted homosexual. Never has the term “gay” been more inapt than in Cohn’s case. He was in many ways an archetype of the self-hatred bred in the closet of American conservatism.

To Canadians it may seem obvious that there is an irresovable conflict between being conservative and being gay, much less openly gay. But if you look internationally, that’s less apparent.

While the Red Scare faded with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the rise of the evangelical Christian community as a core Republican constituency stoked the party’s homophobia. In the 2004 presidential election, George Bush’s strategist Karl Rove encouraged local referenda to block the extension of rights to homosexuals and thus drive social conservatives to the polls where they would, incidentally, vote for the president.

Nonetheless, there were two openly gay Republican Congressmen in the 1990s — one of them outed by a colleague on the floor of the House of Representatives, remarkably enough. There is a long-established gay organization called the Log Cabin Republicans, though it has had a sometimes uneasy relationship with the official party. GOProud is a more recent, and more conservative, organization also existing on the fringes of the party. An openly gay Republican candidate, George Tisei, was narrowly defeated in a run for a Congressional seat in Massachusetts last year.

In an age when attitudes in the West to homosexuality have been changing with startling speed, Canada has been a little ahead of the curve legislatively: decriminalizing homosexual sex, prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, accepting openly gay people in the military and, more recently, allowing same-sex marriage. So far as we can tell Stephen Harper does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation in his own political circle. And there are obvious reasons why some gay people might be attracted to aspects of Canadian conservatism — particularly its libertarian strain, which places a premium on individual freedom.

On the other hand, Canadian conservatives have opposed every meaningful legislative advance for gay rights. To be a Canadian conservative and gay is to live a dilemma. There has never been a national Canadian equivalent to the Log Cabin Republicans. The Conservative party has a significant socially-conservative wing which may be legislatively impotent but recently has become more vocal. A few conservative organizers, such as the Mike Harris aide Jaime Watt, have been open about their sexual orientation. But that’s it.

Of course, none of us wants to have our politics defined by one narrow aspect of our being — whether that is race, religion, language, income, region, gender or sexual orientation. But neither should we have to renounce who we are to support a major national party.

If the Conservatives are to continue as one of the great parties of state — which I believe is probable — they likely will have to change their posture on sexual orientation, just as they have replaced the dog-whistle racism of the old Reform Party with a greater openness to immigration and new Canadians.

As a straight man who has never suffered either the agonies of the closet or the frightening prospect of coming out, it is not my place to tell anyone what they must disclose or when. As a journalist, I admire the reticence of Canadian media to pry into the sex lives of politicians. I can think of instances when reporters have ignored or downplayed stories that otherwise would have grabbed headlines to avoid such a breach of privacy. And that’s a good thing.

But if a Conservative MP or minister came out freely, it would be a liberation for him or her, no longer to be stalked by rumour and innuendo. Not only that: It would toll the bell of personal liberty for the conservative movement and the country.

Follow Paul Adams on Twitter @padams29

Paul Adams is a veteran of the CBC, the Globe and Mail and EKOS Research. He has taught political science at the University of Manitoba and journalism at Carleton, where he is an associate professor. His new book Power Trap, on the dilemma of Canada’s opposition parties, was published in September.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.