The City Club forum featuring the Center for Christian Virtue had a moderation problem [COMMENTARY]

By John R. Corlett

The recent City Club of Cleveland forum featuring Aaron Baer of the Center for Christian Virtue was framed as a “conversation of consequence.” In one sense, it succeeded. The event exposed deep tensions in Ohio’s civic life: between pluralism and absolutism, between dialogue and dominance, between institutional neutrality and ideological certainty.

The City Club of Cleveland hosts Center for Christian Virtue amid protests. Here’s what we saw.

But it also raised a quieter, more uncomfortable question that I and others raised prior to the forum: was Dan Moulthrop, in his role as CEO of the City Club of Cleveland, the right person to moderate this particular event?

This is not a critique of Dan’s competence or good faith. He is a skilled moderator, thoughtful and disciplined. 

But as CEO, Dan is not just another moderator. He embodies the City Club itself: its norms and its stated commitment to neutrality. That position carries real constraints. Every interruption, every correction, every sharper follow-up risks being interpreted not as facilitation, but as the institution taking sides.

Aaron Baer was not simply offering a set of policy positions within a shared democratic framework. He was advancing a worldview that treats Christian moral truth as singular, sees democracy primarily as a tool to enforce that truth, and dismisses disagreement as theological error rather than difference.

In that context, the moderator’s task is not merely to keep the conversation civil. It is to defend the conditions that make conversation possible in the first place. That requires a different kind of moderation.

Throughout the forum, Dan asked careful, precise questions. But when Baer substituted different answers for the questions asked, asserted contested claims as settled fact, or escalated rhetorically, Dan often redirected or moved on rather than stopping the move. 

That restraint was perhaps understandable. A CEO cannot easily say, “That’s not responsive,” or “That claim is incorrect,” without appearing to speak for the institution.

Someone without institutional stewardship responsibilities could have interrupted more forcefully, drawn clearer lines between empirical claims and moral convictions, and insisted on precision without the risk of the City Club itself being seen as partisan.

For example, when Dan asked whether Baer’s rhetoric that frames LGBTQ+ people as disordered or dangerous causes harm and Baer deflected by accusing Ohio medical institutions such as Cleveland Clinic, Nationwide Children’s, and Cincinnati Children’s of harming children—without citing specific scientific evidence—an independent moderator could have stopped the deflection and required a direct answer. Dan did not.

Similarly, when an audience member challenged Baer on what they described as a fundamental paradox—claiming to support free speech and religious liberty while advocating policies that restrict LGBTQ+ expression in schools, universities, and libraries—Baer denied censoring LGBTQ+ people even as he supported Ohio Senate Bill 1. That legislation imposed restrictions on LGBTQ-related content in public higher education and resulted in the elimination of programs for LGBTQ+ students at Cleveland State, Kent State, Ohio State, and Ohio University, among others. An independent moderator could have pressed Baer to reconcile that inconsistency rather than allowing the denial to stand. Dan did not.

Actual conversations of consequence require the right tools. In this case, separating the role of CEO from the role of moderator might have better served the audience, the institution, and the democratic values the City Club exists to protect.

As I listened to the forum, I couldn’t help but wonder how Ohio parents sitting at home with LGBTQ+ children—trying to do right by them and relying on medical guidance—might have felt listening to their families reduced to a political punching bag. For them, this may not have been an abstract debate at all, but a conversation of real consequence that exposed them to real harm. 🔥

John R. Corlett  serves on a number of philanthropic, public, and private boards in Greater Cleveland. He is also a Visiting Fellow at The Center for Community Solutions and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.