Why am I unsurprised by the arrogant hypocrisy of the family values party? When uptight sanctimonious groups attempt to downplay their Jimmy Swaggarts and purge America of its lust, it doesn't work. Sexocrites are "too sexy for their shirts, so sexy that it hurts," to paraphrase MC Hammer.
The problem is that Republicans over time have made a racket out of the sex game under the guise of moral values, pretending that liberals have disgraced the nation with rampant promiscuity, unwound family stability, spread disease, and advanced the "homosexual agenda" as if something's wrong with being gay and wanting equal rights. Oh, and the horror of horrors, thou shalt not partake in orgasmic blowjobs or flash a boob even for a split second during the sacred ritual of Super Bowl Sunday.
Pam Spaulding's Blend offers an excellent, "Guide to the Top 20 AmTaliban," who lead the charge to tar the Left with the dismissive language of religiosity. One gay-bashing rant via Alabama's Judge Roy Moore of the Ten Commandments monument controversy:
Roy declared homosexuality "abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature." Gay sex, he wrote, is "an act so heinous that it defies one's ability to describe it," an "inherent evil" that "should never be tolerated."Dr. James C. Dobson of Focus on the Family, a lead attack bigot on public education, women's rights, and gay equality-- all liberal tenets--denounces sexuality explicitly and tacitly. He raves:
"State Universities are breeding grounds, quite literally, for sexually transmitted diseases (including HIV), homosexual behavior, unwanted pregnancies, abortions, alcoholism, and drug abuse."
"My observation is that women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership."
"[The homosexual] agenda includes teaching prohomosexual [sic] concepts in the public schools, redefining the family to represent "any circle of people who love each other," approval of homosexual adoption, legitimizing same-sex marriage, and securing special rights for those who identify themselves as gay. Those ideas must be opposed, even though to do so is to expose oneself to the charge of being "homophobic."Yet, for all the Puritanical sex talk to taboo-ize the S word (hetero or gay), the conservative outrage over sin in the Clinton WH, and a call to to rally "values voters," after Bill vacated the Oval Office and Republicans had installed St. George, 2001 rates on divorce, the number of sexual partners, unwed mothers, teen pregnancy, and gonorrhea infection in America pointed the finger to culprits on the red-state side of the country. But that doesn't stop the GOP rhetoric in transmitting to its base the encoded message, "Fear gays. Eject permissive Democrats. Vote Republican. We're holier than them." Well, that's not true.
Last week's revelation about Hookergate involving defense contractors Brent Wilkes and Mitchell Wade, former congressman and convicted felon Duke Cunningham, other unnamed congressmen, and CIA staffers demonstrates how conservatives like "to relax" maybe as much as a raffish Tom Jones libertine. While Republicans speechify about abstinence and the sanctity of marriage, the sexocrites have been busy breaking the law, their word, and their wedding vows. A few Hookergate poker players may have been fornicating with prostitutes for the past ten years. We'll see as the story develops unless the press sits on their hands to the benefit of Republicans. Again.
From Washington. D.C., to Spokane, conservatives have stigmatized sexuality with futile social experiments to control who has sex and when. They shame anyone who ventures outside their proscribed sexual mores and and punish wayward wankers who dare to transgress from obedience to their "way." Methinks they protest too much for many under the GOP big tent exhibit an unmitigated obsession with sex and some tend toward perversion. I can think of several examples without breaking a sweat.
In Washington state, lurks Spokane Mayor Jim West, the Republican "who championed an anti-gay agenda during his tenure as one of the most powerful Republicans in the Legislature" and who got caught using the authority of his office to seduce an 18-year-old lad over the Internet. West was ensnared into outing himself by a newspaper investigator from the Spokesman-Review of Spokane who cyber-posed as the twink. The newspaper unmasked the mayor as a sexocrite.
From the WH press corp hails the enigmatic Jim Guckert who cleared security checks under the alias, Jeff Gannon. When Jim-Jeff wasn't plagiarizing for Talon News or calling on Scotty in the WH pressroom, once questioning the president, he solicited johns as the "Bulldog" at male escort websites -- militarystud.com, MaleCorps.com, StudFiles, and WorkingBoys.net.
If a male prostitute can slip past security clearance, can pedophiles in national security? You betcha. Arraigned yesterday, Brian Doyle, assistant public relations spokesman at Homeland Security, was arrested having solicited sex from a 14 year-old who was in reality an undercover agent. Charles Lynch, director of the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Internet Protocol version 6 transition program, was into child pornography, according to his indictment in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. In Florida, exhibitionist Figueroa, a former high-ranking federal law enforcement official and once chief of Operation Predator, "the Homeland Security Program specifically mandated to go after child predators," exposed himself as he masturbated in front of a 16-year-old girl at an Orlando mall food court. (h/t to Taylor Marsh for the kiddie perv alerts.) Why is it that perverts gravitate toward powerful positions where they can betray the public trust? Oh, yeah. Access to victims under the cover of official authority is to pedophiles what George W. Bush is to an overgrown thicket of shrubs and a chainsaw. Seems fundamental especially for Homeland Security jobs to vet personnel before hiring a sex offender. But they didn't. Strange, huh?
A Bush appointee to the FDA's Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs charged with decisions over the health and welfare of women, Dr. Hager, an OBGYN touted by Modern Healthcare and Good Housekeeping as one of the best doctors in America, failed miserably in applying his reputation to his wife. A rigid Christian conservative, Dr, Hager wrote seemingly benevolent prose in his book, As Jesus Cared for Women: "...it wasn't until I began to see how Jesus treated women that I understood how I, as a doctor, should treat them." But, Hager's words were spiel. According to the ex-Mrs. Hager, the doc offered the lame excuse that he mistook her anus for her vagina when she objected to a rear-end collision. How could an OBGYN make that faux pas? Maybe intentionally since Dr. Hager pressured his wife for anal sex regularly, and for years, sodomized her when she fell asleep as a sufferer of narcolepsy. Money and sex were also intertwined in the Hager bedroom where the two powerful fetishes converged. "Sex was coinage; it was a commodity," his ex-wife said. He left checks on her dresser after roughing up her bum when she consented. One check for $2,000 compensated Mrs. Hager for oral sex, perhaps an example of Dr. Hager's home game version of Hookergate--bribery and blowjobs. The doc practiced a strange marital interpretation of the question, "What would Jesus do?"
Former Christian Coalition president and corrupt lobbyist tied to Abramoff's casino scam, Ralph Reed, employs spokeswoman Lisa Baron. She writes a raunchy marriage column in Atlanta that WaPo described as "shockingly saucy -- often downright ribald." In her Dec. 11, 2005, column, Baron described her vagina as "My big cavernous pit of love." In another column, she grieves her "inner slut" and missed opportunities for premarital sex before marrying Jimmy. What does Ralph Reed's protégé, Dr. James Dobson, think of Baron's opinions? I dunno. Maybe because Lisa works for Reed, theocons grant special dispensation.
Previously I commented on the kinkiness of Jack Ryan, the Illinois GOP Senate candidate whose career ended when his divorce papers divulged he had a thang for sex clubs, one with "cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling," where Jack wanted to do the nasty with his TV star wife, Jeri Lynn Ryan. I've also spoken with a reliable source who told me that the majority of subscribers to a male bondage publication were, yes, you guessed it, conservatives, well-educated, highly affluent powerbroker types in high places. As I recently reiterated, I don't object to what consenting adults do sexually. To each his own. Republicans, however, seem to have huge issues about mutually-consensual sexuality at least so they say publicly... but behind closed doors, well, there's a whole lot of shakin' and sometimes spankin' going on.
Ol' adulterer Newtie Poot, the former congressman from Georgia, who's recently surfaced to flip-flop his Iraq War position, invented the "oral sex isn't really sex" red herring. Who knew? Clinton didn't invent the Newt Defense, according to Ann Manning and she would know. "We had oral sex.... He prefers that modus operandi because then he can say, I never slept with her." Sound familiar? Isn't that a typical Republican scam? Cover your tracks, and if you get caught, blame the Democrats for your err with sound and jury to deflect attention.
Salon reported, "This hypocrite broke up my family," a story that revealed Republican Henry Hyde had conducted an extramarital impropriety with Mrs. Cherie Snodgrass, which destroyed her marriage. The news broke as Hyde managed the House impeachment proceedings against Clinton. President pro tempore and Hyde's Senate buddy during the impeachment, the late Strom Thurmond, a former racial segregationist who ran for president on the 1948 Dixiecrat Party ticket, ejaculated his DNA into a Thurmond family maid to father an illegitimate, interracial daughter. Strom was kinda, sorta for Jim Crow but not when it came to sex. Thurmond also sported a reputation as a philanderer, a claim that conservative Mark Steyn elaborated in his Chicago Sun-Times, Dec. 8, 2002, column, "Strom has done a lot of living." What was the GOP beef about Clinton? What mired congressional business down while spending millions to play gotcha with Bill and Monica? I don't buy the "Clinton lied, obstructed justice" explanation. If that were true, Bush would have congressional subpoenas up the wazoo. Perhaps Bill's use of the Newt Defense stirred 'em up. I don't recall Clinton crediting Gingrich with the attribution and sexocrites may have resented the plagiarism.
Georgia Attorney General Mike Bowers quit his campaign bid for the governor's mansion when his 1o-year extramarital affair was unearthed. With adultery illegal in Georgia, you would think the state's top law enforcement dawg would have known better. Newtie Poot, too. Nah, IOKIYAR. Bowers was also the same AG who prosecuted gay Hardwick in the famous anti-sodomy case, Bowers v. Hardwick, and he cited the state's sodomy law before it was struck down as justification for denying a job to an openly lesbian lawyer, Robin Shahar. The double standard of sexocrites discriminates against a legit sexual minority but not adulterers who vow fidelity in a marriage contract.
And I haven't touched on lecherous Bob Packwood, the former Republican Senator from Oregon, who resigned in 1995 after the Senate Ethics Committee found evidence to substantiate 17 claims of sexual misconduct. Consider my brief Packwood mention an olive branch to the opposition to split the pot over Gary Condit, Marion Barry, Gary Hart, and reaching way back, Ted Kennedy.
By implication, you may assume I anticipate that Hookergate will expose a predominantly GOP sex scandal. Of course, I can't say with absolute certainty. However, given how tightly the K-Street Project managed the flow of lobbying moolah and government contracts, realizing who's in charge of defense appropriations, and the screening of Karl Rove's lobbyist phone calls by Grover Norquist, I'll bet that Republicans have stacked the deck in their favor.
Hookergate provides other intriguing angles yet to emerge beyond the smutty stuff to which Laura Rozen hints and Josh Marshall delves into. Before I amend my lede on sex, lies, and GOP politicians (Repudlicans), I wanted to thoroughly discredit the canard that the GOP holds the moral high ground on sexually-correct behavior. They don't. And it's high time that we, and they, quit swallowing the spittle that they do.
Republicans are humans, fraught with foibles as we all are though most of us wouldn't solemnly promise to return "decency and integrity" to government without blinking an eye. That's the problem, the posturing of tribal superiority--the family values party--over a biological drive that we all share in common. I object strenuously to the politicalization of sexuality because party affiliation can't change sexuality no more than switching parties can make me less right-handed or green-eyed. Truthfulness, compassion, courage, and respect--these are worthy goals for human conduct no matter what your sexuality--hetero, gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered.
So let us Americans speak honestly and frankly about sexuality rather than treating it like a sexocrite as if sex is a favor, an entitlement, a fetish, a taboo, and the oldest profession on the planet. Demand that people can't do something--like drinking booze or enjoying sex--and I'll show you an epidemic of acting out and dangerous pathology in revolt against repression, distortions, and disempowerment.
When Republican moralists wag their fingers at Hollywood liberals, Bill Clinton's blowjob, the Democratic Party in general, and bemoan the moral decay of our society, let's remind them that they could be far more effective at reducing sex offenses, supporting moral values, minimizing promiscuity, adultery, and improving the quality of life in America if they would just do a better job at policing their own sexocrites.
UPDATE: Republican strategist Ed Rollins thinks the Hookergate sex scandal will be big. ThinkProgress provides a Hookergate round-up of the " most extensive federal corruption scandal in a century."
UPDATE II: CIA Director Porter Goss resigns out of the blue, subpoenas are flying, and former Congressman Bob Barr (R-GA) says on CNN that Goss' resignation has to do with Hookergate. Justin Rood at TPM Muckraker keeps you up-to-date, a great source breaking the latest news on Hookergate.
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