Blowfish has a great post on the recent GOP sex scandals…
The story is pretty much boilerplate at this point. “Right-wing Republican politician/ prominent Christian Right leader, famous for advocating a rigid sexual morality, caught in sex scandal.â€
It’s hardly even newsworthy.The latest, of course, is David Vitter, Republican senator from Louisiana, who built a career supporting abstinence-only sex education, opposing same-sex marriage, and generally trying to legislate sexual morality . . . and was recently identified as (and has admitted to being) a client of the D.C. Madam.
There’s also right-wing evangelical preacher Ted Haggard, preaching about the evils of homosexuality and supporting a ban on same-sex marriage . . . having regular sex with a gay male prostitute. There’s Republican Congressman Mark Foley, pushing for laws to protect minors from sex predators on the Internet . . . sending sexually explicit and seductive emails and instant messages to underage pages. There’s Bob Allen, Republican representative in the Florida House and co-chair of McCain’s presidential campaign, sponsoring a bill to tighten Florida’s public sex laws . . . getting arrested for offering a male cop $20 to blow him in a public bathroom.
And that’s just in the last year.
Right Wing Hypocrisy, or Why Sex Guilt Fucks Things Up For Everyone | Blowfish Blog
Susie Bright fills in some of the dirty details on Vitter that I hadn’t heard…
There’s not enough Boudreaux Buttpaste in the world that can wipe-clean a career like Vitter’s— now better known as The Guy Who Frequents Prostitutes and Asks To Wear a Diaper.
Apparently the whores of New Orleans call him “Vitter the Shitter.” And don’t even ask about his love child— who, one can only hope, is kept well-stocked with Pampers.I hate the way a hypocrite like this can drag the good name of kinky sex through the mud.
Susie Bright’s Journal : David Vitter Watches The Detectives
Sure, it’s funny. Kind of. The problem isn’t the personal lives of Republicans, it’s how their personal lives spill over into political positions that end up effecting the personal lives of other people. Blowfish sums up the problem as well as I’ve heard anyone explain it.
…for the most part, I think they feel tremendous guilt about wanting, and having, the exact kinds of sex that they believe are destroying society and making baby Jesus cry.So they overcompensate. They hate themselves for wanting what they want and doing what they do . . . so they preach against it, and propose legislation against it, and do everything in their power to relocate their guilt out in the world instead of inside their own treacherous minds and bodies. They may even feel that, in fighting the scourge of homosexuality or whatever, they’re somehow making up for their own misdeeds. I even have some compassion for them, although I’d have a whole lot more if they weren’t screwing things up for the rest of us.And this is just one more reason we need to work for a new sexual morality – to shift it away from a guilty freakout over which tab goes in what slot, and towards a morality based on honesty and consent.
Because if people in power weren’t so wracked with guilt about their own sexuality, I think they’d be a lot less obsessively controlling about everyone else’s. If Ted Haggard hadn’t felt so guilty about fucking men, maybe he’d have become a minister in the gay-positive MCC . . . instead of battling gay rights at every turn. If Mark Foley hadn’t felt so guilty about emailing and IMing teenage pages, maybe he’d have felt comfortable going for guys who were young but legal . . . instead of trying to turn the Internet into a Norman Rockwell painting. And if David Vitter hadn’t felt so guilty about wanting unusual fetishistic sex, maybe he and his wife could have come to an agreement about it . . . instead of trying to protect the sacred institution of marriage from the depraved ravages of gay people in love.
Right Wing Hypocrisy, or Why Sex Guilt Fucks Things Up For Everyone | Blowfish Blog
It’s not just about gay marriage and monitoring people’s bedroom activities, though. I think there’s evidence that this sex guilt overcompensation has also wormed it’s way into our foriegn policy.
The New Yorker recently ran a riveting article on the nature and extent of the U.S. torture and rendition programs. Here’s an excerpt; tell me if it doesn’t sound like the ritualized playing out of repressed homosexual tendancies.
A former member of a C.I.A. transport team has described the “takeout†of prisoners as a carefully choreographed twenty-minute routine, during which a suspect was hog-tied, stripped naked, photographed, hooded, sedated with anal suppositories, placed in diapers, and transported by plane to a secret location.
A person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry, referring to cavity searches and the frequent use of suppositories during the takeout of detainees, likened the treatment to “sodomy.†He said, “It was used to absolutely strip the detainee of any dignity. It breaks down someone’s sense of impenetrability. The interrogation became a process not just of getting information but of utterly subordinating the detainee through humiliation.†The former C.I.A. officer confirmed that the agency frequently photographed the prisoners naked, “because it’s demoralizing.†The person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry said that photos were also part of the C.I.A.’s quality-control process. They were passed back to case officers for review.
A secret government document, dated December 10, 2002, detailing “SERE Interrogation Standard Operating Procedure,†outlines the advantages of stripping detainees. “In addition to degradation of the detainee, stripping can be used to demonstrate the omnipotence of the captor or to debilitate the detainee.†The document advises interrogators to “tear clothing from detainees by firmly pulling downward against buttoned buttons and seams. Tearing motions shall be downward to prevent pulling the detainee off balance.†The memo also advocates the “Shoulder Slap,†“Stomach Slap,†“Hooding,†“Manhandling,†“Walling,†and a variety of “Stress Positions,†including one called “Worship the Gods.â€
A Reporter at Large: The Black Sites: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
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