I am not an American, but like many Canadians, I do enjoy watching American politics. It’s like watching Dukes of Hazzard, but with higher stakes. Here’s the latest thing to catch my eye:
Recently, in what appears to be an attempt to rally the evangelical lobby, Republican senators David Vitter and Larry Craig co-sponsored a joint resolution to amend the US constitution to specifically exclude homosexuals from marrying. The proposed amendment reads thusly:
Section 2. Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.
For anyone who has been following the ceaseless parade of seedy Republican sex scandals, these two names should ring bells. Last year, Larry Craig plead guilty to soliciting anonymous gay sex in a public restroom in Minneapolis, while David Vitter goes in for prostitutes.
Craig and Vitter are in good company. Notorious perverts of the far right include Mark Foley, Ted Haggard, Bob Allen, Glenn Murphy Jr., Randal David Ankeny, Jim Bakker, Parker Bena, Louis Beres, Ken Calvert, Bill O’Reilly and Neal Horsely, to name a few.
This has gotten me really wondering about people who wring their hands about what I get up to in the bedroom. Why would men who are obviously gay as a fistful of posies fight so passionately against equal rights for homosexuals? Now I’ve started to wonder if their public displays of moral superiority are actually the cause of their sexual deviancy.
Perhaps the belief that sexual behavior is dirty, seedy and sinful produces a pitiable class of people who need their sex lives to be dirty, seedy and sinful. Maybe the reason they fight so desperately to preserve the special status of religiously sanctioned sex is that if non-religious sex were socially acceptable, there would be no taboo-related thrills associated with hiring gay escorts, exposing yourself to strangers or copulating with farm animals. In a sexually permissive society, such things might be exposed as the sad and lonely cries for help they are.
After some consideration, I have begun to suspect the US fundamentalists are not fighting for “family values”. I think they are fighting to preserve their own sexual freedom, which just happens to require that all the rest of us participate in a giant charade where we pretend any kind of sex that doesn’t bore us is wrong so that a bunch of pervy Christians can pretend it is hot to dress up in stockings and get their knobs twiddled by strange men in back alleys and airport restrooms. That is why they fight so hard: because my freedom to openly have sex that is not religiously sanctioned interferes with their dark fantasies of secret, sexual wrongdoing.
Just a thought.
I’ve never thought about it that way, but I wonder whether you don’t have a point. It would explain a lot.
Bill
Some people’s loathing of sex makes me wonder what exactly they get up to in the bedroom. I mean, these people are obsessed with sex, far more than I am, in fact.
… and that’s saying a lot! đ
If the Republican family values crowd is a reliable sample group, I would say they’re willing to get up to just about anything, as long as it’s with a prostitute, child or anonymous hook-up. I’m willing to bet most of their wives are just breeding stock.
It seems to me that, generally speaking, there are two broad attitudes towards sex. First, there’s the notion good sex is based on mutual cooperation between consenting partners. Second, there’s the notion that good sex is based on conquest by one of the partners of the other(s). Those who hold to the former position usually think of sex as a win-win thing. Those who hold to the latter position usually think of sex as a win-loose thing.
According to the latter view, sex is demeaning to at least one of the partners — and perhaps both of them — and can therefore be characterized as filthy, sinful, and so forth.
I would imagine that many politicians, people who are inordinately concerned with power, see sex as an opportunity for conquest, as a win-loose situation, and as something that’s ultimately filthy, demeaning, and sinful.
Just my 5 in the morning thoughts.