The Revolution Eats Its Own
While many have written of the smell of new revolution in the air. The Foley-Hastert scandal shows an older revolution eating its children - that is, the "Gingrich revolution".
What makes the scandal powerful is that it is really three scandals - the first is the sex predator scandal of Foley and pages, the second is the cover up scandal which includes Hastert and the FBI, the third is also a sex and cover up scandal, but it is the one which is the glue that holds the entire roving meltdown together. It about Gay Republicans. Specifically Gay Republicans. That's Gay Republicans.
The scandal which has turned the entire mess radioactive is the cover up by the Republican elite from their own base of the reality of Gay Republican Promiscuous Sex. The Republican Party is in free fall because this isn't a Republican versus Democrat partisan scandal - which could be spun away. But the Republican revolutionary guard need to purge its own leadership.
The Three Faces of Scandal
Democratic politicians are already taking advantage of the Republican civil war in ads. And while the Republican governor's association is spit out the same "higher taxes and cop killers" rile up the base ads for Rep Bass, Lt. Gov Healey and a host of others - the polls show how the scandal is destroying Republican leadership's races - Reynolds is in deep trouble and sinking fast.
The three scandals do a delicate dance, and each one keeps the others alive, each one strengthens the others, and each one is one that embarasses some people, while it arouses others into fury. If the scandal were any one of the the three, it would have been rushed off the pages, pun intended, ages ago. Imagine if Foley had simply resigned last year when confronted with evidence of wrong doing. On the other hand, replace female with male pages, and this becomes a non-scandal, because the Republican masses, rather than exploding with rage, would be swelling up with pride. "Sure, our boy gets it. See Republicanism is better than Viagra."
Instead, Foley's behavior is both what the right wing used to tar Clinton with, and he embodies the terror of the reactionary guard, namely that it is gay pedophiles who infect heterosexual boys with homosexuality. That roving promiscuity that comes from a man with power who sponges weaker wills to his ends. Worse still, Foley's behavior effeminate. I'm going to spare people the wave of post-structuralist verbiage because most people couldn't sort out what is useful from what is nonsense, but let us reduce it down to fundamentals, in the world of deeply closeted men, there are those who penetrate, and those who are penetrated. In half a dozen "down low" type subcultures I am familiar with, men who penetrate other men or boys will look at you with a straight face and tell you "I'm not gay. I just have sex with men." To be homosexual in these subcultures is to be penetrated. Foley's obsession with penises - which tramps through dozens of chats and emails - clearly makes him, within the down low world of Republicans a "faggot".
I use this offensive word because it their word, and it is the revulsion of the reactionary masses which is keeping this scandal going. They are the marginal viewers of news, and when they watch, ratings go through the roof. This is why the cable networks have marched to the right, this is why the New York Times appointed a "(Free Re)Public Editor", this is why Jayson Blair was "a scandal" while Judith Miller was a hero. Because what the reactionary masses want to watch makes a great deal of money. The base is slowly deserting old outlets for news, so catching the waves has been important.
These people like to watch bombs flying, and hence the war in Iraq is kept viable by suppressing things like flag draped coffins, videos of attacks on US forces and coverage of the Battle of Baghdad. These people also love their morality plays. That is why Clinton's problems ran and reran - they simply could not get enough of watching a marriage of a liberal, in their terms, Democrat getting his just rewards for fooling around.
Each leg of the scandal has its audience. Political junkies can't stop talking about the cover up by Reynolds and Hastert, and see it as an eruption of the emasculation of the Ethics committee, and the partisan use of executive power with an FBI cover up and participation in the Republican counter attack. The Republicans want to counter this scandal with two time honored lies of smear. The first is to claim that the Democrats knew, and should be investigated, and the second is that Democrats released the material to the press. Both of these claims are false, but the FBI itself has put forward the first by accusing CREW of having the emails in question during the spring.
The second scandal is the angle which emphasizes the youth of the pages involved. They are "children". This wing of the scandal is why attempts to change the subject are impotent, because the scandal is part of one of the ur-terrors of middle America. This terror is a complex of the sexualization of children and teenagers, and the violence directed against children and teenagers in the society.
The mythology here equates teenagers with pre-sexual children. The reasons for this equation are complex, but two of the most important are as follows. For parents to claim virtually unlimited power over their young adult offspring, they have to see teenagers as closer to children with regards to sexuality than to adults. The infantilization of teenagers with regard to sex is the rationalization that middle America's parents have to errect barriers to birth control and abortion. The second part is that the infantilization of children is a vain attempt to create a divide which forbids adults from having sex with children. One can see this in the prosecution of female teachers having sex with their underage male students. This never used to be a law enforcement issue. It is now.
This leg of the scandal hits the undercurrent of desire that adults have for teenagers, who are both acquiring sexuality, and which our society dresses as fully sexual adults. This is exacerbated by the life cycle of much of non-college America, where people are supposed to find their lifetime partner in High School. So on one hand teenagers are forbidden from having sex, on the other hand, they must engage in enough sexual signaling to attract, and keep, a spouse.
The Republicans are trying to respond to this leg of the scandal by saying that it was "naughty emails" and that Foley never had sex, with that boy. This lies about the point - use of the internet across state lines makes the age line 18, not DC's 16 for sex - and the chats and emails clearly show how Foley forced his attentions - welcome or unwelcome - on people who were below him in the hierarchy. That is, we have proof positive that Foley did with boys what Clinton was accused of doing with women.
However, these two legs would not, alone, support the political and electoral meltdown of the Republican Party. The third leg spews up from the dark subterranean realities of the right wing, and it is the driving force both for the voracious appetite for revelation, and the relentless response. This leg goes to the sexual politics of the reactionary movement, the sexual politics of the intelligentsia, and how they play out in the world of public politics.
Sexual Congress
The reality of the reactionary base is that it has a particular way of life that it wants to defend. It doesn't actually live this life, but it feels that it is a normative way of being. The reactionary world has a contagion theory of homosexuality – gayness is something you are "infected" with, and by moral weakness are seduced into. In the view of the reactionary world – and we see this in modern day Africa where traditional societies are firm in their belief that there were no homosexuals in Africa until Europeans arrived – being gay is something that one catches from other people.
This world also believes in conspiracies of manipulation.. In their view there is a vast homosexual conspiracy to infect youth with gay secular humanism. In short, the evangelical world sees a counter world – a Satanism of secularlism, that like themselves, infects people with exposure. One is not an evangelical Christian, in their view, until one is exposed to it. One is not, therefore, a member of "the enemy" until one has been exposed. In the Manichean war, the forces of light and the forces of darkness engage in a race to reach, and save or corrupt, the unconverted.
This wing of the vote goes beyond the merely pro-life vote, and far beyond the anti-teenage sex, or even anti-sex, vote. It is a wing of American politics ardently wishing for theocracy, and willing to support any policy which can be put in theocratic terms. It is this core that is willing to accept the World War III paradigm of neo-conservatism.
The reality is that the Republican Party promised these voters something hard to define in mainstream terms, but very easy to explain: the Republicans would defend them from "the other" as post-modern sociology puts it. In modern terms, there is a core of Christianist xenophobia, and the rise of Rove and Bush rests on the promise to protect.
The first result of this is the fear of the loss of this core of voters, as Rick Perlstein, author of the forth coming book Nixonland: The Politics and Culture of the American Berserk, 1965-1972. puts it, a reversion to the natural state of the evangelical vote as generally disconnected from politics:
The important part comes next. S/he doesn't say s/he'll be voting for Democrats now. S/he says;"I'll never vote again."
This brings up a very important historical point for progressive activists to understand. For most of its history, until the late 1970s, the more evangelical one was, the more likely one was to be not involved in politics AT ALL--to see it as an inherently sinful realm.
See, for instance, this letter I collected at an archive from 1970 to Maine Senator Margaret Chase: "I bumped into many women who had religious objections to voting. This area is strongly fundamentalist, including Holiness Churches, and the general idea is to let God look
after things.""I'll never vote again": these are the most terrifying words Karl Rove can ever hear from a Christian--worse, even, than "I hate Bush." "I hate Bush" can be turned around, or at any rate will become moot after Bush leaves the scene. "I'll never vote again" means, basically, "I choose salvation over voting, because politics is an inherently sinful realm." It means: the groundwork of a generation--turning evangelical Christians into political activists--can disintegrate. And with it, the entire Republican coalition.
It signifies the entropic reversion to the natural state of things: apolitical evangelicals. Rove always known, deep down, that it takes active work and maintenance to keep this entropy from happening.
An observation given strong empirical grounding in the cratering of Rep. Reynolds – head of the RNCC and "long time powerhouse" in the words of the Buffalo News.
However, merely losing shock troops and believers is not the end of the problem. There is more, and as a dead sitcom from the 1990's said "Well of course there is more, that's what more means." This Manichean world view as a consumer product – complete with mega-churches, radio stations, books, rock bands and code words – is not the indigenous product of the people who believe in it. One can see this by the split in the Republican Party over immigration. To the xenophobes, Mexicans are infectious threats, to the core of the Washington Party they are future pro-life social conservative votes, and the source of cheap labor to make profits for Republican agri-business and keep food costs down.
No, the devastating second part of the problem is that there is a fundamental element of gayness in the means by which theocratic imperialism was turned from a marginal belief into a powerful political force. Let's go back to the 1990's. The packaging of anti-federal isolationism at that time produced a few members of Congress, the Brushfire rebellion in the West – and a great deal of trouble. Ruby Ridge, Waco and Oklahoma City were the products of the extreme end of the Christianist militia movement. The problems with utilizing this movement politically were numerous and obvious. Not the least of which was their suspicion of the outside world. It was this very same population that murmured darkly about George Herbert Walker Bush's "New World Order" and equated it with UN plots.
Fast forward to 9/11 – it is 9/11 that turns the isolationist xenophobe, to the expansionist xenophobe. Perlstein's characterization of this as the politics of the berserk is particularly apt. Key to the transformation, was not only the equation of Saddam with Hitler, but the equation of the invasion of Iraq as part of a larger "clash of civilizations". This is a phrase that means two different things to two different groups of people. To the Christianist it is a pointer to the war of heterosexual god fearing America against homosexual degenerate secular humanism. To another group of people, it means something else.
This other group of people are the plutocratic wing of the intelligentsia.
The view from liberal, and liberal-esque commentators has been that the Republican Party is an alliance of "social conservatives" and "fiscal conservatives". Foley himself provided the counterpoint – he is a socially conservative gay Republican. He voted for the "Defense of Marriage Act", he voted for the Shiavo Law. He is a social conservative. He just happens to be promiscuous and gay and has a taste for boys and an obsession with their penises.
The fundamental dynamic going on here is between a royal court system, which relies upon debauchery as part of its attraction, and the peasant supporters of that system, who agree on the royalist, top down and militaristically nationalist structure of society – that is of a society which is rigidly hierarchical and controlled by an elite which is given privileges that the lower section of society can only envy. The reactionary hinterland allow themselves doses of debauchery, but see it as a threat to their economic well being. They would be less moral if they could be, which is why they support their elites in success.
There are two ways that the Foley-Hastert dance plays into this dynamic.
The first is the obvious – many of the elites of that court system are gay. Many of them engage in the very behavior the allegations of which were used to justify what Joe Conason called The Hunting of the President. Namely the perpetual search for sex partners.
This is causing an explosive fear among Gay Republican Washington. If the reactionary base demands a purge – the Rumpification of the Republican Revolution – then that purge will and must happen. One reason that Republicans are not falling on their swords as they have in so many past scandals –starting with the donors piloting a nuclear submarine – is that the fate of those who are cast out is not a cushy K-Street job, but ostracism. Compare this to the quiet resignation of a White House aid over Ambramoff recently, or the ending of the careers of DeLay, Ney or Cunningham. They literally could not get far away from the ballot box fast enough. Corruption is not a bar to continued employment, but homosexuality makes the bearer of infection radioactive.
This is why conservatives such as Howard Kurtz, Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Caldwell are trying to put a firebreak between "gay" and "pedophile", or downplaying the scandal entire. They know that a purge of gay men from the upper ranks of Republicanism would do to the reactionary apparatus what AIDS did to the theatre world – erase half a generation of talent, well down into the farm team. This is supported by the Foley emails themselves – while many of the targets of his attentions were clearly unwilling, many were clearly quite eager to have an affair with an older man. The emails and chats are clear and persuasive evidence that the right wing has a large gay youth component.
This connects with the contagion theory of homosexuality, and the "values" issue. Unelected gay staffers, as servants, are acceptable – more on this shortly – but elected gay officials mean that the reactionary base has participated in homosexuality. Since their theory is that there is a homosexual conspiracy that seduces unknowing heterosexuals into "the gay life style", they are tainted, and must purge the element which tainted them.
The Republican around the filter noise machine is already trying to connect Democrats to the scandal, because in this way the noise machine can create the counter impression that Foley is a plant, a mole from the secular humanist gay agenda. In short, a programmed Cylon, who is not really responsible. In this conspiracy theory counter-narrative, it is really the Democrats who did the covering up, and are thus the real source of the infection.
This infective narrative is easily countered by underlining the facts. This scandal is about gay Republicans and the gay Republican closet culture, which participates in depriving ordinary people of the same rights that they exercise with such, pardon the pun, gay abandon. The people protecting Foley were not, and are not, gay Democrats or gay liberals, but, like Fordham who used to be Foley's handler at parties, gay Republicans.
Unfortunately for the Republicans, this leads to the second part of the matrix of gayness and the rise of reactionary politics, namely that many of the people who have packaged anti-gay hysteria as the means of justifying imperialist theocracy are, themselves, gay. More over, there is an important homo-erotic element to the narrative complex that they construct.
The first part of this comes from the simple reality that gay men and women are the Jews of the reactionary movement – they are used, and useful at the top levels, even as they reviled by the base. There is a long standing realization in societies that people who are willing to forgo breeding are useful as they can devote themselves to their job or role. While not everyone who does so is homosexual, homosexuals, particularly in repressive cultures, are far more willing to be celibate or semi-celibate and devoted to their cause. This kind of sexualized asexuality has led to speculation about such figures as Condoleeza Rice and Harriet Miers, who give themselves over to the work of promoting George W. Bush.
The fear that this reality creates is that it creates opportunities for the infection narrative. This is why Foley said he was abused by a priest, in order to connect the scandal with the "homosexual conspiracy" that the reactionary base is sure exists. Thus, people willing to sacrifice sex life for the cause are laudable, until such time as they becom suspected of being "carriers".
The second part is that the receptive homosexual stance is an important part of the meme that Republicans are decisive doers, the Marlboro Man politics. It is a core part of, for example, David Brooks' appeals to red blooded, red zone red neckery. Republicans are the real men, Democrats are the sissies. In the down low paradigm, Republicans aren't gay, the people who they fuck are gay. Facing this sexualized narrative is important, because it joins together the various strands of self-hating liberals, who fall, with eager erotic tones, into the entire imperial project. Take Christopher Hitchens as a cardinal example. The actual sexuality is irrelevant, it is the sexual role in public discourse which is important. Brooks, Hitchens, Sullivan all told the same story to liberals in the middle: "bend over for he man Bush."
Without this narrative, the Reactionaries cannot turn the all important corner of making legitimate the clash of civilizations narrative. Let me underline that – without the meme that neo-conservative militarism and expansionism are masculine, and that weaker receptive wills should give in to a need to obey, there is no invasion of Iraq, nor the dominance of Bush in politics.
To summarize this point: the reason that the Foley scandal is burning through the Republican party with the reactionary base is not outrage at Hastert's cover up – of which there are few news items – but the cover up of the existence of Gay Republicans. Specifically, Gay Republicans having promiscuous sex with young boys and young men. The results flow in several directions. First it deactivates the reactionary base, which voted for Republicans to protect them from what they think of as a conspiracy to infect them with liberal, secular humanist homosexuality – these are tied up in one big ball to them. Second it reveals the truth that the elites of the right wing are heavily laced with both actual homosexuals, and with a narrative of homoerotic submission. This narrative connects to the final crowning irony, and that is the element of homo-erotic sadism that is essential to recruit people into the project of neo-conservative imperialism. Torture and Abu Ghraib, "my God is bigger than his God" and the entire structure of abusive militarism are, let us not get squeamish – homoerotic sadism for the reactionary masses. Having made homosexuality, itself, an infection and a danger, the reactionary system gives back the permission to engage in testosteronated abuse of acceptable targets. I don't need to reach for this, Clarence Thomas said as much in a court decision: homosexual rape is part of the punishment of prison.
What the Foley-Hastert scandal does is expose the fundamental rift between Republican elites and the reactionary base. It is not a rift of "social conservatives" against "fiscal conservatives" – both groups believe in profligate borrow and squander policies to be paid back by a future that will be richer than the present – again, I don't need to reach for this, just read what the right wing economists say about global warming – basically, let the rich future pay for it.
The rift then is not over objectives, nor over world view – both groups are borrow and squander right wing socialists. Both groups believe that the resources of the whole society should be available to protect "der volk" from threats. The difference between the two groups is not even over morality – both groups agree that wealth and success buy permission to engage in acts which are forbidden to ordinary people. The difference between the two is simpler, and outside of metropolitan discourse, because metropolitan discourse doesn't even recognize the question which is at stake.
Who the devil is.
The Number of the Beast
To the Christianists, the enemy is a bringer of personal corruption in the form of lack of faith in God, homosexuality, questioning established boundaries, faithlessness. The enemy are hidden traitors. No program on television more explicitly and enthusiastically mythologizes the Christianist theocrat's view of the war on terrorism than the new Battlestar Galactica – along with 24, an unapologetic fictionalization of the idea that "they" infect "us" and that the solution is to make "them" like us. Bluntly speaking procreative heterosexual love is the road to salvation.
To the neo-conservatives, the question is one of economic hegemony, not religious hegemony. While there is a large streak of a need for relgiocity among the intellectual right, to come out of the closet as unreconstructed believers in miracles and the importance of theocracy for social stability, as Robert Barro has devoted his career to at this point, a shockingly large number of the right wing elite understand theocracy in very cynical terms as a means to manipulate. However, the good versus evil world view is also in place here. The difference is that "evil" is seen in terms of threats to the plutocratic order, to the place of a system of ownership and control, rather than being seen in personal terms.
These two world views are not in coalition, but intertwined – among economic elites there is a large streak of belief in divine providence for success. That is, one is ultra-rich because God intended it so. This belief – related to similar beliefs in the Calvinist strains of Protestantism – is, in itself, not new. However, by acting in conversation with the theology of conspiracy theory theocracy, it allowed the creation of a fusion of two stains which, left to themselves, would have difficulty coordinating.
Let me state this bluntly – both the neo-conservative theocracy, and the evangelical theocracy believe that success is a sign of personal moral worth, and that lack of success comes from lack of personal moral worth. The both believe in the same economic strategy of bankrupting the power of the democratic state, in return for enriching a plutocratic and theocratic state. One might think that they would be in tight agreement, except for one generally insurmountable problem. For the plutocratic elite, membership in the elite is all forgiving – there are no boundaries or rules for the elites themselves. They are free of personal responsibility, and from the ordinary rules of family duty. For them, the evil in the world is that which threatens the corporate system of ownership, and those forces which would overthrow or dislodge their privilege are, ipso facto, bringers of chaos and what used to be termed "bolshevism".
Their close cousins of the isolationist theocratic world do not believe that the elites are all permitted. Instead, they are willing to forgive their elites indulgence in desires that they are allowed to feel, but not act on for lack of money. Thus heterosexual sex, personal excess, mansions, fashion and so on, are permissible indulgences for the elite. However, desires which are forbidden because of intrinsic corruption, are not permitted. Cardinal among these is over homo-erotic expression. This is, to no small extent, a social imperative – in the world of military, resource extraction and long distance transport – anywhere where men leave the home and are among other men out of economic necessity – close bonds between men are necessary for the functioning of the team, but bonds of sexual attachment threaten both the hierarchy of men, and the bond with the home. The Brokeback marriage haunts the ordinary world of the theocratic heartland of America.
This difference – not between various forms of "conservatism" – is the difference that separates Gary Bauer from Ken Mehlman.
Pedofoleya
The proper scandal – over how the Republicans run Washington – has remarkably little in the way of staying power. The scandal of middle America, over Foley the sex predator can be blunted with the claim of consensuality. The third scandal – of the divide between the theocratic base and their plutocratic elites over the existence of homosexuality – rests on the very xenophobia which has fueled the right wing. The right wing has been active and aggressive, because its base sees all enemies as carriers of a plague. Outsiders mean death.
This connection allowed Bush to lead the base where ever he wanted, because he could argue that the war was about killing he carriers of the infection. So long as he could join the two together, the xenophobia fueled bigotry would both keep the support of the military, and create a powerful political shock wave to be directed at anyone who opposed him. The only problem is that one of the powerful forms of xenophobia is sexual xenophobia – whether from race or orientation. This is because it plays on self-hatred, guilt and subterranean desires. The worst racial bigots, are those that crave the flesh of the other races. The worst anti-homosexual bigots are, like Foley, themselves homosexual.
The absurdity of this connection has provided fodder for one of the best and most popular satire sites on the web and countless observations.
However, until now, there seemed to be no amount of cognitive dissonance that the theocratic base would engage in to ignore the gayness of their own narratives and the people who made the Republican revolution possible. This is because they believed that it was the liberal homosexual secular humanist conspiracy. While the around the filter noise machine is trying to portray Foley in this manner, the revelations – of, for example consensual sex with a former page – drive the question back to Foley.
No small part of this is the subtext of the text messages. Consider that there are 66 pages. Foley found willing partners in every class. As one friend of mine put it "you do the math, the concentration of young gay men in the Republican elite has to be pretty high." What has not been commented on in the "mainstream" is inescapable as a conclusion in the Christanist world – there would have to be a lot of gay Republicans for Mark Foley to fish in the page pool. There would have to be a fairly aggressive safety net to protect him while he was doing it.
Thus, the Christianists are faced with a reality – that reality is that the Republican Party is as infected with the modern and post-modern age as the Democratic Party is. That reality is that the Republican Party promised to protect the country from the stain of sexual corruption, and instead covered it up.
This leg of the scandal is what makes it stand up right, which gives it the effect of dribbling out revelations. The ethics scandal could be buried, the sex predator scandal explained away. But the two together form the third leg. The Republicans cannot escape the scandal, because the way to change the subject in the news stream for those who are marginally attached to the news stream, is to talk about violence against children and pedophilia – for example, the Colorado shootings or the Amish shootings, or Jon Benet Ramsey – three media interruptions from the last few months. However, such interruptions, while the change the subject from Iraq, Abramoff or the economy – do not change the subject from Mark Foley. In fact, the more the attempt is made to interrupt, the more it underlines the nightmare of both Middle America, and of Christianist theocratic America.
The Three Faces of Satan
The ability of the Republicans to govern as a 70% party with only about 45% support has been one of the most persistent features of the last decade of American politics. They impeached a President with only that level of support, and held Congress. They were able to control the House, Senate, Presidency and Supreme Court with that level of support. They squandered trillions of dollars. They borrowed all of what they squandered. They pushed for, and got, a war of aggression. They dismantled the Bill of Rights. All the while the Democratic Party was in cowering fear of the xenophobic wing of the Republican Party, and its ability to pour molten outrage in to the public discourse.
This very power shook the Republican Party earlier this year as the anti-immigration wave built. It was a force which the traditional part of the Republican machine could not deal with, because it leveraged the xenophobia of the base in a way which was against the interests which fund the Republican Party. Patrick Buchanan could smell this, and was all over it. So could people like Rep. Musgrave. However, by a series of calculated symbolic gestures, the establishment managed to fund their Reagan Wall, and then not have to actually build it.
The Foley scandal pierces the fragile veil, and turns the Republican party inward on itself. It creates a civil war among the jihadists of the right wing – it creates a rift between the foot soldiers, and the elites who they had, to date, served.
Core to this is the indespensibility of both homosexual men and women to the Republican core, and the indespensibility of homo-erotic narratives in selling their policies – which is ultimately incompatible and incommensurable with using anti-homosexual xenophobia as the motivating engine of their coalition. The Republican Party elites are eating their own. And that is precisely what the base cannot stand.
This is because the repressed homoerotic desire mixed with xenophobia - the permission to both act out sadistic forbidden desires and the permission to attack others for having them - is what got their base up out of bed and to the poles. Not tax cuts, not Medicare D. The xenophobia itself. Now that the base has begun to see the Republican leadership as alien, the writing is on the wall.
And this leads to the other devastating reality for the Republicans. In order to hold on to the evangelicals, the Republican party must attempt to create a conspiracy theory where the Democrats were involved in Foley. They must get out in front and issue defamatory attacks, in hopes of convincing at least some evangelicals that this plot, like all others, comes from the Jewish-liberal-Homosexual conspiracy - it is no accident that they blame it on Soros, a man who, in point of fact, has enormous distaste for this sort of politics.
As middle America sees the reactionary base as alien, it begins to unravel the entire Republican coalition of ex-urban xenophobes and suburban fear voters. For a long time, the suburbanites saw in the exurbanites a people like themselves - perhaps more devout and bible thumping - but afraid of the same things, and aligned against the dangers of the cities - crime, for example. Over the last few years, as the anti-science, anti-progress component of the exurbanites becomes more visible, their have been more and more wedge issues against the far right wing. Stem cells and Darwin to take two.
And now this.
Wow....just wow. This deserves a second or even third read to grasp it all. Thank you.
October 8, 2006 4:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
I second and third that notion! Usually you find something like this spread out over 300 pages in a book. I generally love taking a shower in Sterling's stream of conciousness but this was like drinking from the fire hydrant! We need to get Sterling a "Life Preserver Required" sign for him to hang on the front of articles like this.
October 8, 2006 4:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is one of the most inspiring, ...no, the most inspiring analysis of the cultural divide between heartland and coastal America I've read in a very long time. Thank you very much.
There is a brief statement, however, that surprises me; or rather, I wonder if it may be an unreflected borrowing from popular beliefs:
People may believe so, ...particularly them without relevant experiences of their own, but is there really any support for such a belief?
October 8, 2006 5:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
So, let's see if I get this. The best approach is to claim Hastert "allowed" Foley to "infect" those innocent children with a passion worse that death itself because Hastert dresses up like a Roman Senator in his study. Or, to paraphrase it for the crowd down at the end of the bar, "Hastert let him turn those kids into queers! Who the hell does he think he is?"
OK, that will play. I don't know how many mentalists will throw their hands in the air over it and cry, "That's it! I'll never vote again!" but it's worth a shot.
Maybe, we need to start up a cross-denominational drive to rescue those kids, bring them home and "clean" them up. Or start an upscale (big money contributions) rehab center for unqueering Hastert's victims. Needs a big name sponsor. I know... the Boston Archdiocese, they still have dues to pay don't they. Why, we could keep this sore oozing pus for months with that one.
October 8, 2006 6:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Bravo! Very well put indeed!
What is amazing to me is that while this very erudite and well thought out analysis is right on, it can and has been put very simply by many, many Democratic voices for years. Perhaps because this is a more detailed and intellectual approach it might sink in to the brains of the Democratic elite in Washington who has lead us to defeat after defeat by so willingly playing the role of the cowering bottom who deserves to be dominated and could not protect anyone--even themselves! The funny thing is that in many ways the Republicans have had it right about our elected Dems and their wealthy and well paid advisors: they are pussies and they don't have courage. They are pusillanimous and craven, they are calculating and don't really stand for anything other than their own continuation in office. What terrifies Republicans the most is when a figure like Howard Dean who is not afraid of them emerges and won't cower and won't hide in the face of their rhetorical onslaught---or worse than that if a type of Democratic candidate would begin to emerge such as that great veteran in Ohio who nearly won that seat in Congress and who should have been the Democratic nominee for Senator in that state. But what did our cowering leaders in Washington do? That's right, they pushed him out of the race to make sure there was room for someone they are more comfortable with--one of their own. Not to knock the current nominee, but the point is that the current Democratic elite are also terrified of Democrats who really stand for something, who do have the courage of their convictions, who are less interested in preserving their own power than in getting America back on track. But, bottom line now is the time for Democrats to do all they can to encourage the Republicans to eat their own and also to begin to remember what Democrats are supposed to be and when Congress is ours again to actually have the courage to get the nation back on course and lay the groundwork for a safe, peaceful and secure future for our children.
October 8, 2006 6:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
The homerotic resonance of this WH's politicking has been noted elsewhere, but this is the first I have heard of the sexual privilege angle as a reward of power, other than generically, and outside of DC. It feels right, though, with this bunch.
Reminds me of a novel called "Fierce People" which was set in old-money society. The writer researched his field and said, in an interview, that these people are more different than we can imagine. (One major plot event was a nominally forbidden sexual liason.) Racism is like the air they breath, and the sense of royalty is strong.
I would guess that some significant fraction of elected Repubs are not in on the news concerning their elite reward, at least at first. Financial supporters would be more savvy, though. So what you're saying is that the deep pockets know exactly what they're doing, and this time their playing with fire will burn them. A reason to hope that the unholy alliance with evangelicals will be broken for a long time.
The possibility of a non-random corellation between homosexuality and authoritarian mindset (meaning, wanting authority) is something worth asking John Dean's sociologist sources.
October 8, 2006 6:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Then of course there are evangelicals like me.
I am a Christian, I believe it is correct for Christians to evangelize (that is, preaching/proselytizing) though I suspecy my version of evangelism and the one that most people think of is vastly different. But I also believe that religion and politics need to be seperate for the mutual good of both.
I recently saw the movie Saved! and the change in the main protagonist at the end of the movie is representative in the type of Christian that I think it is good to strive to be. (Not that the protagonists have made it all the way but they've taken some steps.)
I don't see anything intrinsically wrong about gayness etc. and my concern boils down to the Great Commandment: Love God with everything you are, and Love your Neighbor as You Would Love Yourself. To me, that entails voting Dem because of policy and identity.
And that's it. And it's enough.
October 8, 2006 7:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Which is why I use the word Christianist, rather that Christian, to describe the right wing politics in question.
Stirling Newberry http://www.bopnews.com
October 8, 2006 7:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Of course there is support for this belief. It is before the chapter on how tax cuts lead to increases in tax revenue and after the chapter on the geology of the 6,000 year old Earth.
October 8, 2006 7:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
So Stirling, according to your thesis, this Kolbe revelation is going to really blow shit up?
October 8, 2006 8:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
I need to re-read Stirling's take, but on first blush it sounds like a lot of psychobabble to me.
Of course, I live in Red State America. I encounter actual Republican faithful on a daily basis. They don't seem to be nearly as homophobic as Stirling claims they are.
On the other hand many of them are parents. Parenting is very fundamental. As parents they simply don't like powerful men hitting on kids of either sex. Remember Dan Crane. He screwed a 16 year old girl. He wasn't re-elected. A big part the Bill Clinton affair with 24 year old Monica is that she was much, much younger and she was much, much less powerful. You will notice she was a woman. Even then Clinton continued to have a 65% approval rating.
I have watched this weekend as a couple of backbench Republican congressmen have tried to peddle the "its the homosexual loving Democrats fault" meme all over the television. Every time I have seen those clowns on television the MSM media guy interviewing them has called them on their storyline. They have simply come off looking desprate. I haven't run into anybody around here, including Republicans, who have bought the story line.
I don't think this whole meltdown is nearly as complicated as the Washington elite wants to believe.
I happen to think this scandal is just the straw that broke the camel's back. If there hadn't Iraq, Katrina, and all the rest, this scandal would not be so important.
Ron Byers
October 8, 2006 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
1. Just because some Republicans may oppose illegal/legal immigration out of "xenophobia" doesn't mean that opposition to I/LI is "xenophobic".
2. Many Democrats and independents are opposed to I/LI too; are they "xenophobes"?
3. What exactly does "xenophobia" mean anyway? Isn't that basically just a smear word?
4. We're told by many others that today's immigration is just like yesterday's, but there are many differences, one of which being that oldentimes immigrants were checked for disease. Nowadays, anyone can come over the border, and they may be bearing diseases previously thought eradicated in the U.S., such as polio. Obviously, that's a serious concern for those who care about public health. But, that hardly means that that's the primary concern of those opposed to I/LI.
5. It's not clear whether llegal labor keeping food costs down is something the author believes or something he thinks those profiting from it believe. In fact, cheap labor doesn't keep costs that much lower than they would be without it. It's basically a massive subsidy: growers get in an increase in profits, everyone else pays for their workers' educational needs etc., and consumers only save a few pennies here and there.
6. And, isn't calling those who oppose I/LI (whether GOP, Dems, or independents) "xenophobes" in effect serving the interests of those who "fund the Republican Party"?
October 8, 2006 10:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
What exactly does "I/LI" mean?
And no, xenophobia is not just a smearword, ...at least no more than racism, anti-Americanism or anti-Communism.
Wikipedia's articles are sometimes good. In this case it starts:
October 8, 2006 10:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
that was too funny! I agree... the Foley thing seems simple: "Foley was grooming children to just say 'yes'."
October 9, 2006 1:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
that was too funny! I agree... the Foley thing seems simple: "Foley was grooming children to just say 'yes'."
October 9, 2006 1:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
There is a brief statement, however, that surprises me; or rather, I wonder if it may be an unreflected borrowing from popular beliefs:
[...] anywhere where men leave the home and are among other men out of [...] necessity, close bonds between men are necessary for the functioning of the team, but bonds of sexual attachment threaten both the hierarchy of men, and the bond with the home. [my emphasis]
I think Stirling is correct.
Bonds of sexual attachment (and bonds of sexual jealousy) threatan any hierarchy. That is why there are such taboos on sex, hetero or homo, in offices.
In many societies, sex is a significant part of what induces men to trade their freedom for commitment, to look out for others instead of themselves. Look how economic power for women has given women far more ability to leave or stay out of emotionally undesirable marriages.
Of course, there is some homosexual behavior in predominantly-male hierarchies and the hierarchies survive, but they would have much more difficulty if that behaviour was freely allowed and more extensive.
If have any doubt about how sex functions in social groupings the way free radicals do in the body, just look at your local high school.
October 9, 2006 4:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
October 9, 2006 5:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Whoops. That would be 10-08-06 for Tucker Carlson.
See //smirkingchimp.com/thread/1488
October 9, 2006 5:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think you miss the important distinction between closeness and sex as expression for bonding and sex for its own sake.
October 9, 2006 8:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Forget about numbering the scandals; I don't think it is worth it. I just saw another one (actually unrelated to Foley-gate, which although welcome, is actually tiny compared to all the other scandalous workings in this administration).
I know it is off-thread, but it goes back to the "republican values thing" and how ludicrously superficial they are. Go here: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1009-01.htm to find out what happens when a naval officer who has served with distinction goes to bat for someone against the Bushites. Two weeks after the Supreme Court agreed with this Jag, he was denied a promotion, and so will be forced out of the military by the "up or out" policy.
I thought republicans liked our troops. Guess that is only true if they carry water for George & the gang of torturers. Really, this Foley thing is getting on my nerves! At Huffington Post it has the top billing OVER North Korea testing a nuclear bomb, over soaring deaths in Iraq, over all the other incompentencies of this administration. THAT is what is truly wrong with republicans -- they just don't have any sense of moral proportion.
Jan Knaus
October 9, 2006 10:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm curious:
Does anyone see this scandal in the long run as a possible catalyst for a mass exodus of conservative Christians from the Republican party into an outright theocratic party started by someone like, say, Pat Robertson? He claims to speak for 40 or 50 million Christians and while many Christians don't necessarily agree with everything Robertson, they might see him as the least of all evils in light of what's happening to the Repubs. I don't know how viable such a scenario is, but a party that large and with a theocratic agenda could create quite a problem if it were to come to pass.
Thoughts? Or am I reaching too far?
October 9, 2006 10:57 AM | Reply | Permalink
The American political system doesn't really invite to multi-party representative democracy, so a Christian party will be as handicapped as are liberals.
There certainly are some ways the democratic system could be improved.
October 9, 2006 11:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Do you make a distinction between "psychobabble" and valid psychological analysis? The kind of argument Mr. Newberry is making here is inherently psychological. In his allusions and deductions, he passes through and uses concepts formulated by Freud, Lacan, Foucault and many others.
If the psychological as such is to be kept out of the discussion of how sexuality relates to political reality, then the discussion will stop and the whole issue of homosexuality (or heterosexuality, for that matter), as the saying goes, will stay in the closet.
But it is too late for that, of course. Cratylus may have talked himself out of speaking ever again but all the different political positions being taken about homosexuality today are steeped in psychological categories. Even the coarsest version of the idea that there is a conspiracy to "homosexualize" young people (and thus society) has its root in the psychological inquiry that began in the 19nth century into what is "perversity." Freud extracted the issue from the theologians when he viewed the matter strictly as a moment in the Family Scene. Insisting upon such a context in which to examine behavior was understood at the outset to bring what underlay civil society into question. The centrality of the Oedipus complex is necessarily connected to the logic of Civilization and its Discontents.
I reject the idea that rejecting the psychological aspects of the political process automatically places one on firm ground. Rebuking an artifact of intellectual innovators requires destroying the grounds for it intellectually. Consider how hard Strauss worked to separate matters psychological from the concept of human nature. To do so, he “proved” that Nietzsche’s psychology abandoned the idea of the natural human. Having deduced the limits of Nietzsche’s ideas, Strauss exempted himself from having to seriously consider any of the thinking (including Freud) that came out of Nietzsche’s work.
After all that hard work, I still am not persuaded by Strauss. He did show me that dismissing categories of inquiry have big consequences.
October 9, 2006 11:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
By your nickname I assuem you are in Montana?
The reason I say that is being from Seattle I can relate. I grew up in an evangelical church and most of my family remains evangelical. A childhood friend who gre wup in the same church and I were discussing this awhile ago and he opbserved that his family, which is even more conservative than mine, really didn't relate to the modern christian right, his take on it was that their background was entirely New England Protestant.
I think this rings true, there is a big difference between the Southern evangelicals (typically Southern Baptist and pentacostals) we typically associate with the religious right and the more moderate evangelical churches of the West and NE who while typically nondemoniational grew out of mainline protestant churches.
October 9, 2006 11:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Re: but the equation of the invasion of Iraq as part of a larger "clash of civilizations". This is a phrase that means two different things to two different groups of people.
I think your formulation here gives short shift to what the Religious Right sees in this "Clash of Civilizations" rhetoric: a religious war against Islam which of course has been Christianity's main rival for 1400 years. If you look at the foreign policy fever dreams these folks, spin homophobia is not part of it; fear of Islam is. They demonize Mohammed, for example ("A demon-possessed pedophile" in the words of one guy I read-- Mohammed having married a young girl at one point in his career), and are convinced that a rather literal Amageddon conflict will play itself out in the Middle East with Islam in the role of the Beast.
Re: Namely the perpetual search for sex partners.
This exactly the problem with the Closet: long term, meaningful relationhsips are impossible; only furtive sexual encounters can be had. And an interesting new development in L'affair Foley: Jim Kolbe, openly gay GOP congressman, tried intervening in the mess early, rebuking Foley for his conduct privately. So the one Republican involved in the mess who comes out looking OK was the openly gay one.
Re: Corruption is not a bar to continued employment, but homosexuality makes the bearer of infection radioactive.
How do you explain Kolbe, or Steve Gunderson in the 90s? Ironically too Foley's neck of the woods, South Florida, is actually a gay mecca and he could have gotten away with being openly gay down here (I live in Fort Lauderdale, where even the muffler shops will fly rainbow flags during Pride). Of course what an out Foley could not have done is thump the Social Conservatism tub, and any Republican who hopes to advance in the DC hierarchy must do that. Kolbe and Gunderson had no such ambitions; Foley did.
Re: Consider that there are 66 pages. Foley found willing partners in every class.
Are the pages all Republicans? I am rather ignorant about the program, but my impression was the program was non-partisan, employing youths whose families had some pull in DC.
October 9, 2006 11:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Of course, I live in Red State America. I encounter actual Republican faithful on a daily basis. They don't seem to be nearly as homophobic as Stirling claims they are.
The short response to this is to note that Republicans legislators and staffers aren't out.
Al Gore could have his campaign run by an out lesbian. George Bush cannot have his party run by an out gay guy, even if it is. Same with Foley. He didn't think he could be Republican, gay and elected. Santorum's message of gay=bestiality is corrupted when a voter discovers that he has a gay senior staffer. And they wouldn't be using those messages (that, you'll note, they can't possibly believe to be true) unless they were effective.
In this one, because Foley wasn't merely gay, but also predatory, it cuts into two republican narratives, as Stirling points out. It demolishes the message sent to the religious right, in defense of marriage amendments and other statements of the horrific immorality of homosexuality. And it cuts into the soccer/security mom vote who trusts the republicans to keep their children safe.
This is simply a disaster for the republicans. But you have to say that it was inevitable. They've built their political ediface on a creaking pile of rotting timbers. It worked well when they were in opposition, but in power, it's been a collapse waiting to happen.
Let's just hope Joe Lieberman goes down with the pile.
October 9, 2006 12:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Many gay men say that closeted or not the very reason men enjoy homosexuality is that their is no obligation nor pretense of monogamy. Also, studies show that gay men do not have long-term committment even when they claim to have a 'life partner'
As far as Kolbe goes, his being out of the closet only underscores that even those gays who were not in the closet failed to go to the ethics committee, which is the regulator of Congressmans' behavior. Kolbe can be seen as participating in the cover-up by not going public or to the Ethics Committee, despite having seen the sexually explicit e mails. His actions, were worse than Hastert, given that Hastert claims to have only been told of 'overfriendly' emails. Point of fact, Kolbe's action demonstrate a knowing cover-up by a homosexual and he shows how this conspiracy to protect gay repubicans was given a higher priority than protecting children who were being preyed on by a sexual predator who happened to be gay.
October 9, 2006 1:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hasn't psychology progressed beyond the 19th century? If not, why not?
I believe it is very tempting for people who don't understand process or the facts to spin conjectures out of small tidbits of information, and then blow the conjectures up into universal "laws" or rules. I think Sterling is doing that here. I think Freud did the same thing in the 19th Century and it took 50 years for psychology to recover. The same can be said of Weber, but sociology never recovered.
I would suggest less Freudian mumbo jumbo and more empirical research.
Ron Byers
October 9, 2006 1:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: He didn't think he could be Republican, gay and elected.
As I noted elsewhere, Foley could have easily been elected in his district as an openly gay Republican. But he would not have been able to progress up the leadership ladder.
October 9, 2006 2:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: Many gay men say that closeted or not the very reason men enjoy homosexuality is that their is no obligation nor pretense of monogamy.
While I would probably have better luck talking my cat into becoming a vegetarian than debating anything on this topic with you, please do NOT confuse the wild party gay culture of urban gay meccas with gay life in general. Yes, there are promiscuous gays-- there are promiscuous straight people too and their hi-jinx can be seen every night at the local singles club (and who by the way keeps all those Ladies of the Evening in their fishnet stockings?). But, as with straight people, as gay guys grow older they too tend to settle down and behave better, if only because they have less time and energy for such capers and are less attractive as age has its way. In any event the pederasty problem really is focused very haevily on the closet cases. These people have never been able to mature emotionally beyodn their own teen years and as a result they tend to seek teens for lovers. Once a guy is out and open, he can grow up and will naturally prefer partners that share something more in life and experience than a youth can. Oh, and as far monogamy goes there's a lot more straight adultery going on than is generally acknowledged. Again, who keeps all the hookers employed? and some studies of paternity have shown that about 10% of all children were not fathered by the guy who gave their mother a ring.
October 9, 2006 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
That reward system for the elite had many versions, it seems.
Investigation of an escort service may be connected to Duke Cunningham.
Much more from Wayne Madsen (pull page down).
I am convinced. Stirling is on the money here--the elite have been enjoying their privileges, including sex slaves in the Marianas and Thailand, where John Mark Karr may have been sprung to protect US officals from Thai investigations.
October 9, 2006 2:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don't stop there. Suggest something. What is the more empirical way to investigate how sexuality and politics have to do with each other? Say more about what a misunderstood "process" is.
You are not reinventing the wheel here. Many interesting arguments have been made along the lines you have outlined. Agreeing with them is not the same as making an argument yourself.
To answer your first question, I think psychology has progressed tremendously since the beginning of the 20th century.
Whether you agree with that or not doesn't address my point that "psychological" concepts have become commonplace in all sectors of society. There is a lot of mumbo jumbo that goes with such a broad currency. It sounds like your criticism might go further than judging a certain set of ideas by seeing them only in their most vulgar articulation. More effort on your part is needed to avoid such an interpretation.
October 9, 2006 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fair enough.
That strikes me as a distinction without a difference, though. One of the central point of Stirling's post is that while most things are OK if you're a republican, being gay is not.
October 9, 2006 6:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Great post. Don't mean to be picky, but:
It's "das Volk" not "der volk" - the Christianists may be conflicted about gender issues, but German nouns never are.
October 9, 2006 6:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
To paraphrase Bertrand Russell, if people wanted their own happiness as much as they want other peoples' misery, the world would be paradise.
There's a strong thread of this in American politics. It's not that your own guy is really so great, but if he can at least keep that other asshole out of power, then suddenly he's my hero too.
Guess what, Republicans! The assholes you feared most are actually your own.
-- "Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable." (John Kenneth Galbraith)
October 9, 2006 6:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Please note, these surveys were on homosexual males who provided this information to gay and lesbian organization. There did not seem to be any confusion in terms of 'urban' vs. gay lifestyle in general. Point of fact it seems to be a distinction without a difference that you are making. The survey was conducted on "gay lifestyles "by gays and lesbians.
Promiscuity is expected and accepted in homosexual relationships. As the previous post noted. Even relationships that last more than 5 years have an option for promiscuity and or sex outside of that relationship. Ladies of the evening are not the equivalent of gay promiscuity and neither is adultery.
Um, no. Not according to the studies and surveys.
Can you cite any studies or research for this assertion or is this simply your personal opinion?
Please. This sounds like the typical response of 'but look what Clinton did' from the GOP when they refuse to be accountable for the actions of Bush and the republican party. The incidence of adultery by heterosexuals has nothing whatsoever to do with the promiscuity of men who commit homosexual acts. I am not asserting that heteros do not commit adultery and it is really not relevant nor indicative of the high level of promiscuity that is integral to the gay lifestyle in general.
Given that homosexuals boast about their non-breeding relationships, what the heck does this have to do with the overall high promiscuity rate of gays or your contention that older, partnered and/or out of the closet gays not seeking sex outside their relationship like 'urban gays'? Are you suggesting that most gays do not know who their own father is or what?
October 9, 2006 6:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re: The incidence of adultery by heterosexuals has nothing whatsoever to do with the promiscuity of men who commit homosexual acts
Do you even bother to read my posts? Or do you just scan a few key words and then start foaming at the mouth?
You are upset that gays are promiscuous. Well I hate to break it to you but human beings in general are promiscuous. By all means berate mortalkind for its sins, but at least be fair and berate all such sinners rather than scapegoating a few for the common sins of many.
October 9, 2006 7:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Actually MN as in Minnesota. I grew up in a Southern Baptist Church, and at the Christian school I went to most people were Evangelical Free denomination, basically mega-church. So the only exposure I've had to denominations that do not spring to mind when thinking of Christianists is Lutherans (I went to a Lutherna HS) and the United Church of Christ that I've been going to for the past year or so.
My own stance on evangelism has been a product mostly of melding my own liberal/progressive politics and ideals with studying the Christian Gospels as a political text. The spiritual experience I had when I considered the words of Jesus Christ in a political context and absent Pauline interpretations (or from Aquinas etc.) far outstripped anything I had ever experienced in a church. This was a journey completed by myself and by God, the people around me either didn't understand or didn't agree.
On the other hand there is an interesting facet of my family: My parents are HARD CORE Democrats. They would never be able to check off that "R" in the box. Yet they are clearly conservative Christians (though I have nudged them leftward lately) and I think you might call them Carter Democrats in what they see as a politician who lives his faith. Ina any case they never indoctrinated me into their specific values and supported me when I was deciding whether to stay with Christianity or not.
My story is just an example of the vast differences even in the evangelical movements (and I'm not saying Stirling isn't aware and dealing with those differences!).
October 10, 2006 7:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
I wasn't saying you did. I was only making it explicit that there may be some evangelicals who don't fit into your discussion above.
I do of course, realize you know this just not discussing it in this particular post.
October 10, 2006 7:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes. I read your posts. I read them thoroughly and take the time to respond to them thoughtfully with facts, science and research without flying off the handle and making unwarranted accusations and character attacks as you are prone to.
I am not upset about anything. I have simply stated the facts as shown regarding promiscuity within the homosexual population. You however, seem to be unaware and upset by these facts.
It seems you have some ax to grind and a perpetual whine about this not being the case, despite numerous studies demonstrating that your opinion is totally unsubstantiated by the facts and nothing more than a hotwrongheadedmess in your own mind I have not berated anyone. You simply take issue with facts. No one is being scapegoated either. Rather the difficulty seems to be that you are unable to accept that the homosexual lifestyle is highly promiscuous as documented by gay and lesbian organizations as well as actual reporting from homosexuals themselves even when they are partnered and/or older.
If you think homosexuals are being berated and scapegoated by homosexuals reporting the actual truth of their lives then address that to your local gay and lesbian advocate or organization leadership.
But please do not make me the source of your panties being all in a knot about gay promiscuity. I have nothing to do with there being such extreme promiscuity among gays and neither do the heterosexuals who engage in adultery or birthing children out of wedlock.
Puhleeeeze!
October 10, 2006 7:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
delete
October 10, 2006 7:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
I've been arguing most of these points, without the psychological analysis, since the Foley revelations first came out.
http://thepeskyfly.blogspot.com/2006/10/joker.html
This image is not an argument, but I think it says it pretty clearly.
October 11, 2006 2:09 PM | Reply | Permalink