A voice of semi-sanity can occasionally be found on the pages of Free Republic. I make light of the ignorance there because it is seemingly endless, but here we find some actual truth-telling about the Craig matter, by FR resident nathanbedford that leaves most of the knuckledraggers there with little to say. You may not agree with this Freeper’s views in total — his argument is less support of Craig (or homosexuality) as a moral issue but an acknowledgment that far-right efforts to impose their morality through law-making leads to abuse, such as bathroom busts targeting gay sexual conduct versus straight sexual conduct, the latter which never seems to be the target of vice sting operations. For the underbelly of the far-right, this is a rare major smackdown from one of its own.
What should be the proper conservative perspective on laws concerning homosexuality?
First, we must acknowledge that the Supreme Court decision in the Texas case [Lawrence v. Texas, which decriminalized homosexuality] exists. Second, we deplore the decision because it is a departure from states’ rights-but I think it would be a very serious blunder to deplore the decision because we find homosexuality icky. The world has moved beyond the point where our society arrogates the right to criminalize unseemliness in private, consensual, adult sex. We like to think of ourselves as far more enlightened than the Victorians and we regard them as being a culture locked in irrational sexual taboos. But it was Lady Astor, very much a Victorian, who said, “you can do anything you like in public providing you don’t frighten the horses.”
Second, we must recognize the tides of jurisprudence, culture, and public consensus are flowing against us. The Supreme Court opinion is very unlikely to be reversed, so the law has already moved substantially against the traditional “conservative” position. Concurrently, the legal and social advances of homosexuals in our society are unlikely to be reversed. The homosexual community is an exceedingly active and effective lobby who can only be expected to campaign vigilantly for their own perceived rights. They are winning the battle. Conservatives who stand against them are impotently standing athwart history and must expect an unrelenting series of Larry Craig type incidents which increasingly alienate us from the general public. I think a truly conservative approach to the issue of homosexuality is to distinguish between that which is tolerable and that which is not because it conflicts with a competing higher value. For example, private homosexual sex between consenting adults is something that a true conservative who respects individual liberty should have little trouble concluding that is an area not for the Lawgiver but for the Redeemer. The flagrant, obnoxious, in your face primping and even soliciting, should be outlawed because it is repugnant to a higher value, which is the welfare of our children. Likewise proselytizing of our children in the school system. Homosexual marriage can be opposed because it degrades a higher institution, heterosexual marriage. Civil unions, on the other hand, should be easy for a conservative to tolerate because he believes in the freedom of contract.
Third, as conservatives we fear, above all things, intrusive government. We should be wary lest we tolerate government peccadilloes against homosexuals because we are disgusted by them. As conservatives we are rightly or reluctant to turn to the government for solutions to social problems. To the degree that we regard homosexuality as a “problem” we should be very reluctant to look to the criminal law system as the solution. That means that we must be careful not to criminalize or even stigmatize homosexuality because we find it repugnant. Conversely, we must not be intimidated by political correctness from insisting that the law protect our children from physical, psychological and educational abuse. We must be careful to punish acts where appropriate, but not the status. Neither should we tolerate that the status be exalted. We should act only when the horses are frightened.
So all of this brings us to the political implications of the Craig scandal. I have posted in another context as recently as a few days ago my concern about Republicans who throw their fellows to the enemy as soon as storm clouds gather. In fact, I make reference to this deplorable tendency in my about page. I do not think it is necessary to consider what to do about Senator Larry Craig, he is a problem in the process of resolving itself and I have no doubt that he will not be the Senator from Idaho on January 2, 2008. His senatorial career is virtually over. But I dodge the issue, what should be done about Senator Larry Craig if he does not go voluntarily? He should be shunned by the party and all support for him should be withdrawn not because he is a homosexual but because he is a damn hypocrite. Craig did not do much of anything legally wrong-he did not frighten the horses-if but he brings disgrace to the party by his flagrant hypocrisy. And the party must rid itself of him because failure to do so would lay it open to the charge of hypocrisy. He represented the party in the United States Senate for the state of Idaho and he lied to us about matters of morality and “family values.” It is one thing to have a rot in the body of the party and to remove that rotten apple from the barrel and quite another thing to regularize perversity as the Democrats have done in similar circumstances.
What to do about other homosexuals? Do we welcome them into the party? I should think so, so long as they are open and otherwise comport themselves in sync with conservative values. That is, when they are not hypocrites.
Ironically, the remarks of Barney Frank seemed to me to be the best placed of this controversy. Of course he did not object to Craig’s homosexuality and thought he should remain in the Senate. But he did criticize the man’s hypocrisy. In this Barney Frank struck home. So long as we as conservatives attack homosexuals for their status as homosexuals rather than for their overt acts which are repugnant to a higher value, we are open to the hypocrisy charge. And every time a Republican homosexual is outed, we will become a laughingstock. We are open to the charge that we are hypocrites when we invoke the criminal law to enforce our predilections about sex because we are the party which says it stands for individual liberty and limited government. The Democrats say we intrude government into the bedroom and in this case they are right. So, when they say the same thing about abortion, we cannot effectively deny the charge even though a much higher value-a baby’s life-is at stake.
We fall into this hypocrisy trap when we make the fundamental mistake respecting the nature of homosexuality vis-à-vis society. Democrats accuse us of hypocrisy because closet homosexuals within our ranks preach “family values.” Why do we let the Democrats conflate these two issues? Because we have done so ourselves. Homosexual activity in private between consenting adults who are not married constitute no threat to my marriage. Nor do they constitute a threat to the institution of marriage. Adultery poses a threat to the adulterer’s marriage whether the adultery is homosexual or heterosexual. The adulterer is not a greater hypocrite because his adultery is homosexual. I submit that no-fault divorce is a far graver threat to the institution of marriage than is the fact of homosexuality in our society.
50 Responses to “A Freeper smacks down the Base over Craig and hypocrisy”
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At least he is honest enough to admit that the conservative aversion to homosexuality is based on two principles:
1) Homosexual sex is “icky”.
2) The Bible says homosexual sex is wrong.
Although I disagree strongly with most of what he believes in, at least he is bright enough to realize that neither one of these reasons is a valid reason to create policy in a free society.
I imagine this guy is going to get attacked by his own, because most of the people I know who still self-ID as conservative would think this was gibberish - of course “family values” mean “no gays” - who does this guy think he is?
Sadly, the “no fault divorce” argument would scream right past them unacknowledged as their knees jerked to refute the “family values” hypocrisy charge.
It’s difficult to comment on this. It is so far ahead of what passes for conservative thought on these issues that it is deeply refreshing - I get the sense that in some parts of it at least, we might be open to some actual discussion. He certainly properly pegs the immediate issues, which comes down to essentially acknowledging that gay people exist, and that more and more of society is okay with that. A voice actually saying that the Republican party has to move forward into admitting that and then negotiating what is and isn’t allowable public behavior - for both gay and straight people? Amazing.
At the same time, of course, I deeply disagree with him on many of his deeper underlying points and his clearly unquestioned assumptions, such as that even allowing children to know that homosexuality exists does violence to them and must be kept out of schools as a “higher value.”
Of course, the resulting comments that follow his post are typical Freeper bleatings.
They are so going to ban that poor guy.
He forgot he had to check his brain at the door.
That’s a guy who’s probably about to become (A) a non-Freeper and (B) a non-Republican. There’s no place for thinkers in the current incarnations of either of those “institutions.”
This guy is on the fundies’ chopping block on the day of the Great Libertarian Purge.
He’s a pre-9/11 conservative. Presently his party couldn’t win a one man race without christian conservatives.
Hmm, is this guy really taking his name from Nathan Bedford Forrest, a founder of the KKK? And he’s the voice of reason at Freeper-land? Yikes.
Someone with a stronger stomach than I should keep an eye on that post and see if any more almost-sensible conservatives crawl out.
I certainly have mixed feelings–on the one hand, this is one reactionary one could have serious discussions with–I think. On the other, his very intelligence and integrity (to values which include some very repugnant ones–wasn’t Nathan Bedford Forrest one of the founders of the Klan and someone who committed massacres against African-Americans as a Confederate general?) would represent that much more effective resistance to general social progress and possibly greater success in rolling that progress back.
Mind, since I figure the real enemy of human decency is not wrong thinking but the doublethink that enables capitalism to continue to tighten its death-grip on all humanity, I welcome clarity and honesty of thought in anyone. How long can someone recognize that both pragmatic considerations and elementary human decency restrain homobigots from so many of their customary methods, before beginning to wonder why exactly the bigotry should exist at all?
I believe that morality is after all, higher pragmatism. If there is no morally reasonable mechanism available to make progress toward a moral good, then the perceived moral good will either be forgotten or come under scrutiny, and revised or eventually rejected. Means and ends are tied together, ethically.
Anyway–yeah, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for this level of reasoning to spread to the right. I expect rightists will continue their trajectory into lunacy and idiocy, and this guy is trailing rather than leading the thundering herd.
Amusing quote:
‘The only “problem” we have is that our constitution was written in a more civilized time, by more civilized men who didn’t dream that someday their degenerate descendants would walk the land they were taming proclaiming special rights for those who practice sodomy.’
Special? More like equal.
Also,
‘We’re all hypocrites because all of us fall short and sin at times. We freely admit it. What makes us different from the Left is we do not deny the necessity of living up to the standards we proclaim for ourselves and demand others follow.’
After reading Ann Coulter’s quote about how “Democrats resolutely refuse to tell the poor the secret to not being poor: Keep your knees together until marriage,” this is ridiculous. By her own admission it’s never been a necessity of her to follow this.
“The only “problem” we have is that our constitution was written in a more civilized time, by more civilized men who didn’t dream that someday their degenerate descendants would walk the land they were taming proclaiming
special rights for those who practice sodomy‘War is Peace’, ‘Freedom is Slavery’, and ‘Ignorance is Strength’, while continuously promoting fear and shouting that only ‘Conservatives’ can protect the American People from immediate destruction by foreigners from oil-rich countries.”There, fixed that for him…
Wow! an actual conservative! It’s like catching a Coelocanth. I thought those suckers were extinct.
I feel genuinely sorry for old school conservatives. I disagree with their philosophy, but it did at least have internal consistency and a certain respect for liberty*. The new face of conservatism is hypocrisy, cruelty, relentless lust for power, and a near total detachment from reason.
(*) As always, the reality of actual laws implemented tended to deviate substantially from the philosophical ideal in the direction of pandering and special interests, but I’ll not throw that stone from the liberal glass house.
I’m afraid I don’t share your magnanimity, Pam. The fact that a broken clock is right twice a day doesn’t mean it’s not broken. Coming to the rather obvious conclusion that most sane people don’t truck with gibbering theofascism doesn’t make you any less of a gibbering theofascist.
NB Forrest was a slave-holding white supremacist, but he repudiated the Klan’s violent methods and distanced himself from them in later years.
“NB Forrest was a slave-holding white supremacist, but he repudiated the Klan’s violent methods and distanced himself from them in later years.”
So let me get this straight CJ: To you that makes Nathan Bedford Forrest and admirable man of principle? What are you really trying to say?…
“‘The only “problem” we have is that our constitution was written in a more civilized time[…]”
I love this argument. You know, that more civilized time when we kept slaves, slaughtered natives, and executed people for relatively minor crimes.
Wait, come to think of it, the Rethugs probably think that sounds pretty good. Nevermind.
“[…] by more civilized men who didn’t dream that someday their degenerate descendants would walk the land they were taming proclaiming special rights for those who practice sodomy.’”
Some of them (Jefferson) also didn’t dream that it would be possible for free blacks to coexist peaceably with whites. But, again, that’s is probably a bad argument since the sentiment probably sounds reasonable to a lot of conservatives. I give up.
Clearly an actual Libertarian.
That means still both cognate and sapient at some level.
[sometimes very high-functioning].
Not in any sense a ‘Gingrich Republican’
[the Contract-with-America brownshirted hooligan crowd]
who in turn fail to be Conservative in any real
-the Goldwater - sense.
The term used by many for of this blotch on the body politic is
‘Movement Conservative’. These are reactionary, regressive,
RWA*, fundie -down-your-throat- Christianist and
proto-fascist…or Corporatist in their base manifestation.
The terms are important…and tricky.
Understanding what each is ‘about’ is more so.
*Altemeyer..submissive, authoritarian and conventional
Did anyone else notice that the guy used Second place twice?
“First, we must acknowledge that the Supreme Court …”
“Second, we deplore the decision…”
“Second, we must recognize the tides…”
then he goes on to “concurrent.”
Is it just me?
“So let me get this straight CJ: To you that makes Nathan Bedford Forrest and admirable man of principle? What are you really trying to say?…”
Countdown until a troll says “why does teh Democrat party consider Robert Sheetz Byrd an admirable man of principle when he claimz to have abandoned hiz ways,” ignoring that he, unlike Forrest, never owned slaves.
I think it’s interesting that George Felix Macaca Allen named his son after Forrest, btw.
I don’t see this fellow having much a future with the freepii. I also don’t think much of what he probably thinks of as his ‘principles,’ but he, unlike many of his party, sees the writing on the wall.
He probably needs to source his quotes better:
“It doesn’t make any difference what you do in the bedroom as long as you don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.”
–Attributed (possibly apocryphal) to Mrs. Patrick Campbell, the Edwardian actress.
And this is just plain wrong:
He represented the party in the United States Senate for the state of Idaho
No, he didn’t. He represented the people of the state of Idaho.
Not ‘the party.’
“Third, as conservatives we fear, above all things, intrusive government.”
Hahahah. But seriously, do conservatives even claim to hold this as a principle anymore? If conservatives actually believe this, why do they keep voting for Republicans?
Also, I noticed that he thinks we should outlaw primping, or at least “in your face primping”. For the sake of the children, of course.
But his apparent concern for hypocrisy is what gives him away as a parody troll. Conservatives aren’t bothered by hypocrisy, they can’t smell it.
Bah, even Ted Haggard said that (paraphrasing) “such and such is what the Bible teaches and we want to follow it, but I would not want to enforce it by law”.
Dude, “primping?” No product in public? What?
“Dude, “primping?” No product in public? What?”
That’s what the veil is for, right?…
[I think it’s interesting that George Felix Macaca Allen named his son after Forrest, btw.]
Gump, maybe? So he could actually say in later years:
“RUN, Forrestt! RUUUUN!”
Ooh, ooh, women were ornaments and incubators of sons! Forgot one, silly.
I got a kick out of that too. But he also believes that Christians got morality perfectly “right” two thousand years ago, so.. you know. He’s catching up.
Whenever people deify Jefferson and Madison, I always think of what miserable monsters they were according to today’s ethical standards. Maybe there are some scribblings in a journal about how much guilt they felt over their slave-keeping, but the bottom line is that they owned people; maybe they claimed to love their wives oh-so-much, but they still didn’t want them getting jobs or participating in gov’t.
In addition, I’m taking “Gov’ts of Western Europe” this semester and I’ve gotta say, even their organization and system of gov’t is pretty shitty (The Netherlands wins).
Of the other hand, not buying the divinity of Christ might even it out.
Um.. right. I’ve heard that’s how its supposed to work in theory, but let’s not kid ourselves. :p
I noticed this too, and what I think he was trying to do (though I’m not sure) is: first, introduce a major point; second, introduce a minor point dependant on the first major point; third, introduce a second major point; and fourth, introduce a third major point.
If one paraphrases the first two points “nathanbedford” introduces, what one ends up with is something like: “First, I am obliged to admit that (fill in the blank) has happened, but (second) I am equally strongly obliged to admit that, for reasons which seem good to me, I object profoundly to (fill in the blank).” Later on he proceeds to introduce two other, nondependant points under the headings:
“Second, we must recognize the tides…”
and
“Third, as conservatives we fear, above all things, intrusive government.”
Then he goes on to analyze and to draw conclusions from the points he has assembled. Overall the structure turns out to be something like:
1.
1. (a)
2.
3.
(conclusion)
I agree that the reiteration of the term “second” makes things more confusing than they need to be, but, personally, I would say that nathanbeford’s mistake is one that strikes me as being more grammatical or lexical than logical or pertinent to the argument. Sloppy writing, in other words. I’ve done some proofreading and I used to run across that all the time.
It’s encouraging to see a libertarian-leaning Freeper try to reconcile his principles with Republican politics. But, my friend, why is it okay to repress gay PDA behavior on the grounds that it might corrupt the children, but it’s not okay to restrict parents’ child-rearing methods directly? I think kids should all be required to go to school, simply to thwart some psychotics’ medieval ideas about parenting. But libertarians think that’s awful. What’s the difference?
The really amusing thing about the “protect the children” argument — from men kissing men, from crazed liberal English professors, from learning scientists’ version of science, from reading certain verboten words they learned from their parents — is that it betrays the Righties’ unconfidence that their kids actually absorbed the repressive lessons their parents tried to teach them.
Second, we must recognize the tides of jurisprudence, culture, and public consensus are flowing against us
The tides are *always* flowing against you, dude, because, hey, conservatives –the actual people, not the theory– have been wrong about every important social issue, since, like, EVER.
The one thing conservatives had going for them was the closet and the things that enforce it, the fear of arrest and disgrace. Now that those have mostly fallen by the wayside and GLBT people now live openly and without fear of arrest, the conservatives have lost. They don’t really know it yet, and there’s still major bumps in the road for us mo’s, but they’re on the wrong side of history AGAIN, the freaking dinosaurs.
In that freeper thread there sure are a lot of strident I-too-find-homosexuality-repulsive assertions.
Methinks the ladies doth protest too much.
Gotta admit, if there were ore conservatives like this in the party, the US would be a much better place to live. I’m not saying I buy into what he’s saying (I find the concept of homosexuality=perverted practice to be condescending and offensive), but this type of poster strikes me as a person who you could get into a deep political discussion with. Unlike many Bush supporters who eventually degenerate into mindless screaming or apoplexy, I think this is the kind of person you could debate with.
Wow - a freeper that still believes in the old fashioned American value of minding his own business and salvation.
“Were”? You optimist, you.
Oh, please. Mr. States’ Rights probably peed himself with joy when DOMA passed.
There was a bathroom bust targeting straight sex in Seattle not that long ago. Some woman and her boyfriend were having sex in the ladies’ room, and some of the women who wanted to use the ladies’ room for its intended purpose complained. So the police went in and busted it up and arrested him for trespassing. They either didn’t arrest her at all, or else they arrested her too and the charge was dismissed, I forget. Because of course as a woman she was entitled to be in the ladies’ room, but as a man, he wasn’t.
I used to live in Minneapolis, it’s a pretty liberal town, and gay-friendly as far as I could tell. I don’t think the police are out harassing gay people, I think they were just trying to reclaim the bathroom for the use of the general public. Craig was arrested, I understand, for leering through the crack in the door, which if the police officer didn’t send out any signals was certainly an intrusion. Any solicitation to have sex where the sex was intended to take place in the bathroom was an intrusion upon others’ use of the space. If I were Craig, I would have said yeah, I was soliciting sex, so what, we weren’t going to do it in the bathroom itself, we were going to go outside. But of course, as a closeted, homosexual, homophobic senator from Idaho, Craig couldn’t say something like that.
I don’t think the police are out harassing gay people, I think they were just trying to reclaim the bathroom for the use of the general public.
Mike, you can ‘think’ all you want, even in the most liberal of spaces such laws have always almost exclusively been, historically and contemporarily, used against both gays and lesbians, and gay men in particular.
It’s no random occurrence that the bust in the Lawrence V. Texas decision was one done against gay men.
shit, the blockquote fucked up … the above first sentence was supposed to be quoted.
Ah, the messed-up blockquote in your first comment just above explains my confusion.
Right you are, Sarah.
Since the question, “how often do men get ‘harassed’ in restrooms anyway?” came up somewhere above, all I can say is, in my own personal experience, absolutely never. Not even when I was in K-12 school, when I attracted all manner of bullying harassment outside the restrooms, was I ever afraid of getting jumped in it. And by “jumped” I just mean yet another attack on me from ambush; the whole notion of sexual abuse was something I was blithely innocent of.
In my last years of HS, I heard one of my classmates tell me he had been somehow approached in, I think, a restroom, once.
In the ensuing 24 years of my legal adulthood–never even heard of it.
I really don’t think it’s a widespread problem, even if one construes simple and nonconfrontational propositions in whatever code actual seekers of such encounters may have developed as problematic.
Well, maybe this is just yet more of my interpersonal cluelessness at work. Fools rush in and all that.
You know, reproductive rights *would* be a stale issue if the theofascist Republicans would leave it the fuck alone.
Oops wrong thread! Sorry!
Freeper:
No, hypocrisy is having two sets of standards: one for yourself and one for other, usually lesser, people. Frankly, I don’t think anyone can have a absence of standards.
Sarah, I’m not completely sold on the view that harassment of gays was what was happening in this case. The police contend that there were complaints of this behavior in the bathroom, and chasing out people who were using the bathroom in ways that interfered with other users was a legitimate action. There are plenty of places for gay men to go to have sex, they don’t have to do it in public spaces that are dedicated to other uses.
BUT, did Craig leer through the crack in the door in response to signals from the policeman? I am suspicious that he did; why did he pick the policeman in particular if the policeman wasn’t making overtures? If the policeman was making overtures, the legitimacy of the arrest diminishes a great deal. But Craig didn’t make that argument, and was seriously inhibited from making it by the way he’s lived his life. He wasn’t going to say, “You were coming on to me, I recognized the signals and responded to your invitation. ‘Interference with privacy, forsooth!’”
I’ve heard this incident described as reflecting a clash between older gay culture and newer gay culture. During Craig’s formative years, places like bathrooms were where you went, a lot of gay sex took place in furtive, shadowy encounters. So this sort of activity was natural to someone in that era, and the police really had no moral right to interfere, since it was prejudice and harassment that made it necessary.
Now, I think the situation has changed. Gay men are not forced into furtive bathroom sex, and there’s a lot more reasonableness in the police clearing sexual encounters out of the bathroom - especially an airside bathroom, where people trying to catch a flight shouldn’t have to wait for a stall to be vacated by two men who are having sex in it, taking more time than they are rightly entitled to.
You could be right. It could be harassment. But I am not yet convinced of that, although I have some suspicion. But my argument, I think, is at least a legitimate one, and may in fact reflect what was happening in this case.
Mike -
This particular incident with Craig may not be harassment of the specific type that is routinely used against gay men. Nonetheless, this one incident doesn’t change the fact that the majority of such laws ARE placed almost exclusively onto gay men.
Further, I think there IS some degree of this being a correct application of the law. However, that doesn’t stop it being discriminatory also. To merely look to one location for an act, especially when it comes to the law, is a rather simplistic approach.
Oh, and your contention that gay men are no long forced into bathroom sex is also an oversimplification. Some men ARE forced into such by the nature of their (sub)cultures and communities. The idea that all gay men are now completely free to pursue relationships and sex just like straight men are is a fantasy.
Teh fact that he uses the phrase “states’ rights” invalidates any other opinion he may have. States don’t HAVE rights. PEOPLE have rights.
I, for one, have never been propositioned in a restroom…strangely though I don’t have a friend called Dorothy either!!
He, of course, can no longer call himself a Conservative (with a big C) ‘cos Conservatism is based on, resistance to change, to hold to all that was dear, things were better in the old days, crap. (that great twisted ‘by civilised’ ancesters shit is a doosie!).
Conservatives (as all are) closets are just full to overflowing and it’s no great surprise when a lovely fat flounder like a senator falls out on to the floor for it’s former colleagues to feast on. It’s what makes spectatin’ great!
@46 - I think the argument is that within its own borders a state must have the right (or power, if you prefer) to enact the will of its people, or there’s no reason for it to exist at all. I’m a federalist because I believe a slim majority of Americans actually want to live in a theocratic hellhole, so I would have preferred to sacrifice the red states to them if it means they wouldn’t have seized the entire nation.
Just because this guy is smart enough to realize that gay people exist, and deserve not to be harassed just for existing, doesn’t make him not a gibbering idiot.
He talks about “proselytizing” in schools. He claims that same-sex couples getting married is a threat to his own marriage. He’s in favor of the government getting to force religious values on people against their will, yet he claims he doesn’t approve of “intrusive government”.
He can do a lot more damage than a raving ignorant nutter who thinks that gays go away if you ignore them, because he’s sane enough to recognize facts, yet bigoted enough to think that gays ought to be permanent second-class citizens in a theocratic USA.
I still don’t get it. I always thought the freepers were like the P.J. O’Rourke Libertarians: not homophobic, not anti-choice, but with the wacky “no government at all” attitude.
This guy sounds no better than an AM radio neocon who probably found out a close relative is gay, and, wow, maybe they shouldn’t be sentenced to death by stoning.