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By Joseph Couture
Thursday, March 27, 2008
America loves a good sex scandal. Once again we have been treated to the walk of shame with another parade of disgrace, denial and denunciation.
It's a good one this time. On the one hand we have the self-righteous former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer topping the news, and on the other former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey back for a second public flogging.
Spitzer, as everyone has no doubt heard, quickly resigned after it was publicly revealed that he paid a high priced call girl for a two hour encounter in a posh Washington hotel. Spitzer, who made a name for himself cleaning up corporate corruption and sleaze of various kinds, seemed to have more enemies than friends, most of whom could barely contain their joy at his downfall.
McGreevey had already resigned as governor of New Jersey some time ago when it was revealed that the married McGreevey was gay and he admitted that he had an affair with a male staff member. The staff member denies the allegation and claims it was more a case of sexual harassment by the former governor.
McGreevey's wife did the talk show circuit expressing her hurt and betrayal at her husband's "secret." Now it is being alleged that the couple engaged in threesomes with the governor's male chauffeur.
My concern here is twofold. The first is that in both cases their only crimes were expressions of their sexuality. If McGreevey is correct, they were consensual ones at that. In the second, other politicians who have committed much more grievous crimes have gone unpunished with little or no media uproar and no public outcry.
McGreevey's "crime" was that he was exposed as being gay. It caused a national scandal ending with his resignation from office. But being gay does not make you unfit for public office or for anything else for that matter. Yet he all but told America that being gay made him unworthy of his position by quitting. This is a terrible message to send to young people who may be struggling with issues of their own sexual orientation.
I would argue that Spitzer did nothing wrong by paying for sex. As they say, it's not the crime, it's the cover up. It was his hypocrisy by simultaneously cracking down on some prostitutes while at the same time sleeping with others that is the problem. His message to the public is that having sex with a prostitute is OK if you don't get caught and you lie about it. In other words, sex is something that is bad and must be hidden.
While almost impossible to stomach, dishonesty and hypocrisy seem as common as the transgressions themselves. Look at our dear friend Sen. Larry Craig, who was once voting against gay rights while he also stood accused of clandestine gay escapades and toe tapping toilet flirtations with other men.
Every time one of these stories breaks, the scandal script is the same. You either lie until you can lie no longer, or you admit your sins and beg for forgiveness and crawl back under your rock.
Each time, the media treat these stores as if they were not only truly important but were the most important thing happening in the United States of America. I'm afraid the rest of the world might disagree.
People around the globe could hardly be blamed for scratching their heads at this American peculiarity. They wonder why the citizens of this great land aren't more concerned with the other things their politicians are up to.
They read stories about how the U.S. government abducts people they don't like and whisks them off to foreign countries in the middle of the night to be tortured. They read about how President Bush vetoes bills that say it is wrong to simulate drowning people in their custody during questioning. They read about how one of the costliest wars in history was started based on lies.
Who could blame them for wondering why these are not considered crimes worthy of denunciation. Lying to start a war is no big deal, but lying about being gay is an unspeakable evil. It seems the writing on the wall says that sex, especially gay sex, is worse than murder.
Is it just me, or is there something wrong with this picture?
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