While researching this new novel, I ran across quite a bit of stuff about J Edgar Hoover and rumors about his homosexuality. Hoover certainly fit the fabulous stereotype. He collected antiques, never dated, lived with his mom, and had a long term relationship with a guy named Clyde. He also publicly hated homosexuals, using his considerable power to crush anyone who even suggested he might be the slightest bit fey.
That made me think of Roy Cohn, the infamous DC lawyer who sat at Joe McCarthy's elbow and persecuted homosexuals with the same reckless virulence he went after reds, all while snuggling with "rent boys" at night.
Right wingers think more about gay sex than anyone other than gay men, who think about gay sex a lot. But the truth is, many of these defenders of public morality are gay men and they let they're toxic self-hatred spill out and poison entire communities.
With a five minute Google search I turned up several more examples. For instance, Lonnie Latham, a pastor out of Tulsa, was arrested after propositioning a male undercover cop. Latham has fought gay civil rights for years so, apparently, two people living in a committed relationship is wrong, but it's OK for Lonnie to do a little lap-bobbing on some stranger's crank.
Congressmen Ed Schrock, a Republican representative from Virginia, was another culture warrior with a voting record of 92% pure according to the Christian Coaltion. He got caught soliciting men for oral sex. He tried to defend himself in the press, but no one could understand him with his mouth full.
Robert Bauman, Republican from Maryland, was caught with a 16-year-old boy, although he might have been teaching the young man about the joys of baseball because there was talk of who would pitch and who would catch.
Then there's Steve Wilsey, a youth counselor with James Dobson's Focus on the Family. It seems Wilsey was focusing his gaze a little lower on the family, somewhere around an 8-year-old's crotch. The irony is, the boy's mom asked Wilsey to counsel her son after hearing a Focus on the Family radio broadcast that said the sons of single moms were at greater risk of turning gay. Tragically, the radio broadcast forgot to mention the closeted, predatory pedophiles working for Focus on the Family.
I found more, but you get the picture. I've always been interested in, and deeply respectful of, the human mystery. Sex, and America's weirdly schizo sexual dysfunction, is endlessly fascinating. We're overwhelmingly churchy and yet support a lucrative and amazingly twisted porn industry. We preach abstinence, but encourage preteens to strut their sexuality in Little Miss pageants. And what about Hello Kitty underpants? Or is that just me? Never mind. Grapple with America's fixation with sex and it always leads to something weird and creepy.
This dark little corner would be a lot more entertaining if there weren't so many innocent bystanders hit by shrapnel when these family men self-destruct.
Self-hating hypocrites have been a staple of public life and fiction for years but still, I have to ask, what's with these guys?
1 comment:
Indoctrination, to some degree.
Someone said to me several months back that "sex is all gays think about."
I said some of my favourite writers are gay and that they don't even like writing sex.
Unlike some straight writers I know.
Really, truly, you sit down on the pews week after week and hear the same garbage and a lot of people buy into it. Doesn't matter if they've never even met a person who's gay. They just believe what they're told, because the majority of people are sheep and incapable or unwilling to think for themselves based on facts instead of conjecture.
And people on the right become crusaders for it because it buys the church vote. It's still not quite accepted enough to quash the extremists from pushing the cause, even politically. Hasn't Bush undermined abortion rights as well?
The extreme right think it's their job to preserve morality for the rest of the heathen world. Unfortunately, they haven't bothered to get a proper definition. The morality that counts is rooted in integrity, virtue, honesty, decency, not whether your partner's name is Joe or Julie.
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