(Also published at Firedoglake and The Agonist)
Linda Wall, a conservative independent Virginia candidate for the House of Delegates, admitted on Wednesday that she had an affair with a female student as a junior high gym teacher in the early 1970s, but said she has changed…. “I’ve never tried to hide that I was in homosexuality,” she said in an interview with the AP. “If anybody Googles me, they would find that out there,” she said. “Forty years ago I was a different person. I was a heavy pot smoker with … impaired judgment and made some bad choices,” she added. The student was a minor at the time, meaning Wall could still be prosecuted if she comes forward.
So Linda Wall schtupped a junior high school girl forty years ago…but hey, it was the ’70s, right? Didn’t everyone??
Variations on this story line have become disturbingly banal of late, but it does raise an interesting question. For the sake of argument, let’s take Wall’s version of the story at face value. So she had a lesbian affair with a junior high school student in the early ’70s. Now what? Should Wall be held to account for her “indiscretion” crime? Does the passage of time mitigate the impact, severity, and moral weight of her breach of trust and abuse of power? Things were different forty years ago; do we judge her crime by today’s standards…or do we render judgment based on the standards in place at that point in time?
I raise these questions not in a effort to diminish or soft-pedal Wall’s confession. I do so because I find myself wondering if the passage of time and the quality of life that a person has lived in the interim can be held to convey penance and rehabilitation…or is Wall’s debt to society to be considered unpaid until she does hard time for her particular crime?
Here’s another factor to increase the degree of difficulty in resolving this moral dilemma:
Wall has “grown up” and “reformed” over the intervening 40 years. She’s converted to Christianity (Doesn’t everyone play this card when they’re hoping to evade accountability on a morals charge?). She been active on social issues, lobbying the Virginia House of Delegates. She describes herself as “ex-gay.” Those may to some represent good and wonderful things…but do they rise to the level of absolution for her long-ago crime? Has her advocacy on behalf of a socially Conservative agenda arisen from a place of legitimate contrition and desire for forgiveness? Or does it come from a place of anger, denial of culpability, and a refusal to be (or a desire to avoid being) held accountable? Sure, she’s seeking public office now, so one could argue that she has to come clean and fall on her sword in the hopes that the voters will give her a pass…but what came prior to this? Was her “come to Jesus” moment regarding her crime demonstrated by the way she’s lived her life over the past 40 years? Or is it related to her pursuit of political office?
There’s another aspect to this question as well, one that I can’t prove or quantify, but one that I think absolutely impacts how a person might judge Wall. Wall is now an avowed Conservative; will her ideological fellow travelers be more inclined to forgive her because of her Conservative values? What if Wall was a Liberal making the same admission and the same claims of contrition? My sense in matters such as this is that Conservatives tend to be far more forgiving of their own. If Wall was a Liberal, the Sturm und Drang arguably would be heard from Sperryville to Arlington. The drumbeat of those crying for her head on a pike would drown out virtually all other matters of business, to the point where Wall would eventually have to step away from her candidacy.
I can’t say with certain that Liberals would be more forgiving of Wall, but my sense is that we tend to be far less bloodthirsty. That’s a matter for debate, of course, and I have no answer to that question. I raise it because it does impact how the denouement of the episode will play out.
Like many, I’m repulsed by Wall’s action, though I admire the courage it must have taken to own up to her long-ago crime. I find myself conflicted; the passage of time has allowed Wall to demonstrate contrition and rehabilitation, but the rule of law still requires accountability. Which is the greater consideration? And what of Conservatives desire to protect their own and persecute Liberals whenever possible (not that the reverse could never be true)? What of the hypocrisy inherent in the attitude of those who would give Wall a pass but attack a Liberal guilty of the same of similar crimes?
And what of her victim from so many years ago? While we’re debating Wall’s political future and fitness to serve, what’s become of her victim…and should that knowledge help to inform a decision as to what, if any, punishment Wall needs to face?
No, I don’t have an answer…but I still have a lot of questions.
