(Also published at Firedoglake, The Agonist and Daily Kos)
Herman Cain really likes to bang (or try to bang) white women. The obvious thing here: wait, you mean a skeevy lobbyist and poisonous food hawker turned out to be a skeevy human being? How could we even think about not electing him president? Oh, and he’s thinking of getting out of the campaign now. Just two days too late. Extra bonus humor points: Cain’s lawyer saying that “No individual…should be questioned about his or her private sexual life.” What country has he been living in?
An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.
- Michael Korda
Few aspects of human existence illustrate the difference between Liberals and Conservatives more than each side’s attitude towards sex, sexuality, and marriage. Conservatives treat their flavor of sex and sexuality as if it’s a private matter, beyond discussion and accountability because it happens between consenting adults behind closed doors. Marriage? Well, duh…that means one man and one woman, with no deviation being conceivable, much less acceptable. Anything that doesn’t fit within those narrow bounds is evil, sinful, and a crime against God and humanity: WHAT ABOUT THE POOR, IMPRESSIONABLE CHILDREN???
Liberals tend to be a fair bit more laissez faire, seeing issues of sex, sexuality, and marriage as something to be negotiated between two consenting adults and beyond strict, seemingly arbitrary rules. Liberals tend to view sexuality as a spectrum. Some may be heterosexual at one end of the spectrum, others homosexual and at the other end, with the rest of humankind falling somewhere in between. The idea is that sexuality is and/or can be fluid for some, not definable by the inflexible labels we’re accustomed to using. As for marriage…well, since when is a stable and committed relationship not good for society? If your marriage is threatened by two homosexuals getting married, y’all might want to consider couples counseling. Now. Hey, if you oppose same-sex marriage, then don’t marry someone of your gender, knowhutimean??
Given the differences when it comes to issues of sex, sexuality, and marriage, it’s no wonder that most (but certainly not all) of the hypocrisy emanates from the Right. Being of a generally more authoritarian bent, many Conservatives are quite comfortable with the idea that their standards should be the standards for ALL of us. That this flies in the face of the reality that not all of us are heterosexual, procreational, missionary-position-loving Evangelicals seems beside the point. Of course, we all SHOULD be, so why shouldn’t those standards become law?
“No individual…should be questioned about his or her private sexual life.” Hmm…perhaps someone should have told Kenneth Starr this before he and his neoConservative cohorts attempted to destroy Bill Clinton. Perhaps the quote would be more accurate if we just added one tiny little word to it: “No CONSERVATIVE individual…should be questioned about his or her private sexual life.”
There; that sounds about right….
