9-05-07, 9:17 am

Having once written a short article on sex scandals in U.S. political history during the very low farce of the Clinton impeachment in the late 1990s, I thought it might be a good time to look at the present wave of sex scandals, in which the party that has never been without sin and has always thrown the first stone is once more caught with its pants down, literally and figuratively.

While much of this is funny, the fact that the right-wing Republicans have made what we might call 'scarlet letter politics' into a center piece of their political platform isn't. They have used such appeals to deny elemental civil rights and civil liberties to gay people and in effect incite hatred and violence against them, the way Southern segregationists used racist appeals and particularly the spectre of Black men having sexual relations with white women to deny civil rights to African Americans and incite hatred and violence against them. They have long used 'family values' as a tactical slogan and an ideological cover for anti-reproductive rights, anti-birth control, anti-sex education policies whose purpose in the material world is to maintain the second sex status of women by turning both their child-bearing capabilities and their erotic sensibilities into fetters or even chains to limit their freedom and mobility. And they have in recent decades done great damage to the American people with such such assaults on personal freedoms.

First let's start with some serious stuff. The U.S. throughout its history has had a weak family system because families are defense and support networks and a society in which individualism has played the role that it has throughout U.S. history, a society in a huge country characterized by great geographical mobility, is not conducive to a strong family system, which of course has its positives and negatives. 'Strong family' societies are usually poor societies with extended family systems, relatives living under the same roof, and children with obligations to take care of parents because parents have nothing when they are too old to work. Capitalism, modern industrial capitalism, by creating the modern working class, makes that traditional family system impossible to continue and anyone who believes that it can continue for a majority of people is living in a world of illusions and delusions.

In the modern world, among 'modern people' those who are seriously 'focussed' on the family, create conditions where families can develop. Such conditions are the foundation of the 'welfare states' that 'modern people' with a big push from the socialist movement, began to develop in the early 20th century, much more extensively after WWII when socialism spread rapidly and for many seemed to be an unstoppable force, and which reactionary forces in the world, including the 'family values' propagandists here, have been assaulting over the last three decades.

Welfare states have things like comprehensive public health care, free tuition public education including college, paid maternal and paternal leaves, 'family allowances' and other subsidies for children in families far above the very marginal tax exemptions that exist here. The welfare state, as conservative scholars (as against propagandists) like to say, hasn't produced too much of a diferences in things like divorce rates but, I would say, it has given people, particularly women both choices and greater freedom in living their lives and has sharply reduced the economic strain that is important in understanding many disfunctional families. That the fiercest enemies of the modern welfare state in the U.S. are also the greatest verbal champions is 'family values' is a hypocrisy greater than Larry Craig pleading guilty to soliciting sex in a bathroom, David Vitter consorting with prostititues, or 'in the good old days' alcoholic politicians speaking and voting for Prohibition!

Now for some funny stuff. I would suggest that both the original French film, La Cage Aux Follies, and the American version, The Bird Cage, be required viewing for all registered Republicans. It is a hilarious farce in which the daughter of a rightwing politician (it really doesn't matter whether the rightwing politician is French or American or anything else since this is an international rightwing theme, although the U.S. is currently clearly number one in 'outed' right-wing politicians) seeks to marry the son of a gay owner of a drag club whose significant other is the leading drag performer.

Perhaps both versions should be played on CNN with breaks for Viagra commercials. I would also remind the right Republicans in the United States of that great moment in the Profumo sex scandal case in British politics in the early 1960s (there were some serious security issues involved there and the case led to the fall of the conservative government) when a leader of the Liberal Party congratulated the Conservatives in a parliamentary debate about finally have a heterosexual scandal! So, the right Republicans have something to look forward to.

The present 'scandal' deals with Senator Larry Craig of Idaho, who pleaded guilty to soliciting sex in the bathroom of the Minneapolis airport from an undercover police officer. First let me say that such acts of entrapment are in themselves disgraceful and were of course considered normal in the 'good old days' in which gay men particularly were subject to routine police harassment and brutality. Craig's denial that he is 'gay' is the big story in the news, along with mention that he has voted for a constitutional amendment which would outlaw gay marriage, and against legislation to fund programs for HIV infected people under Medicaid (large numbers of whom are heterosexual drug users) and making attacks on gays hate crimes (which the right sees as a plot to 'infiltrate' gay rights into existing civil rights protections). These are all good reasons to vote him out of office, not his sexual desires or even his inability to either acknowledge or control them.

There are other 'scandals' involving other Republicans, Florida's Mark Foley a while ago and his amorous emails to a young congressional page, a right Republican Senator from Lousiana, David Vitter, and his phone number in a Washington Madam's 'little black book, and others. ad naseum. But the real scandal should be what these politicians, Craig et al, have done for decades in acting as guardians of big business and the rich, wasting trillions for the military budget, and adding insult to injury by proclaiming that they have a right to punish people for their erotic orientations and for actions which, assuming they are between consenting adults, should be private matters.

And the real scandal also is the Ralph Reeds and Gary Bauers and the other 'professional puritians' who lead the organizations that, were they associated with the left would be called 'front groups' for the Republican party, who are expressing their outrage at Craig et al, scurrying about and proclaiming that all this shows is that it is necessary to have morality back in politics, not that a selective double standard makes these scandals inevitable and keeps people collectively from becoming adults.

Perhaps when the rightwing Republicans suffer the crushing defeat that their disastrous policies merit, their financial backers will to sobered up enough to realize that the 'sexual McCarthyism' that they have fostered in American politics over the last generation is self-defeating, even for them. Then Larry Craig might be able to enjoy his federal pension without worrying about police harassment, seek therapy for whatever bathroom fixations he may have, and even have to worry less about HIV since a progressive government would of course seriously fund research and preventive care for the disease. Who knows, stem cell research funded by a progressive government might even enable him and some of his moral majority-Christian Coalition-Family Whatever-God is On Our Side Because Our Chastity Belts are A OK associates to live longer and healthier lives.

--Norman Markowitz is a contributing editor of Political Affairs

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