O that ye would altogether hold your peace! and it should be your wisdom.
-Job 13:5-
California state Senator Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield) is very concerned about the "gay agenda" and he's been a fierce opponent of same sex marriage and a "family values" blowhard for a long time. Although many don't agree with my feeling that such obsession is a cover up, examples keep emerging with regularity and it's hard even to list the most humorous ones. Senator Ashburn was recently arrested for drunk driving in downtown Sacramento early Wednesday morning. There's no particular surprise there and I imagine many other patrons leaving the gay bar "Faces" in the wee hours had had a bit too much to drink. He was given a field sobriety test and promptly taken off to jail. I don't know what happened to his "unidentified male companion."
Perhaps it will be less of a surprise to hear that Angelo Balducci, a "Gentleman of His Holiness," was caught on a police wiretap negotiating for the services of male prostitutes with a Vatican Chorister. No official comments have yet been published.
The pattern emerged a long time ago, even before Wide Stance Larry tapped his toes in Minneapolis and whether you do or don't agree with me, I'm going to bet that more often than not, the biggest and most assertive opponents of gay rights and fantasy fabricators are dealing with difficult inner longings. Perhaps after all, if you'll forgive my radical libertarianism, the best way to hide them and to avoid suspicion is to simply leave gay people alone?
Annoying as these folks are - I can not help but feel a bit sorry for them. They are so clearly the sad products of our society's homophobic history - they learned our homophobic lessons all too well - sadly to the extent of inflicting it upon their very selves.
ReplyDeleteTo feel such loathing for one's self - to be the poster-child for internalized oppression - or whatever theoretical, psychological approach you want to take - must be a truly hellish place to be.
If they could just accept the idea that peace, love and understanding are NOT bad things and pull that holier than thou stick from out of their asses, most of us wouldn't give a crap what they did in their private lives but the blatant hypocrisy is an outrageous affront.
ReplyDeleteI just don't get it. Why would they be anti-gay and anti-gay marriage if they ARE gay?
ReplyDeleteIf they are trying to hide in the "closet" then don't say anything. There is a common term that Congress practices quite often, "No comment", I believe. Why don't they just use that rather than be hypocrites? Or is it the risk of being "caught" that's so "exciting"?
I'm grasping at straws--I know. It's just that I can't and probably won't ever understand their mentality.
I've always believed in tellilng the truth or just keeping your mouth shut. I guess these guys weren't raised the same way. More's the pity.
I think it's a mistake to think of humans as rational. We are emotional creatures who rationalize. Never underestimate the human tendency to lie to one's self!
ReplyDeleteI've known a disturbing number of hyper-religious men who are quite evidently gay and hate their own longings and think that God will be impressed by their struggle or fooled by their outspoken denunciations. I've known some who were married and had very unhappy wives.
Is it a coincidence that all considered themselves to be "conservative?" I don't know, this isn't scientific, but it seems to describe so many people.
It's hard for me to understand a doctrine that says thinking about a sex act is a sex act, but harder to connect that with the idea that one is going to get a plaque or a gold star from God for repressing an urge that is sinful to have -- unless of course, you can fool God the way you can fool a polygraph.
But here I go, acting like people and what they do makes any kind of sense. Humans are born hypocrites and that certainly includes people who insist that ancient Hebrew commandments are the laws of the universe and then without a care in the world ignore virtually all of them save gay sex, murder and theft - and maybe sometimes bearing false witness.
Why do Christians eat cheeseburgers, for instance, but insist that an Orca must be killed because there's some blather about stoning an ox?
No, I think our species was created simply because God needed something stupid and hypocritical to laugh at.
I’m guessing that these chaps are self-loathers. They can’t resist their own impulses, but at the same time they sincerely believe what they’re doing is wrong. So they deal with this internal contradiction by lashing out at others with anti-gay rhetoric and legislation, which makes them feel like they are at least promoting the “correct” outlook even though they aren’t personally conforming to it. Yes, it would be nice if they would just be quiet rather than bray their bigotry at every opportunity. But of course there’s always the locker-room atmosphere of the political circles within which they move – failure to tell enough anti-gay jokes, or failure to denounce the so-called “gay agenda” with sufficient vigor, would call them into suspicion with people whose opinions matter to them.
ReplyDeleteI don’t have a problem with people refusing to label themselves this, that, or t’other – in other words keeping open a space between what they sometimes do and how they see themselves in terms of stable identity. Our current essentialist way of construing sexual preferences has its positive side and its perils – I don’t think it’s right to force others to accept labels with which they aren’t comfortable, especially when those labels involve something as intimate as sexuality and personal identity. So I don’t care whether congressman so-and-so considers himself “gay” or “straight.” But I most certainly have a problem with men who get soused at gay bars and then head back to congress to vote against basic human rights for the very people they were just a-courting. For them, the time-honored Gospel word-whoopin’ will do: “Hypocrites and Pharisees!”
As for Capt. Fogg's point, Montaigne cites a fellow author, I believe, to the effect that "he who tells a lie is a coward to men and bold with God."
Pamela: Try to imagine what goes on in the head of somebody who has been raised to hate and then discovers that he is one of those he was raised to hate. Self-loathing and reality-denial can produce a thoroughly twisted and loathsome personality.
ReplyDeleteSome persecute other gays in the hopes that it will divert suspicion away from themselves. Others do it because it helps them deny to themselves that they are gay, even as they struggle with what they consider "sinful" urges.
I think that even among Christians, it is much rarer now to raise children to hate homosexuality, so I hope that the next generation will contain fewer of these twisted people.
Pamela: “I just don't get it. Why would they be anti-gay and anti-gay marriage if they ARE gay?”
ReplyDeleteThis would be explained by a concept in Freudian psychology known as “reaction formation,” a defense mechanism in which unacceptable emotions and impulses are disguised or masked by adopting an opposing strategy. Reaction formation depends on the hypothesis that "the ego may try to sidetrack the offending impulse by concentrating upon its opposite."
A person engaged in reaction formation tends to exaggerate their behaviors by going overboard in the opposite direction, such as a closet alcoholic who extols the virtues of abstinence, or a person who refuses to accept gay tendencies may engage in open criticism of gays (or conspicuous heterosexual affairs). Reaction formation may be conscious or subconscious. Telltale signs: Compulsive behaviors followed by strenuous denials.
Is there a name for Freud's ability to put a lab coat on the obvious and call it science? ;-)
ReplyDeleteOf course maybe it wouldn't have been so obvious without him. Even so, an experienced cop may tell you that murderers often volunteer to help in searching for their own victims so as to avert suspicion by others whether or not they're trying to sidetrack offending impulses. Many of these people really do believe in a disapproving God and are trying to bargain with him: "hey look, I know you hate this stuff and I'm trying to help you out here and not just with myself."
Captain, are you trying to tell us that all God's helpers are little devils?
ReplyDeleteWell. every philosophy conceals a philosophy as Saint Nietzsche told us.
ReplyDelete