"An appeals court has ruled that anyone involved in an extramarital affair can be prosecuted for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony punishable by up to life in prison."Or so says the Eagle Forum run by Rod Parsley, President and Founder of World Harvest Church in Ohio. Actually it's more likely that Judge William Murphy of the Michigan Court of Appeals was indulging in a bit of reductio ad absurdem in order to mock the obvious venality of the prosecution -- and in this case, the absurdity of the Michigan law is apparent without much reduction.
It's all about one Lloyd Waltonen who gave a cocktail waitress prescription drugs in exchange for sex and was charged with criminal sexual conduct, a felony, although the sex was consensual.
Of course those charges were dismissed, but on appeal The Michigan Attorney General, Mike Cox (I'm not making that up) in an effort to ruin Waltonen's life in any way he could, dredged up some statute stating that any sexual activity committed during the same time as a felony constitutes criminal sexual conduct. Since adultery is a felony in Michigan, (I'm not making this up) he technically could get life in prison for consensual sex, although that's never happened and never likely will unless of course we allow demented parasitic vermin like Parsley to get involved with the judicial process. (More on that later)
So what was apparently a disgusted judge trying to make a fool of the hypocritical and hyperventilating Mr. Cox, (who as you would expect of a moralizing Republican, has admitted to an adulterous and hence felonious relationship himself,) might as well have a target tattooed on his forehead.
All of this staged display of irony of course, has escaped not only the resident and hairy-palmed hand of God at The Center For Moral Clarity, the World Harvest Church and the Eagle Forum, but Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell's nominee for the Alaska Judiciary Council, Don Haase of Valdez. Haase, (he pronounces it Haze, but we won't go there this time) loves the idea of arresting people for obeying his religious laws, and why, you might ask? Premarital sex should be outlawed because it could "cause violence" and "spread disease," he told the Senate Judiciary Committee. To his credit, he's either not quite as crazy as Parsley or perhaps less credit worthy, he's just trying to sound sane long enough to be confirmed, because while he doesn't claim that adultery or pre-marital sex should be a felony, he thinks it should be a crime.
Haase of course is a past president of Eagle Forum Alaska, a blog that advocates for what it calls conservative principles much like those of Medieval Europe. So we've come as close to full circle as we can while talking about idiots and madmen with no regard for freedom or the US constitution. We've come full circle from a secular liberal democracy and the counsel of intelligent and reasonable men as well.
I wonder how long it will be until each of these holier-than-thou gentlemen will become embroiled in the next Republican sex scandal? After all, Jesus Himself said "Let he among you who is without sin cast the first stone..."
ReplyDeleteThere seem to be an awful lot of unholy stone throwers and I don't think Christianity, or at least the teachings of Jesus have made much of an impression on them for all their proud and angry strutting.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, I have no problems with religions setting up rules for their members, as long as one can choose not to be a member.
I'd better change my moniker back to Truth 101. Those bastards would be on the lookout for Morally Depraved Liberal.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Ron Parsley has ever invited Newt Gingrich to speak at an Eagle Forum gathering.
ReplyDeleteWell, there goes the theory of higher education making for a better (and brighter) society.
ReplyDeleteParnell has a BBA and a law degree. Cox has a law degree, obviously, and adding more irony to the fire, was instrumental in stonewalling the Detroit Mayor's Mansion Party case (remember the Kwami Kilpatrick party where a stripper was assaulted and shortly afterward a young woman was murdered?). Parsley has a BA in ministry, no surprise there, and a couple of toilet paper honorary doctorates, but he's obviously literate and intelligent enough to get through school. Haase is a mechanical designer (though how this qualifies him for his new role is a mystery, well not quite). And Palin herself has some kind of communications degree (back to the ironic theme).
How did this melange get started? Obviously higher education isn't the answer. All of these people have had more years of formal education than most of the founding fathers—and certainly far more than Franklin and Washington, who were self-taught.
Why the backlash politics? What are these people trying to achieve? Parnell, I understand. He's a careerist and former Sunoco flack. But guys like Haase are genuine. So was Palin in the beginning.
Somehow American politics has to move away from polemics and toward a shared political currency. The future depends on it...
I suspect that some of our ironically titled institutions of higher learning aren't. People seem to have degrees in all sorts of vague things that don't actually relate to higher learning unless office management and other sorts of job training are the new equivalent of an education. After all, reading political philosophy is elitist and we need more common folk to run things, like Chairman Mao said.
ReplyDeleteI mean all you really need is the proper class background, right?
(Laughing!) Yes. Well, it would help. Like being born attractive...!
ReplyDeleteThis is not the first time the name Michael Cox has appeared in the pages of the Swash Zone. I mentioned Cox sometime back in October as the boss of one Assistant AG Andrew Shirvell who had harassed a gay student at the University of Michigan. What Shirvell did: Superimposed Nazi swastikas over the student’s photograph, visited the student’s house at 1:30 AM, and smeared the student’s parents and friends.
ReplyDeleteWhat we call defamation, harassment, intimidation, and stalking, the Cox sucker defended as legitimate forms of free speech. Here is Anderson Cooper’s interview with Cox over that incident.
And here is what the Octopus predicted back in October:
“The repeal of Roe v. Wade will mean victims of rape and incest will be forced to bear the children of sexual predators;
If a woman has a naturally spontaneous miscarriage, she will be automatically suspected of murdering the fetus;
Women with expired or anencephalic fetuses will be forced carry them to full term, thus endangering their own lives;
Victims of domestic violence will not be able to divorce their tormenters”
Now that the Bagheads have won state legislatures, this is the kind of sick, fascist oppression they are trying to impose on the public.
I would think stoning or caning, (or both), would be the appropriate punishment.
ReplyDeleteJust to put it on record, I wandered over to the Eagle Forum, and pointed out some historical and legal inaccuracies in his viewpoint (including the fact that he doesn't seem to understand the concept of "irony").
ReplyDeleteAt this point, call it 18 hours later? Nothing. I might as well have written nothing. Since that's what has appeared.
They don't like the dissenting viewpoints around those parts...
That's funny, they didn't publish my comment either and all I said was that Michigan was not actually prosecuting adultery as a felony -- which they are not. I did get a reply denying that Parsley has "anything to do" with Eagle Forum. I answered that by that measure Beck has nothing to do with Fox.
ReplyDeleteBut you can't win with these people. They speak from faith, not from reason.