From Lukens to Souder: the conservative sexual revolution
The Washington Post reported this morning the death of former U.S. Rep. Donald “Buz” Lukens from Ohio. You probably don’t remember him.
But back in the late 80s, he was convicted of paying a 16-year-old girl to have sex with him.
First elected in 1967, Lukens was a conservative’s conservative, a staunch supporter of Barry Goldwater and an ally of Ronald Reagan.
His career, along with the recent downfall of Indiana Rep. Mark Souder, serve as bookmarks to the fundamentalist right and its thorny entanglements with the sexual revolution.
Souder confessed to having an affair with a female staff aide — a woman with whom he made a video encouraging abstinence. He resigned earlier this month.
Obviously, liberals and moderates have their sex scandals, too. Bill Clinton and Eliot Spitzer both saw their careers crippled by dalliances.
But conservatives have placed the politics of human sexuality squarely at the center of their agenda.
They have advocated for a “traditional” definition of marriage, opposed expanding marriage and other rights to benefit gays and lesbians, and sought to limit access to legal abortions.
Critics insist that all this amounts to simple hypocrisy. From Mark Sanford to Larry Craig to Ted Haggard, conservative activists and lawmakers proclaim the true path while living in the shadows.
But this goes beyond hypocrisy. The right has long acknowledged that humans are fallible, flawed — and in the eyes of many Christians, fallen.
The real sin in their eyes isn’t the transgression.
The real sin is arguing that the old system of morality doesn’t make sense any more, that those rules no longer fit with the way that we live our lives.
Under the new rules — espoused, according to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, by ‘gay and secular fascists’ — men and women can marry who they want, regardless of gender.
They can make a wide range of choices about their sexuality; and yes, when an accidental or unwanted pregnancy results, they can abort the fetus.
Marriage, under the new paradigm, isn’t a sacred bond. It is a flexible contract, a product of the fickle human heart, and often ends in divorce or dissolution.
Often, according to this modernist view, sin itself isn’t sin. It’s a lifestyle choice. Or genetics. Or even love.
This is what social conservatives are fighting against. Here’s what former Rep. Souder had to say.
“The ideas we advocate are still just and right. America will survive and thrive when anchored in those values. Human beings like me will fail. But our cause is greater than individuals. It is based on eternal truths.”
But hypocrisy or no, conservatives are clearly having a tough time modeling the behavior that they claim to espouse, and showing that it produces better, happier and more moral results.
Gingrich himself has been married three times — his last marriage disintegrating after he, too, had an affair with a staff member. Hardly a poster boy for traditional matrimony.
What seems clear is that the conservative movement will continue to live with this disconnect, this fugue between its principles and its practices. It’s part of the DNA of the movement.
The right will continue to fight for a set of traditionalist rules and principles that they know many of their own most passionate leaders will fail to uphold.
So what’s your conclusion, Brian?
Is it better to hold the standard high, which will lead to men and women falling short …
Or, lower the standard to meet the bassist of human activity?
I’m not sure Brian is trying to reach a conclusion, but here’s my question.
Shouldn’t the conservative position be that all adults capable of making their own choices and not hurting anyone else be allowed to do as they please in regard to love and sex as long as everything is consensual?
Or are we in a position where the conservative position is not dictated by political views but rather by religious views?
The question I have Brian is why do you assume that these cries for so-called traditional family values are anything more than electioneering and hate-mongering?
It seems to me that allowing others the right to lead their own lives according to their own conscious is scary for those who have shown again and again they have no conscious.
The conservative right’s mantras like “Drill baby, drill,” War in Iraq! and Deregulate the Banks! have driven us the brink of bankruptcy, have led to outrageous xenophobia that pits neighbor against neighbor, and has led to such nastiness as the death penalty for gay and lesbian people in Africa.
It’s time that media stop bowing to the increasingly fascist, tax and spend, spend, spend, right wing, corporate liars.
Stop treating them like they are some kind of alternative view – they are the same view that spent that last 40 years in power.
Look where that has gotten us.
Remember the more than 5,000 dead in Afghanistan and Iraq! They are responsible. Hold them to account.
“all adults capable of making their own choices and not hurting anyone else be allowed to do as they please in regard to love and sex as long as everything is consensual?”
Is this the progressive / liberal position?
JDM-
I’ve never met the bassist of human activity, but I knew these two jazz singers in San Francisco…
Digression aside, I’m wondering what you saw in Brian’s post that struck you as the basest human activity?
Strong stuff in a debate over marriage, divorce, abortion and infidelity.
Hitler, Pol Pot and forcing children to become murdering soldiers in the micro wars over blood diamonds in Africa – I think – qualify as good examples of the base, the worst of human behavior.
Marrying someone you love, divorcing that person, cheating on that person – I think we can agree that these are very different rungs on the hierarchical ladder of “morality.”
-Jonathan, NCPR
JDM –
I came across a quote over the weekend from Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somalia woman who has engaged traditional Islam in heated, on-going debate. (Her new book is called “Nomad”.)
She writes, “I have compared the infidels’ morals to those that you taught us, and I must report that they have, in practice, a better outcome for humans than the morals of your forefathers.”
A similar question can be posed to traditionalists in the Christian community. Are your ideas producing better outcomes?
Obviously, if you believe that legal abortion is murder and that’s the one issue you concern yourself with, then this discussion is sort of a non-starter.
But across a wider array of human experience — personal expression, civil liberties, racial equality, environmental awareness, economic justice, the protection of children and the poor, opposition to war — I think the right has a very mixed moral track record.
Furthermore, a number of traditionalist institutions — the Roman Catholic church and the Boy Scouts, to name two — have been wrestling with problems of systemic moral failure.
Within these institutions, the divide between human behavior and principles appears to have been so vast that it created a culture of secrecy and deception.
Again, I don’t view this as a$ settled (or even resolvable) question, that the left is more or less moral than the right.
But I think the notion that Souder advances in his mea culpa — that conservatives are guided by the one set of principles that can make America prosper — is pretty tough to swallow at this point.
–Brian, NCPR
JDM asks:
“all adults capable of making their own choices and not hurting anyone else be allowed to do as they please in regard to love and sex as long as everything is consensual? Is this the progressive / liberal position?”
No, almost by definition, this is the libertarian position.
Dale Hobson
NCPR Online
Brian:
Well written, and I understand your argument.
It’s hard to group a set of behaviors / mis-behaviors into a group that you identify as “the right”, because that group has no boundaries. You are free to include in it things you like or dislike as you wish, and people as you wish, for the purposes of furthering your discussion.
An artificial grouping of similar circumstances could just as easily be called “the left” or “progressive” or “liberal”.
What are the standards we want to hold ourselves to? I asked khl if it was offering “no one gets hurt” as the standard.
That was why I was asking you about the same point. I gather from your response above that you are more getting at a grouping of people and beliefs who claim to hold a certain set of standards, but don’t live up to them.
Well, join the human race.
Do we throw out the standards? Lower the standards? Re-write the standards? just because people fail.
I suppose that anyone who holds themselves to the standard of “just so long as no one is hurt” will themselves end up hurting someone during their life.
Brian said,
“The right will continue to fight for a set of traditionalist rules and principles that they know many of their own most passionate leaders will fail to uphold.”
Yes. This is very true.
I think the point is that you don’t hold others to standards you can’t adhere to yourself, and then pretend you have the moral high ground. You know…have three failed marriages, and espouse the Defense of Marriage Act to “protect” us straights from same-sex marriage, or do abtinence videos with a staffer you’re having an affair with.
I don’t believe those are examples of either a liberal or conservative ideology.
They’re examples of moral failure and hypocrisy, that has no party affiliation.
Our actions,our joy and how we lead life itself speak louder than all of our ideals. I know many people who were brought up in the same faith tradition that I was and with much stricter parents, but then saw thier parents divorce or suffered through adultery, very few of those friends remained in that tradition as adults. Ideals don’t mean very much without them being in our heart.
As Thomas Kempis said in the Imitation of Christ written in the 15th century; “What good does it do you to be able to give a learned discourse on the Trinity, while you are without humility and thus displeasing to the Trinity? Esoteric words neither make us holy nor righteous;”
If you want to promote something you really should try to live it and find out how hard it can really be.
However, our society IS worse of in many ways because of the problems we have with marriage, with promiscuity, out of wedlock childbirth, violence, drug use etc. Just because a person does not want to ignore those things does not make that person a moralizer in my opinion.
Senator Moynahan long ago predicted the many problems we would face due to family breakdown.
Hmm, an old problem and not an easy one to find an answer to. For me, I believe in the traditional family, I believe in the contract of marriage being sacred. I personally have been wildly disappointed when family members took the vow as no more that a brief thing, to be discarded at the first sign of difficulty. I have my limits to what constitutes a marriage and what constitutes a civil union, but I’m not going to war over that.
What bothers me and apparently a lot of other people is the hypocrisy of the so called “right”. I have never been in a position of power or influence where I thought I was untouchable, so I really can;t understand why anyone would think being in the public eye would somehow prevent them from being found out. I share the disgust at those who say one thing and do another. And lets face it- things we do at 26 or even 30 aren’t the things we expect of sober minded individuals in positions of authority at 45 or 55.
I would like people to try to be honest and say what the mean and think. When they fail, if they’ve made their lives a hypocritical show, hang ’em high. That’s why I can admire certain failed politicians intellect, but would never vote for them- Newt for instance.
One thing nobody can deny: These philanderers are HOTTIES!
Bret part of it is the influence in the South in particular of the ‘once saved always saved’ theology. Walk the aisle and no matter what you do, what you say you have the favor of God as long as YOU think you have faith; so it is hard in that circumstance for some of these guys to get it in that they don’t even believe in confession, once you make the sinners prayer; all past and future sins are forever forgiven without confession.
I do feel kind of sorry for some of them, not all of them. The guy from Indiana seems kind of like a sorry individual to me, at least he resigned.
Mervel, I was a Southern Baptist at one point and was raised New England Baptist. “Once saved, forever saved” is a crock. Anyone who truly believes in redemption, the religious kind or the secular kind, is lying to themselves if they think they can do all sorts of nasty things and still be “clean”. That just doesn’t make anything like sense.
Hang ’em high!
Hahah yes hang em high!
The hard part is that some of these “moral” issues really are important for our society and need to be discussed. But if we say well if you even discuss divorce or adultery or even say that you think it is good for a 15 year old to not have sex (abstinence), then you better be totally without spot or blemish yourself. If that were the case it seems like no one will ever talk about these important issues if we hold that standard.
I agree with Mervel. If someone says no one whose record isn’t “blemish” free can offer an opinion, I’d say that’s garbage. People learn through experience. A lot of experience comes from mistakes. Someone can say to a kid, “Stay away from drugs, they’re bad for you.” It has a lot more weight coming from a reformed druggie that can show and tell WHY they are bad for you first hand.
I don’t know about everyone else, but what really gets to me is the guy that gets caught and then gets caught again and again and every time he denies it or obfuscates or pushes the blame off to something else. That’s just ridiculous.
No doubt that some of these guys simply have no shame, they are sorry they got caught but that is about it, they just go on and do it again and again because of their ego or whatever. It is just a different mentality, I mean lets say I was a social conservative pol, and I got caught in an affair or worse the last thing I would be thinking was to hold a press conference to “explain” things or to try to minimize or deny what I did, I would probably slink out of town in the dark to some cabin somewhere never to be heard from again.
Now you take a dude like Gov. Edwin Edwards, I remember he said that the only way he would get voted out of office over a scandal would be if he got caught in bead with a dead women or a live boy. Of course he did not promote himself as a family values kind of guy.
One of the few things you can say for the GOP is that 99.9% of the time when one of theirs gets caught doing something wrong, he’s toast. The GOP eats it’s own. The other guys? Clinton, Kennedy. Those are the 2 most famous “I did it and I got away with it and you’re dreaming if you think I’m leaving.”
Whether or not many people equate “having sex” with “having Intercourse”, Clinton inteded to deceive with that line. Having said that, I’d never condemn anyone for a human failing; what I detest is the hypocrisy.
As Larry Craig might say, “That’s my stance.”
last i checked mark sanford is still in office.
Yeah, hermit.
And Newt is touted as a presidential candidate.
also let’s not forget reagan and iran-contra, or bush/rove in the attorney scandal or the plame scandal…. yep, 99.9% of the time when a republican does something wrong s/he is toast!
and i should also add that yes there are lots of times when republicans get caught that they really are toast — as it goes for democrats too! the point is that i think republican claims to the contrary are yet another excellent example of the conservative persecution complex.
Comon guys, I was referring to “wrong” as is sexually wrong. In that sense 99.9% of time they are toast.
To this day I stand in amazement that Spitzer resigned. Never thought it would happen.
ok bret let’s ask david vitter how things are working out for him! or how about john ensign!
Fine HT, you’re right, I’m wrong. In fact you’re always right and I’m always wrong. That better?
I wouldn’t vote for either of them and I darn sure wouldn’t vote for a Democrat that did that stuff either. That didn’t keep people from voting for that rapist Bill Clinton or murdering Ted Kennedy, now did it? And as long as we’re playing “gotcha”, how about Clinton trading military secrets to China for campaign donations, Al Gore keeping mum about Russian sub sales to no-no countries and John Kerry serving his wife with divorce papers while she was in an insane asylum. How about Barbara Boxer upping the minimum wage everywhere except in American Samoa where her husbands company just happens to be the largest employer? Explain the gunshot wound in the back of Ron Browns head, convenient since he was becoming a major embarrassment, eh? Of course Clinton upping the taxes on Social Security recipients was real nice too and do we even need to mention John Edwards?
You wanna play the wild accusation game then gird yer loins.
uh no bret i don’t want to play the wild accusation game, just to point out that your claim about what happens 99.9% of the time with republicans is ridiculous. it’s just part of your conservative persecution complex.
Yeah but Souder, I mean he was toast because he was not a very cool guy. Clinton was a cool guy, is a cool guy for his age. I just wish one of these guys would stand up and say hell yes I like women and plenty of them and that’s who I am.
I think sexual politics are like our weight problems. What I mean is that we are heavier than ever in the US yet we obsess about our weight more than ever, it is bizarre. So we are cheating and running around like crazy and yet we are getting all upset when people get caught doing it.
If you want to consider a promiscuous “dog” look no farther than old Strom Thurmond, it didn’t hurt him any and everyone knew about it, but those were different times. There is an old joke about what they had to do to his coffin to close it that I can’t really repeat here.
HT- I had the qualifier of 99.9% but that’s not good enough for you. There is the odd duck that somehow gets away with something ugly on the right, but usually between the press, public opinion and gotcha politics he’s toast. The same is not true on the left. You can start with Barney frank and continue on through Dennis Kucinich and find lots of example where they just plain get a pass.
It really easy to point the finger of blame when you never take a stand on anything. That’s the leftist way.
look bret, i personally think you’re being horribly biased about all this — all those republicans are just “odd ducks,” but not on the dem side? — but i suppose it might be more productive just to say how hopeless and inane these types of disputes are. i think it’s impossible to talk about what happens on the two sides in any kind of remotely rigorous quantitative way, so we’re left to just throw anecdotes back and forth. and i don’t mean to necessarily say that there’s therefore no point in having the discussion in the first place, but it does place a real limit on how far you can get (or in other words, anecdotes aren’t valueless but they are very low-value).
this is the problem with misplaced conservative aggrievement in general: it’s all based on anecdotes of various mistreatment. and we live in a complicated enough world that once the meme of anti-conservative bias has been established, there will always be plenty of fresh anecdotes coming along to keep the fire burning. but meanwhile conservatives ignore or fail to grasp all the ways in which libs/progressives are also mistreated. i happen to think that both sides get screwed equally! (though often in different ways, which again makes it harder for one side to pick up on how the other in mistreated.)
as far as sex scandals go, i do think there’s some truth to the notion that conservatives get held to a higher standard, but i think that’s only because conservatives hold themselves to a higher standard by publicly moralizing on the issue. so while bret is somehow amazed that spitzer was brought down by his dalliances, i mean, of course he was! it’s all about the hypocrisy! to our credit, progressives are far less disposed towards moralizing about sexuality, and hence there’s far less hypocrisy on our side. spitzer really is the exception that proves the rule.
I agree with the premise that this type of thing is hard to discuss. I would also agree conservatives at least try to hold themselves to a higher standard. However, I would take issue that “…progressives are far less disposed towards moralizing about sexuality ” There seems to be plenty to go around when it’s some clown on the other side screwing around!
So there’s far less hypocrisy on the left? Really? I think you’d be hard pressed to prove anything approaching “far less”.
bret,
fair enough, neither of us is going to prove anything about any of this. but the way you’ve worded your comment makes it sound like you think i claimed that progressives are far less disposed towards sex scandals (which i think is utterly false), when in fact i said something very different, that progressives are less disposed towards moralizing about sex. i don’t see how any sane person could dispute that, though the in box is always full of surprises!
Okay, that’s understandable. I apologize if I came across that way. I would agree that progressives are less prone to moralize about their own lives, but that doesn’t seem to stop them from moralizing about others! And I really mean it when I say that it’s easy to deflect blame when you never take a stand on anything. The progressives as a group are extremely good at this. The right tends to take a stand that infidelity (for example) is wrong. The left takes the stand that judging someone for their infidelity is wrong. How do you fight that?! No matter how you try and defend the position you’re done before you start because judging someone else is always a poorer position to debate from, unless you’re without sin and Jesus isn’t in this debate.
Hypocrisy is a common element in our elected officials on both sides. I find it disgusting. The only difference seems to be in who the press seems to focus on. For example, if Newt G. had told a group of Protestant clergy that he wanted them to argue for a political issue from the pulpit he’d be roasted on a spit. Nancy Pelosi does it and absolutely NOTHING is said. If Bush had offered a job to a politician in exchange for dropping out of a race he’d have been impeached. Obama isn’t even questioned about it. Bush caught heck for flying over NO after Katrina and not landing. Obama is shooting hoops and taking vacation during the largest environmental disaster to hit the country and all is well.
You can call it conservative victimology, I call it a double standard.
What is moralizing? Are we talking style or substance? Is it moralizing to even speak about these topics and how they impact our country or is that in itself being judgmental?
I think both parties do this on different topics, don’t smoke, don’t do illegal drugs, if you have sex with someone you don’t know where a condom, don’t drive drunk, don’t eat unhealthy food, don’t eat sugar, don’t gamble, don’t have sex with people you don’t know period, don’t drink too much or at all, don’t use too many carbons, don’t drive big cars, don’t eat too little, exercise more, don’t eat too much meat, don’t grill meat, and on and on and on…..