The Republic of T.

I mentioned earlier that I’ve been doing a bit of writing about the GOP candidates for the day job. Those posts are limited to policy issues, usually economic policy. But, like I said in the posts about Newt, there’s a lot more I’d like to get into with these guys that wouldn’t be appropriate elsewhere.

Which brings me back to Rick Santorum. It’s been a while since I posted another edition in this rather long series. I have so little time for non-work-related writing these days, that I seldom write about LGBT issues. (As a result, the hate crimes project is so embarrassingly out of date, that I’ve let the hosting account lapse, and probably won’t bring it back online because at this point I’ll never get it up to date.) Sometimes I question whether I can even be called a “gay blogger,” except as a blogger who happens to be gay, but rarely ever writes about gay issues (anymore).

Alas, between commuting to work, putting in eight hours, commuting back home, having family dinner, spending time with the kids between dinner and bedtime, helping Parker with his homework, putting the kids to bed, sharing the work of keeping the house relatively clean, and then finishing up the hour’s worth of work I bring home, there are just not enough hours in the day. And I’m usually to physically and mentally exhausted to do much of anything with what’s left of the 24 hours in question.

But that’s another post for another day.

It was my work-related blogging that alerted me to a remark Santorum made, comparing gay parents to felons, which inspired me to return to this series.

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It’s rare that two very public implosions occur almost simultaneously or resonate so well with one another as the the crashing and burning of Herman Cain’s presidential campaign and Eddie Long’s marriage and ministry. It’s even rarer that two high profile “players” like Cain and Long (or Long and Cain, or even Long/Cain, if you prefer) have the bluffs called so spectacularly and fold so publicly.

For a blogger, it’s difficult to resist either story, considering “how snide and vicious” one could get “and still write nothing but the truth.” For one such as myself, who’s written about both men, it’s impossible to resist.

Some of the parallels between the two are innocuous: both are black ministers, both are from Georgia, both have amassed significant amounts of personal wealth. Other parallels are innocuous: both, if the allegations against them are true, rose to fame pretending to be something they were not, and both were publicly revealed as frauds.

Ironically, in the long run, neither may suffer much for it.

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This is rich. If you haven’t seen Atlas Shrugged: Part 1, the film that was intended to be the first in a trilogy that would bring Ayn Rand’s novel to the silver screen, because you were waiting for parts 2 and 3 so you could see it all at once… Well, don’t. Maybe.

At first, it seemed that the producer of Atlas Shrugged: Part 1 was shrugging off parts 2 and 3.

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Classic Predator

Statements to the media and details of in the lawsuits filed by the four men paint the picture a man who qualifies not only as an “emotional predator” (a term I wasn’t aware of until just now), but show several characteristics of a classic sexual predator.

Intimacy

As documented in a study done in an Irish prison, many sexual predators are frightened or extremely uncomfortable with adult intimacy. For some, this stems from being abused as a child, which leads to a distorted view of sexual intimacy. That is not to say that intimacy in this case is purely sexual in nature; rather, it includes emotional intimacy such as meaningful relationships. Sexual predators often report having few close friends or confidantes and coming from strained families where nurturing support was rare or completely absent.

Control and Power

The Irish study also dealt with the predators feelings concerning control. Many reported feeling a lack of control in their own lives due to socioeconomic or emotional factors. For sexual predators, sexual crimes are seen as a way of exerting control, resulting in pleasurable feelings of power that are less concerned with sexual gratification, and more with emotional validation. By forcing their advances on other people, they experience one area of their lives where they were the controlling factor.

Knowing Victims

A study conducted by the Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety in West Virginia reported that 88.5 percent of all studied sex offenders knew their victims prior to violating them. 48.7 percent of these victims were simple acquaintances that the sexual predators admitted to having built relationships with for the purpose of assaulting them. Typically, predators seek out women or children who are vulnerable and lacking a strong support network of family or friends. Oftentimes, they build some levels of trust or familiarities with the people before victimizing them.

Responsibility

The West Virginia study reported that over 36 percent of victims blamed their actions at least partially upon drugs while over half did the same with alcohol. This is evidence of an overall trend that points to the fact that sexual predators often do not take full, if any, responsibility for their actions. Often, they blame outside forces or the victim themselves. This tendency of blaming others frequently extends to other areas of their lives where failures at work, school and personal lives are viewed as the fault of other people and not their own.

While I haven’t found much published about his childhood, the court filings, the public statements of the four men, and some of Long’s own statements provide details that fill in the picture painted in broad broad strokes by the quote above.

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The sex scandal swirling around Eddie Long is the kind of story that the media and consumers of media (in other words, nearly everybody) tend to find irresistible. As Joshua Alston wrote in Newsweek, it’s got everything: secrets, money, sex, and religion. Plus it hits to “hot button” topic — homosexuality and race — and adds a heaping dose of politics to top it off.

But all of the above can blind us to what’s really in front of us, beyond the lights and cameras, the ink spilled and bandwidth burned covering the story. The allegations against Long — that he coerced young men over whom he had authority into sexual relationships — leaves raises more questions than answers; both concerning the specifics of the case against long, and the much larger phenomena the allegations represent.

In the case of the former, the courts will determine what truth there is in the accusations against Long. But the rest of us have to grapple with the latter.

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I suppose it’s no secret anymore. We went down to the courthouse this morning, and got a place in line.

At least 16 couples were waiting at 7:15 a.m. inside the city’s Moultrie courthouse, which houses the marriage bureau and is just blocks from the U.S. Capitol.

Sinjoyla Townsend, 41, and her partner of 12 years, Angelisa Young, 47, claimed the first spot in line just after 6 a.m.

“It’s like waking up Christmas morning,” Young said.

Washington will be the sixth place in the nation where gay marriages can take place. Because of a mandatory waiting period, however, couples won’t actually be able to marry in the District of Columbia until March 9. Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont currently issue licenses to same-sex couples.

…Terrance Heath, 41, planned to be at the courthouse with his partner, Rick Imirowicz, 43. The two have been together for 10 years and have a 7-year-old and a 2-year-old, but Heath said Wednesday feels like “a step forward.”

“My husband has always been my husband to me, but having that legal recognition, that legal protection, makes it easier to deal with any number of situations,” said Heath, a writer and blogger. “If you tell people you’re married, you don’t really have to explain much beyond that.”

The two, who live in Maryland, plan to marry on March 9, the first day possible.

The gay marriage law was introduced in the 13-member D.C. Council in October and had near-unanimous support from the beginning. The bill passed and D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty signed it in December, but because Washington is a federal district, the law had to undergo a congressional review period that expired Tuesday.

We were number 12 in line.

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It’s was 80 years ago this week that the Crash of 1929 kicked off the Great Depression.

Not quite 79 years later, the fall of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, sent the stock market into a meltdown precipitated by the crises of such Wall Street Giants as Bear Stears and AIG, among others.

Comparisons between now and then are, of course, inevitable.

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I was probably an annoying person to have around if you were watching the Sotomayor confirmation hearings. I was so frustrated listening to them that I couldn’t help … um … talking back to the television. There is, after all, only so much the mind can take before it explodes.

At least, that’s true of my mind. As for the minds of some members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, last week was like a crash course of what I’ve often referred to as "self-evasion of the mind."

It was some time before I recognized “self evasion of the mind” as the act of contorting the mind so as not to have to see or acknowledge what is obvious to anyone who simply looks.

It’s a phrase I learned from an admired college professor, and I’ve since expanded my understand of it to include contorting the mind in order that one may continue to hold conflicting views or beliefs, or engage in behavior that is diametrically opposed to your stated beliefs.

Basically, it’s amounts to working very hard at not having a clue. Or, in the case of Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, working overtime at not having a clue.

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I scoffed when Bernie Madoff,through his  lawyers, asked for a twelve year sentence in his fraud case. What some people think they can get away with pales only in comparison to what some people are actually allowed to get away with — especially when the opportunity to hold them accountable and prevent further damage from being done is consistently passed up.

With a name almost Dickensian in its suitability, Madoff is symbolic of so much and so many that bear responsibility for our economic crisis. It’s easy and tempting to accept him as a substitute for the rest, not only because of his dishonesty and his willingness to lay waste s many lives for his own personal gain, because he apparently thought he could — and should — essentially get away with it. But, as with Madoff, we have an opportunity to hold the rest of them accountable, too.

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This post at The Best Article Every Day reminded me of a meme I launched years and years ago, on USENET. (I told you it was years ago.)

Let’s say you get your hands on a brand new Time Machine. Whether it’s the old-school H.G. Wells chair model, or a tricked-out DeLorean, you’ve now got to decide what you’re going to do with your new toy. But before you run off and start messing up your life, sleeping with your grandmother, and investing in Google stock before the Internet was invented, we’ve got a few ideas for you. Here are 15 moments in time, both past and future, that you may want to just witness before you go and do what you’re inevitably going to do, and ruin everyone’s universe.

I can’t claim to have invented it, since I got it the idea from a book (and apparently plenty other people have thought of it). But I thought it might be fun to launch again. (If anybody’s out there.)

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For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.

~ Audre Lourde

The other reason I finally felt the need to speak about the collision between marriage equality and the homophobia of some African-Americans is more personal.

The gay men in Bishop Alfred Owens’ congregation who felt they “had no choice” but to participate in the degradation and denial of their own humanity are not alone. It’s a performance that takes place in some form or fashion every Sunday, in black churches (and beauty shops or barber shops, for that matter) across the country, which Michael Eric Dyson captured in his essay “The Black Church and Sexuality.”

One of the most painful scenarios of black church life is repeated Sunday after Sunday with little notice or collective outrage. A black minister will preach a sermon railing against sexual ills, especially homosexuality. At the close of the sermon, a soloist, who everybody knows is gay, will rise to perform a moving number, as the preacher extends an invitation to visitors to join the church. The soloist is,in effect, being asked to sign his theological death sentence. His presence at the end of such a sermon symbolizes a silent endorsement of the preacher’s message. Ironically, the presence of his gay christian body at the highest moment of worship also negates the preacher’s attempt to censure his presence, to erase his body, to deny his legitimacy as a child of God.

… the black church, an institution that has been at the heart of black emancipation, refuses to unlock the oppressive closet for gays and lesbians. …Black Christians, who have been despised and oppressed for much of our existence, should be wary of extending that oppression to our lesbian sisters and our gay brothers.

That performance is the price some of us pay to remain in or part of the communities we started out calling home.

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For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house…

~ Audre Lourde

That’s for Marion Barry, a number of D.C.’s black ministers, and many African-Americans who seem to need the reminder.

When the D.C. city council voted to recognize same-sex marriage, I blogged about it. I didn’t blog about the theatrics that ensued afterwards.

I knew about it. I read about it. But I didn’t comment on it for a couple of reasons, until now.

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I’m not an economist. I’ve never studied economics, beyond reading The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Economics about a year ago. I’ve read about derivatives, and had my mind blown by the concept of securitization and the idea that people not only sell debt, but chop it up into little pieces, mix those pieces up, and then resell them to other people. (And, wait a minute, debt has value?)

And, all with no regulation or oversight?

Now, after following economic news this past year, it’s like somebody pulled back the curtain and revealed the economy as little more than floating game of craps. And I find myself thinking, “You gotta be kidding me, right? This can’t really be the economy. Can it? We gotta have something else, because you know what this sounds like to me?”

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OK. I’ve been laying off any Bob Novak jokes since a brief aside before he announced that he had a brain tumor. I just can’t bring myself to beat up on anyone who’s undergoing cancer treatment.

In a piece entitled “My brain tumor brings out the best in people” posted on the Chicago Sun-Times’ Web site, Novak details his life since his diagnosis, including losing his way to his longtime office and having seizures.

“I have lost not only left peripheral vision but nearly all my left vision, probably permanently,” Novak wrote.

…In Saturday’s column, Novak wrote that he underwent a four-hour surgery Aug. 15 at Duke University Medical Center during which a 3-by-1 1/2-inch tumor was removed. Dr. Allan H. Friedman, the chief of neurosurgery at the hospital who operated on Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s brain tumor this summer, performed the surgery.

That’s doubly true when it looks like he’s fighting a losing battle. I draw the line at — no, well before — mocking or celebrating anyone’s illness and/or death.

But I gotta admit, stuff like this makes it awfuly hard.

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Slips up on you, actually, to amend the lyrics from the popular song from which I borrowed this title. I had an anniversary last month that I didn’t blog much about at the time, in part because I was so busy living my life that it slipped up on me, and I didn’t think of it until a few days before the actual date. I thought about it again last night, though, when I read about [From Kevin’s anniversary.

20 years ago today…

… I walked into an alcohol & drug in-patient rehab center a cocaine/meth addict unable to stop on my own.

By the grace of God as I understand Him and the invaluable help of a 12-step program I have been clean ever since.

My gratitude is immeasurable.

I left the following comment on that post.

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It just goes to show you can’t necessarily trust a pretty face.

I wasn’t going to say anything about this.

John Edwards has admitted to having an affair with filmmaker Rielle Hunter, according to ABC News.

In an interview with Bob Woodruff that will air tonight on “Nightline,” Edwards reportedly says that he did not love Hunter and also claims that he did not father her infant daughter Frances, although he has not taken a paternity test.

Edwards reportedly tells Woodruff that he can’t be the baby’s father due to the timing of her birth last February.

ABC reports that Hunter was hired by Edwards’ presidential campaign to produce documentaries for his web site, and that Hunter traveled with Edwards to locations in the U.S. and Africa. According to ABC, his political action committee paid her $114,000 for her services.

Edwards reportedly tells Woodruff in the interview that his wife of 31 years, Elizabeth, who gave birth to four children with the former Senator, found out about the affair in 2006. Elizabeth is currently suffering from incurable cancer, but Edwards reportedly told Woodruff that her cancer was in remission when the affair began.

It burns me up that now we’ll waste at least a couple of news cycles talking about it while people dying in Iraq and losing their homes back in the U.S., but there’s something that burns me upmore

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