Talking about Relationships

The cover story in yesterday's AM New York was titled "Oh Boy!" and reports on a Florida Baptist minister, George Alan Rekers, an outspoken anti-gay activist who wants to "cure" homosexuals. Well, it seems, Rekers "solicited a 20-year old male hooker online from the website....then reportedly took his escort for a 10-day romp through Europe last month." Rekers now joins a fairly long and well-known list including former Florida Representative Mark Foley, Idaho's Senator Larry Craig, Virginia Representative Ed Schrock, evangelical preacher Ted Haggard, and former Florida Representative Bob Allen. All of these men were outspoken anti-gay activists who built their reputations on opposition to gay rights. Makes you wonder about hypocrites like these. Makes you wonder about people who hate and who are willing to go to great lengths to spread their particular brand of bigotry. Makes you wonder about their relational lives in general and what kind of hatred they're passing on to their children. One good thing to emerge from this is that people like this will have little further influence and our world will be a little better place.

It Makes You Wonder

Everyone has by now heard of Nevada Senator John Ensign’s admission that he had an affair with a campaign staffer, Cynthia Hampton, whose salary as a staffer doubled and whose 19 year-old son was put on the payroll when the affair began. Not unrelated to this is Ensign’s attack on same-sex marriage and his defense of the Federal Marriage Amendment. It makes you wonder if there’s not some connection between those with relationship “problems” and their condemnation of the relationships of others, especially those relationships that differ from what they want people to think they have or believe in.
Long married, Idaho Senator Larry Craig, who was caught not so long ago for solicitation in a men’s airport bathroom (he pleaded guilty to “disorderly conduct”), was also an outspoken critic of same-sex marriage and of general civil rights for gay men and lesbians. It makes you wonder.
And of course we all remember the case of Jimmy Swaggart, media minister and outspoken critic of fellow media minister, Jim Bakker, for his indiscretions, and who spoke long and loud against civil rights for gay men and lesbians, was caught with prostitutes more than once—even after his tearful speech of apology: “I have sinned against you, my Lord, and I would ask that your precious blood would wash and cleanse every stain until it is in the seas of God’s forgiveness.” WOW! It makes you wonder.
As a working hypothesis, I wonder if this would work: Those with relationship dissonance are more critical of the relationships of others (especially relationships that are different from their own) than are those without relationship dissonance, with the degree of dissonance experienced being positively correlated with the quantity and forcefulness of their criticism. Alternatively, one might hypothesize that relationship satisfaction and the criticism of others’ relationships (that is, the degree of dissatisfaction with the relationships of others) would be negatively correlated; the more satisfied one is in one’s own relationship, the less critical that person is likely to be toward the alternative relationships of others.
Yes, it makes you wonder. Why are people like Ensign, Craig, Swaggart—and these are just three (who are familiar to us because they made the front pages) out of a likely host of others—so against the granting of civil rights for gay men and lesbians? What are they trying to protect?

Larry Craig's Speech

Senator Larry Craig’s speech—of apology? of explanation? of excuse?—is a useful one for analyzing special occasion speaking. It’s in fact as good an example of crap as I’ve seen. It’s crap, in the sense that Neil Postman used the term in his Teaching as a Subversive Activity—a book that totally changed me as a teacher—and we, as educators, need to be crap detectors and call this speech what it is.
Craig said he did nothing wrong at the airport. If what he did was flirt or indicate his interest in another adult—in this case male—then he did in fact nothing wrong to my mind. After all, any reasonable and intelligent adult, upon being propositioned—if this was in fact what happened—would simply say “Thank you, but no thanks; I’m flattered, but I’m not interested.” Admittedly, the context for this “proposition” was not ideal but it seems no cause for alarm; after all, this was all probably done in private and without imposing on the sensibilities of any one else.
So, then, why is the speech crap? It’s crap because Craig is trying to cover up his stupidity, his poor judgment, and his real self. It assumes the listener is an idiot. Saying that he only confessed because he was being harassed by the Idaho Statement seems absurd. Craig is no teenager; he’s a person who has been a member of the power-elite for years (10 years in the House and 6 in the Senate). I seriously doubt that he would be so upset and so stupid as to admit he did something he didn’t.
Further, by repeatedly attesting to his heterosexuality—amid increasingly convincing evidence to the contrary--he shows himself to be a man who either doesn’t know himself or is trying to fool his “wife, family, friends, staff and Idaho.”
Perhaps most important is that this man—this man who is now convincingly (it seems to me) accused of homosexual solicitation (and this is not the only accusation; there have been others)—has voted to prohibit gay marriage and against including attacks on gay people under the definition of hate crimes. Is this the kind of man Idahoans want representing them? I’m sure not. Nor do I believe that his wife, Suzanne, who is currently standing dutifully by the Senator, doesn’t know what is going on and so, in my mind, is complicit in this crap business.
Craig is a perfect example of the usefulness of outing. Now that he’s been outed, he’s no longer in a position to continue attacking gay rights, unless, of course, people are still willing to listen to him.
Yes, viewing the public speaking critic as crap detector seems a useful perspective, especially in 2007.