The Boy Can't Help It

Who Senator David Vitter chooses to sleep with is between him, his wife, his call girl and his God. And I'm quite certain that if you did a "we swear we won't tell" poll of the US Senate, just as if you did the same poll with people in another position of power, say, captains of industry, the odds are that 60-70% are sleeping around. Let He without sin cast the first stone and all that.

But there are two facts at work here. One is that prostitution is against the law, in Washington as well as in Louisiana.

U.S. Senator David Vitter visited a Canal Street brothel several times beginning in the mid-1990s, paying $300 per hour for services at the bordello after he met the madam at a fishing rodeo that included prostitutes and other politicians, according to Jeanette Maier, the "Canal Street Madam" whose operation was shut down by a federal investigators in 2001.

I don't particularly believe that it ought to be against the law, but the fact remains that it is. And one would think that anyone who solemnly swears to uphold the laws of the nation would bother to follow them, though given the Republicans in this Congress I suppose I am asking way too much.

The other point is that David Vitter has made his entire political career on being a person of high moral fiber and committed to family values. He never valued families, not in any meaningful way, like by offering them better health care or more economic opportunity or a better education for their kids. He went before the voters and said "vote for me because I'm a good person and I'm not morally depraved like these sicko liberals." As much as any Republican, he went after President Clinton during the impeachment brouhaha, claiming that his moral depravity alone made him a candidate for impeachment. His campaign ads for 2004 don't go three seconds without the word "family" making an appearance. He's someone who believes stopping the right for gays to marry is the most important issue we face in America, and let he has no problem destroying his own marriage. So that is the proper context in which to view someone who is paying for sex every chance he can get, an action he would certainly call "morally depraved" if an election opponent of his was found to be engaging in it.

I will conclude with remarks which may be counter-intuitive to everything before it, yet they ring extremely true to me, and I think it's something that progressives need to understand about the Christian conservative movement (although I would say that their marginalization will continue in the wake of revelations about Vitter, Mark Foley, Ted Haggard, etc.)

...how many more examples - beyond politicians like Gingrich, Livingston, Giuliani, and Limbaugh; beyond clergy like Jim Bakker and Ted Haggard - do conservative Christians need before they wake up to the truth: that their leaders' pledges of fealty to the concept of "traditional marriage" are meaningless? And that these leaders, as a body, are worthless, only out for themselves?

The answer is: they will never "wake up." The answer is that conservative Christianity is a culture radically different from that of secular (or even religious) liberalism, and that to understand the political meaning of events like this for its members you have to understand that culture's rules. Most importantly, you must understand its rules about sin and redemption. Which are, at heart, an argument about human nature. "True social conservatives" don't reject their sinners - because we are all sinners. They call upon them to repent. Which suggests an entirely different political dynamic than the one native to the secular (or even religious) liberal mindset.

Ted Haggard, pastor of the massive New Life Church in Colorado Springs and leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, provides the best case study. If you believe, as Haggard does, as do all his followers, and their religious tradition going back to time immemorial, that Satan is real, forever laying siege to the faithful, forever providing us tests of our faith, forever reminding us of mandkind's inherently sinful nature--well, then, the kind of leader they will most respect would be the kind of person who feels that reality most intensely, and is able to communicate it most convincingly.

In fact, that kind of person may well be a gay man. He feels, and fights, the presence of Satan daily. He may even, one day, fall to His temptations. If he does, that does not mean he is a "hypocrite." It means he is human - all too human! - according to this worldview [...]

Secular (and even religious) liberals will laugh and scoff, and call the whole sordid right-wing ritual a "free pass to sin".

And this will be a reasonable conclusion. It is true that this whole worldview contains within it a profound possibility of what economists call moral hazard - a perverse incentive built into a system that hastens the possibility of bad instead of good outcomes (by way of example, conservatives identify welfare payments as moral hazard: if you pay people who do not work, you give them an incentive not to work). The cynical - I would certainly count Gingrich among them - can exploit it to aggrandize their power.

But I have to insist that this worldview is not inherently about whitewashing accountability. At its best, the theology of sin and redemption is real - for those to whom Satan is real - and a real spur to moral living, to community-building, to humility, to compassion to grace. It can be a genuine and mature worldview - one that recognizes that people are both good and evil, both autonomous and compulsive, loving and hateful.

This is something that secularists may not believe, but can readily grasp and understand. Indeed, none of us are perfect, and will succumb to selfish or base desires every now and again. Of course, most of us then don't go on to LEGISLATE desire, to deny people the opportunity to make choices. The other obvious point is that David Vitter has never felt redemption for a political enemy in his entire life. He worships at a church of Republicanism as much as at a real church. So while it's important to consider the notion of temptation and sin when considering these affairs, it's just as important to recongnize that there's a vast majority of Americans who don't have such dissonance between their actions and their advocacy.

Which is to say, Larry Flynt rules.

UPDATE: I totally agree with this and this. Prostitution is the most victimless crime there is; the only victims really seem to be the girls who are subject to more violence and exploitation by virtue of the criminal code. The fact that someone writing the laws has no compunction against using the service should be a testament to that. It's a throwback to Puritan moralism that thinks sex is icky and we should criminalize it and lock it in a closet. The problem is that David Vitter thinks the same thing.