Then there was the tawdry affair the memory of which has largely disappeared down the fast receding black hole of the Bush-Cheney administration. The National Mall in DC is the nation's front yard. For decades the Parks Service and Congress has worked to protect the traditional image of the field lined by one of the last stands of elms kept going by periodic treatments -- stretching from the Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol. Events were limited to those political or celebrations of national holidays, and the Smithsonian Folk Life Fair.
But as the privatization that the supposed traditionalists prefer crept in the mall become the venue for less noble fare. In 2003 the National Football league, ABC and assorted sponsors were allowed to hold a big promotion of the upcoming season on the no longer sacred ground. During this august actually it was September -- occasion the Republican friendly Britney Spears did a semi-strip tease with men in football uniforms helping her undress.
President (war-on-terror) Bush took some time off from hunting Bin Laden to, via giant video screen, proclaim that football "celebrates the values that make our country so strong." To which Washington Post TV critic tom Shales responded "Like what, violence and greed?" The President of the United States of America and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces then repeated the corporate slogan, "Are you ready for some football?" Of course the outraged pundits at FoxNews ardently protested this travesty upon traditional American values. Just kidding.
Currently two thirds of the country does not consider nonadulterous nonmarital sex immoral, a far higher level of acceptance than in the Eisenhower era. What is even more interesting is that studies indicate that 95% of American engage in nonmarital sex. Which means that the great majority of theocons who think marriage outside God's sacred institution is a no-no at least once say yes-yes. This may help explain the Coulter phenomenon. The sex symbol of the right is about half a century old. According to the rules of the right she should be married with children. Sans the marriage she should be chaste over the long decades. Like that's going to happen. On Rivera Live Coulter proclaimed "Let's say I go out every night. I meet a guy and have sex with him. Good for me. I'm not married." In other words Ms Coulter is OK and she thinks God is OK -- with fequent pickup sex, apparently in a nonmonogamous context, as long as it does involve someone breaking wedding vows. As far as is known Ms Coulter has had sexual relationships with a number of men, presumably and hopefully using contraceptives. Coulter is also well known for dressing and posing for publicity photos in ways that complement her sex appeal, and she has become a sex symbol to many theocon males, and a heroine to many theocon females.
The problem with Coulter is not that she appears to be sexually active outside marriage, yadda, yadda. More power to her. Nor is she being a blatant hypocrite. She is being fairly open about the matter, as far as I know she does not promote adult chastity, and she could make the argument that nonmarital sex is not necessarily anti-Biblical. The problems begin with that she is playing a bit of a cynical game, in that she does not mention, much less argue, for her views and practices on nonmarital sex in front of conservative audiences. Perhaps she merely prefers not to be rude, but this practice served to protect her brand. But the really big issue is how the right not only does not bring up the awkward subject when she appears before them, or challenge her to either become chaste or married, but not blithely ignores her obviously sexually liberated habits and opinion, actually embraces her as one of theirs even though she is in flaming violation of a core theocon principle. Such hypocrisy shows that the right will dump honor and all that stuff at the drop of a hat when it is convenient, and in doing so ensures that the rest of the population does not take them seriously when they proclaim principle and virtue.
Theocon problems with sex don't stop with Coulter. Rates of abortion, teen pregnancy and gonorrhea and syphilis infections tend to be high on the most theoconservative regions of the USA, and this country performs worse often spectacularly worse -- in these measures of sexual dysfunction that do the more secular and progressive 1st world democracies (http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP07398441_c.pdf and http://www.newsweek.com/id/211746). The failure of the conservative way of sex is generally attributed to the right's emphasis on unrealistic abstinence only sex education and policies that backfire because young conservatives haven't been taught to use protection often enough (http://www.gregspaul.webs.com/pediatrics.pdf and click here=printer).
Then there is divorce and adultery. The swinging sixties saw the beginning of the divorce revolution. Theocons imply that the divorce boom is yet another dark side of the secular self-absorption of the counterculture me-generation, but the baby boomers were too young to be married in large numbers at the time. It was the more traditionalist and church going Greatest Generation that started doing the splits big time. In the late sixties and seventies a main theme of horrified theocons was how divorce is patently unBiblical and unGodly and how Americans ought to knock it off. But this became awkward when Reagan became the flag bearer for the conservative movement. The right would go on to cheerfully make him the first divorcee president. Meanwhile, Newt Gingerich became the firebrand of the right. Never mind that he had dumped his first wife in favor of he woman he was having an affair with. When he performed exactly the same stunt with wife number two and about the same time lost Congress back to the Dems Newt got in hot water with the right. He has been edging his own way back, even contemplating a run for president, his books jacket covers graced with a picture of himself and his lovely wife #3.
If you are thinking that the idea of a divorcee with the woman he shacked up with running for the first family post under the aegis of the Republican is hardly plausible, then may I show you McCain and wife, the Repubs who were aspiring to occupy the White House in the 2008 campaign. Actually, I understand that Mrs. McCain was not enthusiastic about the effort, perhaps she understood the incongruity. It's an amazing thing, had the Repubs won, then
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
would currently be occupied by a couple of adulterers. And don't think for a minute that conservatives would be wringing their principled hands over what they had done, they would instead be denouncing those who dared mention this conflict of family values as an exemplar of right wing hypocrisy as an unwarranted assault on the personal lives of the first couple. That's what conserves do when their inability to stick to their own honor codes is exposed, they lash out in cynical self defense. That's what happened when druggie hating Limbaugh was expoxed as a drug addict. There is nothing in terms of objective self examination by the right in which the possibility that their ideology might be inherently defective is considered. They just keep brushing aside their own failings and demand all others adopt their world view.
Understand that the frequency of divorce among leading conservatives is nothing special, evangelicals split up at very high rates, and no western country has higher divorce rates than Christian America except Sweden, barely. Research indicates the instability is in part because middle aged theocon husbands are prone to having affairs, and dump aging wife #1 in favor of a younger model I personally know of one example of this. Also, some born-again wives get tired of playing the evangelical second fiddle wifely role and get out of the misogynist prison. The series of sometimes spectacular extramarital affairs that theocon politicians have engaged in including three members of The Family evangelical group that organizes the national prayer breakfast Obama will be attending --has paralleled the same among a number of born again clerics.
When I was kid I vaguely recall meeting the white haired minister, last name Moore, of some of my run of the middle class, church going relations living in tidewater country. Years later it turned out he had been having a long-term mutually extramarital affair with one of my relatives. When that blew up in his face Reverend Moore moved back to his home country south of the VA/NC border and ended up marrying a devout evangelical Christian woman named Blanche. Really, Blanche. Not the best choice. She was a serial arsenic poisoner who had dispatched a number others over the years, and the reverend was lucky to survive the highest not quite lethal dose of the poison. The Black Widow Blanche is living out her life on death row. I saw Dan Rather headline the story as a "Gothic horror," it was made into a book "Preacher's Girl," and that became a movie starting my childhood heartthrob Elizabeth Montgomery as Blanche. I don't make this stuff up. David Lynch is right -- scratch the surface of the Christian American Way and there's a whole lot of stuff going on.
There is good reason to conclude that theocons to a fair degree like their bad boys and girls. Its edgy, its exciting, it vicariously breaks them out from their unrealistically constrained lives. So conserves stuggling to remain virginal until their blessed honeymoon can get off on how their girl Ann is getting it on with some fellow and when they fail they can feel if its OK for her then maybe it's not really that terrible. You've got to admit it's kinda cool how Governor Sanford was having an affair with that hot woman all the way down in Argentina, and then was pretty darn proud of it if you read between the lines of his apology.
All this is a very bad thing for the theocon movement not only on a personal basis, but politically. It is correspondingly good news for the progressive cause. Now that conservatives have revealed to the country how scandal and dysfunction prone they are despite or because of their godly mores, they are promising that next time they get power they are going to clean up their act and run the nation in accord with God, honor, principle, discipline and virtue if we only give them another chance. But of course they cannot do that. They suffer from the same core defect as everyone else they're human beings too. Year after year, decade after decade, theocons are going to screw up, often literally, just as much as everyone else. This is worse for theocons than for the opposition because they keep setting themselves up. They over promise the morality they will deliver and then look hypocritical when they cannot meet their own criteria, leaving many voters who backed them feeling burned. Right wing sleaze is the gift to the left that the right will keep on giving. The right has not practical way out of this self damaging circle, and it will help prevent them from becoming a permanent majority (www.edge.org/3rd_culture/paul07/paul07_index.html).
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