Let's talk about sex, specifically gay sex, and more specifically, gay Republican sex.
Let's talk about five men: Mayor Jim West of Spokane, Wash.; Rev. Ted Haggard; Idaho Sen. Larry Craig; Washington state legislator Richard Curtis; and GOP rising/falling star Tyler Whitney.
West, who had opposed gay rights as a legislator, discovered hypocrisy doesn't pay when reporters revealed he'd offered to trade sex for internships with young men he'd met online. Haggard preached against gay rights, but his boyfriend-for-hire exposed him. Arch-homophobe Craig offered a hot toddy on the potty to an undercover cop at the Minneapolis airport. Curtis opposed gay-rights legislation but is said to have erred on the side of fiscal responsibility with a male prostitute he met in a porn store and then went to the cops to accuse the prostitute of extortion. Whitney appeared in a photograph at an anti-gay protest with a sign that read "Go back in the closet," only to have a local gay newspaper reveal he apparently sought to coax young men to join him in his own closet.
It's impossible to talk about closeted homophobes without a little off-color humor, but their effect on society is anything but funny.
A 1996 University of Georgia study indicated a connection between homophobia and arousal by gay pornography. A study in the Journal of Applied Psychology found people who consider themselves morally superior have a high tendency to commit unethical acts.
While most gays and bisexuals overcome acculturation that encourages self hatred, some don't. Some self-hating gays kill themselves or exhibit self-destructive behavior such as drug abuse. Some, however, attack other gays verbally, physically and politically as a coping mechanism.
The aforementioned five men obviously belong in the last category. They can't get over their hang-ups and don't want the rest of us to, either.
For good reasons, societies create strictures against harmful and aberrant sexual activity such as rape, child molestation and adultery. But raising people to treat natural and harmless inclinations and activities such as experimentation, masturbation or homosexuality as immoral and shameful is a morbid denial of human nature that leads to dysfunctional and destructive behavior. Using Judeo-Christian and Islamic religion to justify these attitudes cements dysfunction with a mythological foundation.
The only thing that distinguishes the "five-way" is that they were caught. Chances are that politics and religion, particularly in their conservative manifestations, have closets so full that you couldn't fit a pair of ruby slippers in them.
Who will be the next rabid homophobe to be unmasked? A political candidate who promises to oppose gay rights legislation so gays will disappear and stop reminding him of himself? A preacher who spends Sundays condemning those who act on the fantasies he had the previous night? A "values voter" whose voting decisions merely reflect a futile wish that the ballot box will make those unwanted feelings go away?
While ordinary people who regard homosexuality as immoral on the basis of Bronze Age myths need to be educated and maybe breathe into a bag for a few minutes, the real targets of suspicion and scrutiny should be the peers, parents, preachers and politicians from whom they learn such attitudes.
Write to Alaric at ajdearment@bsu.edu
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