"Family Values" and the Republicans' narrow stance
Commentary (updated below)
Explaining the situational ethics driving "Family Values": Glenn Greenwald (30-Aug-07), Forcing Larry Craig's resignation while embracing David Vitter, Salon [online news magazine focusing on American politics and culture; based in San Francisco, California], online at salon.com (accessed
Is there anyone left in this country who isn't sick of right-wing "Family Values"?
In today's news we see the spectacle of a right-wing Republican Senator – Larry "Wide Stance" Craig from Idaho – resigning from Congress because he got caught soliciting sex from a stranger in a public restroom. Craig had built his career on a "Family Values" platform demonizing various "others", including gays.
Just two months ago, we saw the Republican Senator from Louisiana – David Vitter – getting caught for hiring prostitutes, while at home in Louisiana and while at work in Washington D.C. Vitter, similarly to Craig, had built his political reputation as being a proponent of "Family Values."
The two cases involve illegal wrongdoing and reveal the pitfalls to the individual politician of "Family Values" moralizing. Yet, the cases differ in their outcomes. Craig was forced to resign, while Vitter – it is said – received applause from his colleagues behind closed doors and continues to serve in Congress.
Glenn Greenwald, writing in the online magazine, Salon, explains the self-serving calculations that lie at the heart of "Family Values" politics and explains why Craig resigned (gay animus + the certain appointment of a Republican replacement) and Vitter didn't (conventional heterosexual adultery + the uncertain appointment of a Republican replacement).
Greenwald analyzes the deceit upon which "Family Values" rests:
The only kind of "morality" that this movement knows or embraces is politically exploitative, cost-free morality. That is why the national Republican Party rails endlessly against homosexuality and is virtually mute about divorce and adultery: because anti-gay moralism costs virtually all of its supporters nothing (since that is a moral prohibition that does not constrain them), while heterosexual moral deviations – from divorce to adultery to sex outside of marriage – are rampant among the Values Voters faithful and thus removed from the realm of condemnation. Hence we have scads of people sitting around opposing same-sex marriage because of their professed belief in "Traditional Marriage" while their "third husbands" and multiple step-children and live-in girlfriends sit next to them on the couch.

UPDATE, Sunday, September 2, 2007: Republicans spent today explaining how Craig's case differs from Vitter's. Ed Gillespie, President Bush's counselor and a former chairman of the Republican Party laid out the situation, so that all could see the virtue in the Republicans' handling of Craig. Gillespie said in an interview on Fox:
The fact is that Senator Craig pled guilty to a crime, and therefore was convicted of a crime. Senator Vitter has not been charged with a crime, let alone convicted of one. So there's a pretty big distinction here.
Yeah, sure. Explain that to Vitter's wife.




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