Newt Gingrich now admits he was having an extramarital affair while he led Congress in impeaching President Clinton for getting a few blowjobs from a consenting adult
Ho hum, another “family values” hypocrite. Ted Haggard, Ralph Reed, Mark Foley, Lou Sheldon, Bill O’Reilly, Paul Crouch, Rush Limbaugh, Randall Terry, Robert Livingston (who was supposed to succeed Gingrich as Speaker of the House)—the list of “family values” leaders whose family values include divorce, infidelity, gambling, and embezzlement is getting so big, they could form their own political party. Oh wait—they already have.
Republicans really face a dilemma this Presidential season: three of their four most prominent candidates are divorced. The fourth is—gasp—Mormon. And you know how wild and liberal those desert swingers are.
Serendipitously, Arizona Senator John (‘Jerry Falwell is intolerant except when he’s considering supporting me’) McCain pleaded that “gossip—‘family issues’—should not enter into this campaign.” That was in response to Rudy Giuliani asking for privacy as he apparently deals with estrangement from his children.
In a better, more civilized world, of course our leaders’ private lives would be private. We wouldn’t even know that Gingrich had had extramarital sex with an employee 20 years his junior. And except for a bit of schadenfreude, we wouldn’t care.
But the “family values” crowd has relentlessly shrunk everyone’s zone of privacy. Your sex toy—illegal in 6 states. Your prescription contraceptives—subject to a pharmacist’s “moral refusal rights.” Your private, adults-only strip club, swing club, erotic bookstore—crippled or closed in every state. And so this crowd deserves no privacy whatsoever.
I personally don’t care if a politician is divorced, bisexual, or unfaithful—can any President cause more “immorality” than our current non-drinking, monogamous, Church-going fool who brags about not reading the newspaper? But these people have earned our complete contempt for their private lives, their human struggles, their family dramas.
You know that cliché, live by the sword, die by the sword. Well, you get votes by trashing others’ private choices, you lose votes because of your own.
And Newt? Now that he’s acknowledged “There’s certainly times when I’ve fallen short of God’s standards,” will he do the Godly thing and stop bashing other people’s sexuality and lifestyle?