One of the dilemmas in the Larry Craig fiasco is how to treat people who closet themselves. On one level there is the “Schadenfreude” element where people find pleasure in Senator Craig’s misfortune, especially since his public actions and sentiments differ greatly from his private actions and desires.
Yet, there seems to be an overlooked ethical aspect of this: how do we understand and even help those who seem to lead closeted lives? (The same can be said of Ted Haggard, whose life-long desires have been cured.)
Let me pose the following questions to you:
(1) Does the public outings of Senator Craig and Ted Haggard entice or diminish the desire of some who lives in the closet to become public?
(2) By focusing on the hypocrisy, do those who attack Craig and Haggard become intolerant of those that they should be tolerant?
(3) What is the best way to help people in the public sphere become open with their identity?
I am not sure if I know the answers to these questions, but they may be an interesting starting point.
1 comment:
Great post solon. Harrogate can tell that you and he are occupying the two interrelated, but ultimately very different dominant "takes" on this THUNDER MUG fiasco.
You ask:
By focusing on the hypocrisy, do those who attack Craig and Haggard become intolerant of those that they should be tolerant?
Harrogate's response is, despite the current spin by many members of the liberal blogosphere, no, we do not become intolerant by focusing on Craig's hypocrisy. Nor for that matter do we make it harder for homosexuals to come out of the closet.
It is important to remember that in skewering Craig's hypocrisy we are pointing up the huge chasm separating Lawmakers from Men and Women. It is the Lawmakers, the Demagogues, that we gleefully attack.
We wish to reduce the red meat "family values" demagogues and lawmakers to the tlevel of the comedic and the absurdly dimunutive. We wish to do this PRECISELY BECAUSE of the destructive impact their RHETORIC AND LAWS have upon real men and women.
As for this question:
What is the best way to help people in the public sphere become open with their identity?
There is no one answer. But near the top of the list has to be insisting that our "Leaders" stop pandering to the ignorant troglodytes and instead try TEACHING them to stop obsessing over who's sticking it to whom, and where.
This of course runs the risk of getting badly hurt at the polls. So be it. The long-term benefits to us all greatly outweigh the short-term political ramifications.
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