The Binary Circumstance

It is a really sad commentary on our culture and political system that this is the caliber of person running for the highest office in the land.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, one of the most powerful women in the world, still plays the gender card.

She also made a play for the housewife vote by suggesting her experience in the kitchen will make her a better candidate.

Even as she denied playing the gender card, she evoked gender with a reference to her own familiarity with the kitchen.

“I don’t think they’re piling on because I’m a woman, I think they’re piling on because I’m winning,” Clinton told reporters at the State House, where she filed papers to officially place her name on the New Hampshire ballot. “I anticipate it’s going to get even hotter. And if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen and I’m very much at home in the kitchen.”

This is in contrast to her famous comment in a 1992 interview with Ted Koppel where she stated that she had chosen career over domestic duties.

I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life.

Mitt Romney says children are better off with a dead parent than a gay parent.

Mike Huckabee says when God and science are in conflict, choose God.

“Oh, I believe in science. I certainly do,” [Huckabee] said. “In fact, what I believe in is, I believe in God. I don’t think there’s a conflict between the two. But if there’s going to be a conflict, science changes with every generation and with new discoveries and God doesn’t. So I’ll stick with God if the two are in conflict.”

Throw in Ron Paul’s contradictions and it’s just downright depressing.

These stories are so commonplace they are becoming a bore.

I wouldn’t waste my time writing about them except that the Republican party has become so anti-gay while a significant number of their own members frolic through a bizarre series of gay sexual encounters.

The latest is Washington State representative Richard Curtis.

(Olympia, Washington) Conservative Republican Washington state Rep. Richard Curtis is resigning from office a day after a sex scandal erupted that linked him to a gay prostitute.

In a statement saying he was “sorry” and apologizing to anyone he has “hurt” Curtis said he is leaving politics.

“While I believe we’ve done some good and helped a lot of people during the time I served in the Legislature, events that have recently come to light have hurt a lot of people. I sincerely apologize for any pain my actions may have caused.”

Republican leaders will choose a successor for Curtis to serve in the Legislature until the 2008 election.

For days rumors had spread that Curtis was being blackmailed by a hustler. Curtis on Monday denied he was gay and said he never had sex with a male.

Tuesday, though, Seattle police unsealed a search warrant showing Curtis went to police alleging he was being blackmailed by a man he had picked up for sex. (story)

The warrant said that Curtis met the man at a Spokane adult video store and brought him back to his hotel for sex.

An article in SLOG goes into all the sordid details, some of which have been reported on local TV, including the fact that Curtis was wearing women’s lingerie for at least a portion of his encounter with the young man, Cody Castagna, who also has a rap sheet and has appeared in porn. (SLOG graciously provides a link to Cody’s pics.)

Damn, these closeted Republicans are a kinky lot!

In the current issue of the Seattle Gay News, therapist Michael Raitt, MA LMHC, discusses the dynamics of controlling relationships. It’s an excellent article so I suggest you read the entire thing. But here’s a brief quote:

Regardless of how the control is manifested, behind it exist dynamics and feelings that are poisonous to a relationship. Controlling behaviors are always joined with threats, anger, manipulation, resentment, and fear. Control is both in what we do and what we say. Women and men who exert this level of control have very low thresholds for the anxiety that exists within them about themselves and their partner. They live in constant fear that their partner will hurt them in some way and try to eliminate that fear by controlling the other’s behaviors. This fear generates anger which leads to the threats and manipulations that go on in a relationship. These people are often afraid to seek professional help with these issues (either as a couple or as an individual) because they fear they will lose control when the therapist begins to identify patterns and ask each party to change.

As I read the article, I was struck not only by how well he had articulated the dynamics of control in one-on-one relationships but also how well he had described the dynamics of our political process, and any government built on the use of force.

It inspired me to write the following letter to the editor.

Dear SGN:

I enjoyed Michael Raitt’s excellent article on controlling relationships (SGN, 9/28/2007).

He is correct when he says, “No adult in a relationship, under any circumstances or at any time, should be told what he/she can or cannot do, think, say, feel under the threat of some kind of negative reaction.”

The problem is that all of us feel that way all the time because we live in such relationships every day of our lives. The very political structure of our society dictates that we do.

Both liberals and conservatives operate under the premise that it is desirable to gain control of the machinery and guns of government in order to impose their will on others, attaching penalties like taxes, incarceration and even death upon those who dare to resist the laws imposed on them, laws usually designed to benefit special interests.

We must all be mindful as yet another election day approaches that voting is an act of aggression against the will and choice of others. It’s purpose is to impose the will of majority voters on a political minority and to attach “the threat of some kind of negative reaction” to any failure to comply with the will of those in the majority.

It is for this reason that I decided years ago to discard the basic premise of both conservatives and liberals–the notion that there is a entitlement to force one’s will upon others–and adopted the libertarian premises that every individual owns his own body and his own life and that all relationships in a free society are voluntary and free from coercion. This implies an inviolable right of self-defense as well, which was addressed by Jim Allbaugh in his letter to the editor this week.

As Mr. Raitt notes, relationships based on control are dysfunctional and destructive. That doesn’t just apply to our lovers and significant others, but to our neighbors and fellow citizens as well. It is impossible to heal our most intimate relationships if we practice the use of force and coercion in every other relationship in our lives. The general social anxiety that results from such a political process is bound to infect the relationships most important to us as well. They do not exist in a vacuum.

Negotiation is absolutely important in healthy relationships. It becomes lopsided or non-existent when one party in a relationship (individual or political) gains control of the guns.

Chip Gibbons

I don’t know if they’ll publish it.

For years I have thought of mandatory, coercive governments as similar to an abusive spouse. And just like in an abusive relationships, the battered spouse is often in denial that there’s any problem at all, making excuses for the batterer and acting in ways that enable the abuse to continue.

The relationship with a government built on force is also similar to a drug addiction. People who want more control, see more government programs as a way to alleviate their fears. They may get a temporary fix of power but in the end they end up giving away more control and increasing their anxiety as different special interests compete to gain control of the machinery of government. This drags them deeper into the fear/control cycle.

I’ve written before that a rational definition of a crime must require that an individual is harmed in some way. There is no such thing as a crime against irrational inanimate entities like rocks or states and disobedience in an of itself can not be a crime in a free society. If a person can be guilty of a crime just be disobeying the law and without harming another individual in any way, he is not living in a free society but a slave state instead.

The arrest of Sen. Larry Craig in a men’s room gay sex sting illustrates this issue to some extent. The New York Times [reg. req.] also reports that Craig may have been treated more harshly than than other men arrested in the same sex sting. A defense lawyer clearly articulates the rational test for a crime in the article:

Mr. Dean, the defense lawyer, said, “My legal argument is: as long as it’s not invading anybody else’s privacy, as long as it’s not causing alarm to other people in the bathroom, and as long as they don’t actually have sex in the bathroom, it’s no crime.”

Our legal system is not rational, however. Our nation’s disgust with homosexuality is clearly at work here and the police report clearly indicated that the arresting officer gave a signal (foot-tapping) that would be interpreted as a signal of mutual consent. That raises the issue of entrapment.

I think Craig is being very dishonest with himself and everybody else about his sexuality and what happened in the rest room. I also think he had plenty of time and resources to fight the charges but pleaded guilty because he was embarrassed by being caught peeking into a stall and giving signals that are interpreted as solicitations for gay sex.

Another defense attorney put the entire sting operation into perspective.

Jonathan Burris, a lawyer representing five of the defendants, said the national attention on Mr. Craig had made prosecutors less likely to reduce charges against the other men.

“They’re very happy with their officers for their wonderful sting they’ve put together,” Mr. Burris said, adding, “This is an airport — they’re supposed to watch out for terrorists and bombs, not sit in a bathroom eight hours a day.”

To many, however, there’s nothing more terrifying than homosexuality. And people like Larry Craig and the police officers involved in the sting are both compulsively drawn to it and repulsed by it.

The real irony here is that if one accepts a rational definition of crime then the police officers committed a crime against Craig because they harmed him, and he harmed nobody. But even more importantly, every time Craig has supported legislation that deprives gay men and women of their basic human rights he has committed crimes against them, and himself.

If only our defintion of crime was rational rather than political and rooted in religion.