Monday, May 16, 2005
by Wayne Besen
(Hypocrite: Spokane's Shamed Mayor James E. West) When a person says he is a social conservative, the first thing that now comes to mind is: Who are you really sleeping with and what deep, dark secret are you harboring? Conservatism is no longer a mantra, but a mask, hiding hypocrites and concealing closets.
The most startling example to come to light is the sickening story of Dr. W. David Hager, a prominent Bush appointee to the Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs in the Food and Drug Administration. Hager, a gynecologist, is almost single-handedly responsible for sinking plans to allow Plan B, the morning after pill, to be sold over the counter.
According to an expose in The Nation magazine, Hager explained, in a lecture at Asbury College, how his actions to deny American women easy access to Plan B was God's will.
"Now, the opinion I wrote was not from an evangelical Christian perspective...But I argued it from a scientific perspective, and God took that information, and He used it...to influence the decision."
Hager's pompous and pious speech enraged his ex-wife, Linda Carruth Davis, so much so, that she went public and accused her ex-husband of forcibly sodomizing her during their marriage.
The most shocking part of the allegations was that after she was diagnosed with narcolepsy, Hager took advantage of her while she slept.
"...It was the painful, invasive, totally nonconsensual nature of the sex that was so horrible," recounted Davis in The Nation article.
Amusingly, the Ob-Gyn's defense is that he couldn't tell which entrance was the vagina, leading Davis to tell him that maybe he was in "the wrong business".
And this is the guy Bush turns to for advice on women's health?
Equally stomach turning, is the hypocrisy of former Washington State Senate majority leader and Spokane's right wing mayor James E. West. The mayor had opposed a city measure that would have extended benefits to same-sex partners, and as a state legislator, once proposed prohibiting homosexuals from working in public schools.
With such anti-gay credentials, Spokane's citizens were shocked when the local daily newspaper caught West cruising gay websites and luring young men by offering internships and tickets to sporting events.
What separates conservative Republicans from reasonable people is the inability to see beyond their self-absorbed lives and solipsistic ambitions. When West was closeted, he had no compunction advancing his career on the backs of gay people and doing his best to wreck their lives. But now, that the very homophobic monster he helped create consumes him, he is whining that he is the victim of unfair treatment. In a pitiful phone call to the Spokesman-Review, the paper that uncovered his secret life, West pathetically carped that he was "being destroyed because I am a gay man."
Interestingly, West proposed marriage to his now ex-wife Ginger from the state Senate floor. This goes to my theory that the more public the moralistic display, the greater the private demons. People who have true family values live by them, while deviant phonies incessantly talk about them.
It seems there is no sector of society safe from the sanctimonious. The military used to be an institution that brought people together from different walks of life. Now, it appears that only right wing Christians need apply. Instead of training divisions to fight real wars, we have military leaders sowing division to fight their imagined holy war.
The worst abuses are taking place at the Air Force Academy where lately there is more emphasis on learning Scriptures like 1 Samuel 15, than knowing how to fly an F-15. We've all seen the tacky bumper stickers that read, "God Is My Co-pilot." Apparently, this is official policy at the Air Force Academy.
A report released in April by Yale Divinity School spoke of rampant Anti-Semitism and out of control proselytizing by evangelicals. Americans United for Separation of Church and State also issued a report charging that there is "systematic and pervasive religious bias and intolerance at the highest levels of the Academy command structure."
In an effort to downplay the scathing reports, honchos at the Academy demanded that Capt. MeLinda Morton, an Academy chaplain, defend the military. She declined, saying that she agreed with the reports and went on to help create a program for sensitivity training. The Air Force rewarded Morton for her truthfulness by dismissing her as "executive officer" and now plans to ship her to Okinawa, where she could be deployed in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Is it any surprise that the same Air Force Academy that was mired in scandal in 2003 for sexually abusing women is the preachiest military post in the nation? It seems fire and brimstone creates the perfect smokescreen to veil the peddlers of virtue's real perversions.
0 Comments:
<< Home
