Morality
One helpful thing about General Pace’s outburst regarding the morality of homosexuality, is that now the question is being openly asked…
Clinton Seesaws on Question of Gay Morality
WASHINGTON, March 14 — Asked if she believed homosexuality was immoral, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, initially said Wednesday that it was for "others to conclude," but later issued a statement saying she did not think being gay was immoral.
Her remarks came a day after Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he should not have publicly expressed his personal view that homosexual acts were immoral and akin to adultery, a position that he said was a factor in his opposition to gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military. His views had appeared in The Chicago Tribune on Monday.
A rival of Mrs. Clinton for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was asked the same question three times on Wednesday and sidestepped the issue, according to an article in Newsday.
But a spokesman for Mr. Obama said last night that the senator disagreed with General Pace’s remarks and believed that homosexuality was not immoral.
In case you missed it, Clinton’s backtracking statement "saying she did not think being gay was immoral" was also issued by a "spokesman". Compare and contrast…
Since 1993, I have had the rich satisfaction of knowing and working with many openly gay and lesbian Americans, and I have come to realize that "gay" is an artificial category when it comes to measuring a man or woman’s on-the-job performance or commitment to shared goals. It says little about the person. Our differences and prejudices pale next to our historic challenge. Gen. Pace is entitled, like anyone, to his personal opinion, even if it is completely out of the mainstream of American thinking. But he should know better than to assert this opinion as the basis for policy of a military that represents and serves an entire nation. Let us end "don’t ask, don’t tell." This policy has become a serious detriment to the readiness of America’s forces as they attempt to accomplish what is arguably the most challenging mission in our long and cherished history.
–Alan Simpson, "Bigotry That Hurts Our Military" – The Washington Post
“I respectfully but strongly disagree with the chairman’s view that homosexuality is immoral."
So, dig it. After Pace babbles his mind about how homosexuality is immoral, two republicans, one a Virgina senator no less, and still in office, and the other a former senator and still a force in his party, decisively and very publicly rebuke the sentiment. Yet the current front runners for the democratic presidential nomination reflexively equivocate. And when they finally do say the right thing, they have to say it though a spokesdroid.
The religious right, and their republican enablers are right about one thing: this is a profoundly moral issue. But it’s not about sex. It’s been nearly fifty years since Evelyn Hooker demonstrated that well adjusted gay men were clinically indistinguishable from well adjusted heterosexual men…
Teaching became a source of great satisfaction, and she earned a reputation as one of the best. It was in this capacity that the invitation came to conduct research with homosexuals. A very bright student in one of Hooker’s classes (1945) sought to extend the relationship outside of class, and in so doing met Hooker’s husband (she had married Donn Caldwell, a freelance writer, in 1941). As a couple, they were invited to social occasions with her student and his friends.
After several years, the former student began urging Hooker to conduct research with them. She finally did some exploratory research with them. However, her life had changed, including a divorce in 1947, so the project was put on ice. She was married again in 1951 in London, England to Edward Niles Hooker, a distinguished professor of English at UCLA.
In 1953, Hooker applied to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) for a six-month grant to study the adjustment of nonclinical homosexual men and a comparable group of heterosexual men. If the study section thought it worthwhile, she would pursue it. The reply was not long in coming. John Eberhart, chief of the Grants Division, flew out to spend a day with her. The application, she was told, was quite extraordinary, especially because it was then the height of the McCarthy era. The legal penalties for homosexual behavior were severe. The psychiatric diagnosis was severe and pervasive emotional disorder. There were simply no scientific data about nonimprisoned, nonpatient homosexuals. Eberhart said, "We are prepared to give you the grant, but you may not receive it, and you won’t know why and we won’t know why." Not only did she receive it, but NIMH continued the renewal until 1961, when she received the Research Career Award.
Hooker’s research (1957) demonstrating that expert clinical judges could not distinguish the projective test protocols of nonclinical homosexual men from a comparable group of heterosexual men, nor were there differences in adjustment ratings, was validated soon thereafter by other investigators. Not until 1973, however, did the American Psychiatric Association delete homosexuality from its diagnostic handbook. Meanwhile, the gay and lesbian liberation movement in the 1960s took cognizance of these research findings. It was a source of great satisfaction for Hooker to have contributed in some measure to this new freedom and to a partial lifting of the stigma. Her life was immeasurably enriched by the research and by friendships with men and women across the entire spectrum of occupations and life styles.
Fifty years since Hooker next year. Fifty-three years since Kinsey. Over thirty since the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality as a category of mental illness. The science has been staring people in the face now for half a century. But the story of homosexual people, throughout the human experience, has been there for millennia for all our brothers and sisters to see clearly, plainly, unmistakeably. From the poets and story tellers of ancient Greece to the stories of countless gay men and women alive today, our essential humanity is there for anyone to see. But to see it, you have to want to.
And there’s the moral issue. Does the truth matter? If General Pace fails because he cannot see the people for the homosexuals, and whatever dogma or prejudice it is that’s telling him they are behaving in an immoral fashion regardless of what he can either see with his own two goddamned eyes, or learn any time he’s willing to take a stroll outside the door of his cheap conceits, then what of Clinton and Obama, and all the other cowardly democrats who would rather duck the issue then address it straight on? If the context is a question about the morality of homosexuality, and you believe that it is possible for a gay person to live decent, honorable, moral lives according to their nature, that they can have completely healthy and moral intimate relationships according to their nature, then how moral is it not to plainly say so?
Does the truth matter? You want to know why the republican machine keeps winning the "values" argument it isn’t because anyone with a spine is addressing their beliefs head-on. It’s because by equivocating they’re telling the voters they don’t think the truth matters. It’s one thing to say that we are not Gods, that we are not perfect, that we do not have the perfect God’s eye view of reality, of right and wrong. It’s another to act like you don’t care, or that it doesn’t matter.
Democrats need to stop being afraid to address moral questions. When did a political party that, at least since Roosevelt, championed the common working citizen, children, the needy, the environment, and the ideal of liberty and justice for all, suddenly loose its moral confidence? And in the face of what? A party dedicated to the ideal that greed is good? Rape the environment now because Jesus is coming later? The party of corpses floating in New Orleans? The party of lying the nation into war? The party of sexual purity for everyone but itself? Is this what they’re letting bully them into silence on the issue of the rights of gay people …?
Here’s a summary of Gingrich’s family life: 1) Gingrich marries his high school teacher, Jackie, who was seven years his senior; 2) Jackie puts Gingrich through college and she works hard to get him elected to the House in 1978 (Gingrich won partly because his campaign claimed that his Democratic opponent would neglect her family if elected — at that time it was common knowledge that Gingrich was straying); 3) Shortly after being elected, Gingrich separated from his wife — announcing the separation in the hospital room where Jackie was recovering from cancer surgery (the divorce was final in 1981); Jackie Gingrich and her children had to depend on alms from her church because Gingrich didn’t pay any child support; 3) Six months after the divorce, Gingrich, then 38, married Marianne Ginther, 30; 4) "In May 1999, however, Gingrich [55] called Marianne [48] at her mother’s home. After wishing the 84-year-old matriarch happy birthday, he told Marianne that he wanted a divorce." This was eight months after Marianne was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis; 5) In 2000, Gingrich, 57, married ex-congressional aide Callista Bisek, 34, with whom he was having a relationship while married to Marianne.
Its grotesque, watching the democrats fritter away the moral high ground to a pack of thugs who would have been gangsters had they not chosen to go into politics instead. The war and President Junior’s botching of it gives them a chance to forge a new governing majority, but they’ll loose it all again if they keep equivocating on questions of values and morality, and allow the republicans to once again define themselves as the champions of virtue and godliness. The answer to that question, "Do you believe homosexuality is immoral", should have been: "No. Adultery is immoral. Leaving your children destitute is immoral. Divorcing your wife after you found out she has multiple sclerosis is immoral. Morality isn’t a matter of what sex your partner is. It’s a matter of how you treat them. And if you can’t treat your spouse decently, if you can’t treat your own children decently, then who would you? This country can entrust itself to a government comprised entirely of homosexuals, all in faithful, loving same sex relationships, more then it dare one cheating wife abusing child neglecting heterosexual."
Morality.
