Sex, hypocrites and scandal

Politics – especially the puritanical American variety – often throws up a sex scandal. With the notable exception of Bill Clinton, it’s usually the holier-than-thou types who bring this spectacle into the public arena. Reverend Jimmy Swaggart, Senator Larry Craig, former democratic presidential candidate John Edwards and now Republican presidential hopeful John Ensign are just a few fallen angels. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/16/john-ensign-affair-gop-se_n_216451.html

As a long-time observer, I believe scandals are losing their punch. Not that nowadays, tales of hubris are less salacious. They simply don’t shock and scandalize as before. Is it that we are more jaded than ever? Or have we simply acquired a more pragmatic view of so- called human failings?

There are good reasons to rethink the value of taking down the high and mighty with sex. One of my favorite essays by Richard Kim of the Nation addresses this issue: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010618/kim20010605. The background for Kim’s views is the story of Andrew Sullivan, a self-righteous, openly gay and HIV positive political pundit. Sullivan is widely known for criticizing gay community as promoting recklessness, wanton sex and life without moral codes. His detractors “outed” him for having gone online and solicited “bareback” sex in a chat room devoted to unprotected intercourse. Kim wrote:

“For one thing, if we delight in discovering that Sullivan the moralist doesn't follow his own prescriptions, we need to ask whether excoriating him for his hypocrisy risks reaffirming those very moral standards. In finding him a sinner, do we end up concurring with Sullivan's original understanding of sin--if only to turn the tables on him? In doing so, we don't challenge the moralizing, normalizing values that Sullivan espouses. We just relocate ourselves, temporarily, on the other end of the finger.”

In the world we imagine, it would be OK to negotiate sex on our own terms provided there is no harm to anyone else. As things are now, it’s too easy to create moral divisions through sexuality. This is above all else, a kill-joy, and makes an otherwise fun-thing needlessly political – even dangerous. Janet Jackson would have us reclaim the “pleasure principle.” Maybe our current state of scandal-fatigue is the first stage of a new liberation moment.