Box Turtle Bulletin

Ron Paul’s Easy Appeal Among Reconstructionists

Warren Throckmorton seems to have found what may be the key to Ron Paul’s support among Christian Reconstructionists while also being spurned by Dominionists:

But back to (New Apostolic Reformation dominionists) vs. Christian reconstructionists; the focus of control is different. The NAR folks want to rule America as a Christian nation from the seat of centralized power in Washington DC. The Christian reconstructionists want to deconstruct central government in favor of state or local control of law. Bachmann and Perry promise to govern biblically and impose their view of Christian America on the nation. Paul promises to dismantle the federal government in favor of the states.

In fact, the Christian reconstructionists are afraid of the NAR dominionists. Recontructionist Joel McDurmon wants biblical law in place but he thinks the NAR approach is a dangerous power grab.

It’s notable that the most prominent pastor in Iowa to endorse Ron Paul (an endorsement featured on Paul’s web site) is Rev. Phil Kayser, who has deep reconstructionist (also known as theonomist) ties. At Biblical Blueprints, a reconstrucitonist web site, Kaiser posted a book (PDF: 4.1MB/60 pages) in which he justifies the death penalty for homosexuality:

(page 24): I should think that theonomists would be happy with this understanding of Biblical capital crimes since it is the Bible and the Bible alone that determines ethics.  But I would think that those who are concerned about how Biblical penology would apply in a pagan society and how it would dovetail with evangelism would be happy because Biblical penology beautifully dovetails with God’s program of the  Great Commission. There is no tension between Biblical law and the Great Commission. For example, in a society that was being converted, homosexuals could continue to be converted as they were in the church of Corinth. Even after a society implemented Biblical law and made homosexuality a crime, there are many checks and balances that would be in place. (See Appendix A page  40 for specifics.) The civil government could not round them up. Only those who were prosecuted by citizens could be punished, and the punishment could take a number of forms, including death. This would have a tendency of driving homosexuals back into their closets.

I think I have demonstrated how even capital punishment can be restorative.  Other aspects of penology such as restitution, indentured servitude, etc. are certainly restorative.

I should think that those who accuse Biblicists of a theology that would cause a holocaust should be happy since we advocate standing law, not the Herem principle, and since standing law could be implemented even in a society like ours without the need for massive bloodshed. After a few speedy executions of non-repentant criminals, others would think twice before despising God’s law.

Paul opposes Lawrence v. Texas because he thinks it infringes on states rights. Kayser likes the idea of states having the right to kill homosexuals, which neatly completes the circle to his support for Paul.

Later in the book, Kayser defends his support for capital punishment for gay people against the objection that his theonomist proposals would “lead to a bloodbath”:

(page 38): Objection 13 – “This would lead to a blood bath if we were to implement that law today because almost our entire nation is implicated in capital crimes.”

This objection is a mixture of pragmatism (we can’t do it) and emotional appeal (it would lead to a blood bath). But neither argument changes God’s definition of justice. Difficulty in implementing Biblical law does not make non-Biblical penology just. But as we have seen, while many homosexuals would be executed, the threat of capital punishment can be restorative.

What’s a few dead homosexuals in the greater scheme of things? And this is the man of whose endorsement Paul’s web site now brags. Along with Paul’s praise of the voter recall effort against state Supreme Court judges who ruled in favor of marriage equality, his opposition to Lawrence v. Texas, and the man who Paul selected to lead his Iowa campaign, suddenly those newsletters appear neither anachronistic nor anomalous. Ron Paul supporters have to ask themselves a really hard question: With his active courting of extremists like these, what kind of people do they think Paul will select for his administration?

Ron Paul touts endorsement by pastor who wants you dead. Literally.

Ron Paul is touting the endorsement of “Eminent Pastor Rev. Phil Kayser, Ph.D.”. Kayser is the pastor of Dominion Covenant Church in Omaha, Nebraska and, as might be deduced from the church’s name, Kayser is a dominionist. But as Dr. Warren Throckmorton reports, Kayser is extremist even for dominionists. The eminent pastor reverend doctor Phil Kayser wants to rule the world.

Our church will not rest or be satisfied (Is. 62:6-7) until all human authority submits to Christ (Matt. 28:18), all nations are discipled (Matt. 28:19), all Scripture is followed (Matt. 28:20a) and all of Christ’s presence and resources are claimed (Matt. 28:20b). Anything less than an expectation of total victory for King Jesus in history (1 Cor. 15:24-28) does not do justice to the all encompassing mandate of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18-20).

Oh, and by “all Scripture is followed”, the eminent pastor reverend doctor veers from the usual and customary Christian teaching. The eminent pastor reverend doctor means the following:

But notice how Paul ties this in with his overarching theme of natural knowledge. It is not just the sinfulness of homosexuality that is known, but also the justice of the death penalty for homosexuality. In verse 32 Paul says, “Who knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.” The reason men have an innate sense of justice is because God’s law reflects not only His holiness but also His justice and goodness (Romans 7:12). Romans 13 says that magistrates are subject to all three. They must know what is sin and what is good, and they must apply justice in condemning the one and protecting the other. All of that, Romans 1-2 says is in man’s heart.

Now, I personally don’t believe that executing gays is intuitive or natural or written right there in man’s heart. So I personally don’t find this to be an endorsement that compels me to support Ron Paul. But if you are a big supporter or the eminent pastor reverend doctor Phil Kayser, then you will probably also find that supporting Ron Paul is written in your heart. With a sharpie.

UPDATE: It seems that someone in Ron Paul’s campaign finally noticed what it was that Phil Kayser actually believes and teaches. The campaign website no longer proudly announced Kayser’s endorsement.

The Daily Agenda for Wednesday, December 28

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Closeted Anti-Gay Activist Dies of AIDS: 1986. Terry Dolan, who helped to found the National Conservative Political Action Committee, was pretty well known in elite gay circles. According to Randy Schilts’s And the Band Played On, when playwright Larry Kramer recognized him at a Washington, D.C. cocktail party, he walked up to Dolan and threw a drink is his face. “How dare you come here?” he shouted. “You take the best from our world and then do all those hateful things against us. You should be ashamed.” Among those awful things was sending out fundraising letters for NCPAC, which claimed that “Our nation’s moral fiber is being weakened by the growing homosexual movement and the fanatical E.R.A. pushers (many of whom publicly brag they are lesbians).” Meanwhile, Dolan had, at the time of that 1984 encounter with Kramer, had just ended an affair with a male epidemiologist at the New York City Health Department, and was then enjoying everything the gay social scene had to offer.

Dolan knew how to raise money. “The “shriller you are,” he said in 1982, “the easier it is to raise money.” That’s been the recipe for anti-gay activists ever since. But four years later, Dolan himself was dead of AIDS at the age of 36. The following May, The Washington Post published an article about “the cautious closet” of Terry Dolan. His brother, Reagan White House speechwriter Anthony Dolan was livid, and took out an two-page ad in The Washington Times, arguing that “the greatest and most malicious falsehood in this story was its entire thrust, its basis: the claim that my brother lived and died a homosexual.” But he did live and die a homosexual, and a deeply closeted one at that. But despite his and the family’s best efforts, the secret was out, and no amount of wishful thinking otherwise would ever change that.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

Big Centralized Government is a Michigan Republican Value

The Michigan Republican Party claims the usual litany of principles that most state Republican Party organizations claim. Their listing of beliefs speak a great deal about equality and nearly every point uses the word “individual”. The two beliefs that stand out as defining characteristics of Republicans, those that really differentiate from Democrats, are probably the following:

I BELIEVE the proper role of government is to provide for the people only those critical functions that cannot be performed by individuals or private organizations, and that the best government is that which governs least.

I BELIEVE the most effective, responsible and responsive government is government closest to the people.

Reading the full eight statements of belief, one might believe that Michigan Republicans believe in small government, individual self-determination, and equality under the law. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In reality, Michigan Republicans believe in utilization of state power to coerce compliance by counties and local governments, dictated values, and a class system based on religious dogma. And nothing illustrates that truth more effectively than House Bills 4770 and 4771.

The synopsis of HB 4770 pretty much says everything that needs to be known about its intent or the mentality of those who passed it:

A bill to prohibit public employers from providing certain benefits to public employees.

This bill prohibits local governmental employers – county, state, fire departments, etc. – from providing local governmental employees – librarians, firemen, teachers, lifeguards, etc. – with benefits under certain conditions. It removes from the ‘government closest to the people’ the ability to make decisions that reflect the values and needs of the people and puts the state in the position of dictating the terms and conditions of local employment contracts.

Specifically, the Public Employee Domestic Partner Benefit Restriction Act (yes, this really is it’s name), dictates that “a public employer shall not provide medical benefits or other fringe benefits for an individual currently
residing in the same residence as an employee of the public employer” unless they are an opposite-sex spouse or a dependent (or an intestate successor). Those gay employees of villages or towns who receive the same compensation package as their heterosexual office-mates will now be stripped of a portion of their pay.

The sole purpose is to impose the beliefs of the state legislators onto those municipalities that do not share their beliefs. Unable to convince local communities to engage in anti-gay discrimination, Republican legislators will now use the power of the state to force them to do so.

Companion bill HB 4771 adds the following language into the collective bargaining law: “(11) Health insurance or other fringe benefits for any coresident of an employee of a public employer on terms that conflict with the Public Employee Domestic Partner Benefit Restriction Act.”

I will give them this much: they are not pretending that this bill is anything other than what it is. As the bill puts it, “that group of employees” is it’s target. And while the bill would strip unmarried heterosexual couples eligible for domestic partner benefits (should any municipality provide such coverage), there’s no pretense that this is not a blatant attempt to strip gay people of equal pay.

Earlier this month, the Republican majorities in the House and Senate passed HB 4770 and 4771 on a party line vote (with the support of one Democrat) and on Thursday, Governor Rick Snyder (R) signed the bills into law.

[L]ead sponsor Rep. David Agema, R-Grandville, praised the governor’s decision, saying, “Time and again, Michigan residents have said ‘no’ to paying for the health benefits of the roommates and unmarried partners of public employees, and the governor’s signature today gives the people’s voice the rule of law.”

I don’t know of any municipalities that provide domestic partnership benefits to roommates and I don’t think Agema does either. Rather, I suspect that is just his way of demeaning gay people by pretending to think that long-term committed same-sex relationship are just “roommates”. Having imposed his religious views on those who do have different beliefs, he now is blaring his contempt for you.

And Agema is quite clear that it is truly his intention to impose his religion on the land, regardless of the beliefs or desires of others. Describing himself as a servant of “God, family, and country” (in that order) Agema runs Saboath House Ministries, a dominionist organization.

In today’s language, Sabaoth means “Taking Back God’s Property”. That is what Sabaoth Ministries is all about…going into the city and taking back God’s property.

Looking back over the past few years, it is clear that Michigan Republicans have become increasingly known for their anti-gay activism (and bizarre antics). Which is fine, I suppose. If the Michigan Republican Party truly wishes to be the political vehicle for extremist dominionists who seek to impose a talibanish form of theocracy, then they should have the right to present those views. If they want to be the party of strong centralized government and dictated social policy, that’s their right.

But I do object to them claiming to be the opposite. It’s time they give up the pretense of favoring the rights of the individual or the principle of smaller, local, less intrusive government.

Criminal Complaint In Miller-Jenkins Kidnapping Implicates Anti-Gay Web Site

Last October, we learned that Federal authorities have dropped charges against Mennonite minister Timothy “Timo” Miller, who was arrested last spring and charged with aiding and abetting in the kidnapping of Isabella Miller-Jenkins, specifically for purchasing airline tickets for the Isabella and Lisa Miller to Nicaragua. Miller, who is not related to Lisa Miller or to Isabella, was reportedly cooperating with the ongoing investigation into the kidnapping. Since then, another Mennonite minister, Kenneth Miller, was arrested and charged with aiding in Isabela’s international kidnapping conspiracy. The Advocate looked into the affidavit against Kenneth Miller, and discovered that the conspirators suggested using Life Site News, an unofficial Catholic anti-gay web site, could be used as an intermediary for communications:

In one November 2010 email exchange from addresses linked to Kenneth Miller and Timo Miller, Kenneth Miller allegedly expressed concern about the whereabouts of Lisa Miller and Isabella. Referencing an October 2010 news article on Lez Get Real reporting that Miller and her daughter were in Quito, Ecuador, Kenneth Miller wrote to Timo Miller in Nicaragua, “Is she still in the same country that she was? Can you get a hold of her?” The email was written in a mix of English and Pennsylvania German, a dialect spoken by some Mennonites.

“When we still want, we can send a letter about her through this, and we can get it mailed from another country over here. We can send it to a site that’s called lifesitenews,” Kenneth Miller continued in the email, according to a translation by an FBI contract linguist. “That’s a way that to get word to [unintelligible] friends. What do you think of that?”

The affidavit shows that Miller appeared surprised by the reference to Quito, Ecuador. “I don’t believe it,” he wrote, “but have you heard anything like that? Is she still in the same country that she was?…” Melanie Nathan, who had been an author at LezGetReal but left before it was revealed that the blog’s main writer was a hoax, now says that she believes the story she wrote placing Isabella at Quito was based on fraudulent “tips” passed to her by LezGetReal’s fake lesbian “Paula Brooks” (real name: Bill Graber). That would explain Miller’s apparent astonishment about reports of Isabella’s whereabouts and his desire to learn whether she was “still in the same country that she was,” namely Nicaragua.

The Advocate, which posted its story shortly before Christmas, notes that Life Site News has written extensively about the Miller-Jenkins kidnapping:

With headlines such as “Lisa Miller’s Daughter Appeared Traumatized by Visits With Lesbian ‘Mother,’” to “Ex-Lesbian Fighting for Custody of Own Child Against ‘Civil Union’ Partner,” Life Site News’ coverage of the multiyear custody battle between Miller and her former partner, Janet Jenkins, has been extensive. It includes forceful commentary in support of Miller’s conduct—a warrant for her arrest was issued in April 2010—as well as Timo Miller’s alleged involvement in the kidnapping. In a December 1 Life Site News op-ed titled “Cowardice: The State and Homosexualist Powers Against a Former Lesbian and Her Daughter,” Brazilian antigay activist Julio Severo characterized Lisa Miller and her daughter as victims in a perceived war against religious freedom. Jenkins, meanwhile, was cast as a predator and cynical “lesbian activist.”

Other anti-gay organizations have also been implicated in the kidnapping case. An FBI investigation revealed that Miller fled with considerable support from an employee and benefactor of Liberty University and Liberty Counsel, which provided for Miller’s legal defense.

Ron Paul’s Iowa State Director Is Also A Leading Anti-Gay Extremist

Michael Heath, State Director of the Ron Paul for President Campaign in Iowa.

This guy: Michael Heath. He’s the former director of the Christian Civic League of Maine, who resigned in 2009 because he was too much of a “lightning rod” when anti-gay activists began gearing up to repeal the recently-passed marriage equality bill. In 2008, Heath had blamed the economic crisis on “America’s sinful sexual culture, including the acceptance of gay unions.” In 2010, Peter LaBarbera announced that Heath would serve as board chairman for LaBarbera’s Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, just one of a small handful of groups identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-gay hate group. Last September, he joined the Ron Paul campaign in Iowa as that state’s director. (The announcement is dated November 16, although the news was picked up two month earlier.)

[via Warren Throckmorton]

Paul Unendorsed

Image of one of the Ron Paul's newsletters equating "Sodomy = Death." Note the following paragraph talking about Ron Paul's former membership in the Episcopal Church, written in the first person. (Click to see the entire page as a PDF from The New Republic.)

Not all Paulistas are putting their hands to their ears and shouting lalalalalalalala as loudly as possible over the incendiary racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic newsletters that went out under his name and with his active promotion for most of a decade. Andrew Sullivan endorsed Rep. Ron Paul for the GOP presidential nomination because of his economic libertarianism and his refusal to support unnecessary foreign wars. Sullivan knew about those newsletters at the time, having read about them when they first came to light in 2008. But now Sullivan said that he sat down and re-read those newsletters again and decided that their existence makes Paul ineligible for the Presidency:

It seems to me that even though I don’t believe these old screeds reflect Paul’s own beliefs, his new level of prominence demands a new level of accountability, even on issues this old. If Paul did not write these newsletters, then he has an obligation to say if he knew who did, or conduct an investigation. He has had years to do this, and hasn’t. And here’s what you’ve persuaded me of in the last few days: a person who has that kind of bigotry directly printed under his name without a clear empirical explanation of why he is innocent cannot be an honorable president of the United States. The hatred of groups of people in those letters – however gussied up by shards of legitimate arguments – is too deep and vile to be attached to a leader of the entire country. It is far too divisive. The appearance of things matters; and until Paul explains why this appears so horrible, he cannot shrug off the burden of proof.

…the words and sentiments in those newsletters cannot attach themselves – even by mere appearance – to a potential president of this country. I see that now. Maybe my admiration for Paul’s courage and his extraordinary resistance to the authoritarianism and intolerance in his own party blinded me to this. But you can’t be both the solution and the problem. And so, until Paul fully explains this incident, in the kind of way Michael Tomasky recommends, I have to say there is an alternative, as I described at length in the endorsement: Jon Huntsman. He’s what my super-ego tells me is the right choice. My id remains with Ron. But I write with the rational part of my brain, or at least I try to.

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, December 27

TODAY IN HISTORY:
“An Evil Force In Our Land”: 1708. That was a sermon against “sodomites” delivered by a British preacher, according to historian Rictor Norton:

The Societies for Reformation of Manners was founded in 1690 and there were about twenty such Societies by 1701. They aimed to clean up public vice, and focused particularly upon prostitution. The leader of the Societies, Reverend Bray, was obsessed with sodomy, which he called “an evil force invading our land” in the sermon he preached at St Mary’s Le Bow before the Societies for Reformation of Manners on 27 December 1708. Bray directed several raids from 1707 through 1709, in association with Constables who were themselves members of the Societies. By their annual meeting in 1710 they were able to boast that by their means “our streets have been very much cleansed from the lewd night-walkers and most detestable sodomites.” Our knowledge about the homosexual subculture of London at that time is exactly coterminous with the investigations of the Societies for Reformation of Manners. It is not accurate to say that the gay subculture was “born” at that time, only that it was “uncovered” by these campaigning moralists.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

Appellant in Lawrence v. Texas Dies

John Lawrence (left) and Tyrone Garner (right)

John Lawrence, memorialized as the appellant in the landmark Lawrence v. Texas ruling which invalidated state anti-sodomy laws nationwide, died last month at the age of 68. His death came to light when his lawyers tried to reach him for an invitation to an event commemorating the Supreme Court decision. He died on November 20, according to his partner, of heart disease. The New York Times has a very informative obituary:

Mr. Lawrence attended the Supreme Court argument in his case, his lawyers recalled, mingling with the people who had waited in line all night to see it, alive with excitement, pride and a sense of history. “He was willing to be the real-life face of injustice,” Mr. Katine said.

Mr. Lawrence reflected on his case years later in an interview with Professor Carpenter. “Why should there be a law passed that only prosecutes certain people?” he asked. “Why build a law that only says, ‘Because you’re a gay man you can’t do this. But because you’re a heterosexual, you can do the same thing’?”

Tyrone Garner, who was also arrested at the same time as Lawrence, passed away in 2006.

Blogging Difficulties

Our phone company was bought by CenturyLink a while ago, and today I am experiencing an incapacitating internet outage at home. After 90 minutes of trying, I finally reached someone in tech support after having five previous calls routed to a dial tone. The lovely lady was convinced the problem was in my computer. After spending twenty minutes with me trying to prove there was nothing wrong on their end, she received a message notifying her that there was an outage throughout the 520 area code and that they “just now” found out about it? Really? Just now? Could that be because anytime someone tried to call tech support, their call got routed to a busy signal?

So now I’m blogging from a coffee shop, which definitely cuts down on my productivity.

Ron Paul’s Name

Americans have an incredibly short attention span. One would imagine the public’s latest outrage was over a recent discovery of a tranche of Ron Paul’s racist and homophobic newsletters written from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. The problem, though, is that while the renewed outrage may be recent, the discovery wasn’t. Many of those newsletters came to light the last time he ran for president, just short of four years ago. The New Republic, which broke the story in 2008, has an updated rundown on just what some of those reprehensible ideas were:

Gays

The December 1989 Ron Paul Political Report contains entries on a “new form of racial terrorism,” cites former Congressman Bill Dannemeyer’s claim that “the average homosexual has 1,000 or more partners in a lifetime,” and quotes Lew Rockwell, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, in the third person.

In January 1990, the Ron Paul Political Report cites “a well-known libertarian editor” who “told me: ‘The ACT-UP slogan on stickers plastered all over Manhattan is ‘Silence=Death.’ But shouldn’t it be Sodomy = Death’?”

The September 1994 issue of the Ron Paul Survival Report states that “those who don’t commit sodomy, who don’t get blood a transfusion, and who don’t swap needles, are virtually assured of not getting AIDS unless they are deliberately infected by a malicious gay.”

The June 1990 issue of the Political Report says: “I miss the closet. Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities.”

A January 1994 edition of the Survival Report states that “gays in San Francisco do not obey the dictates of good sense,” adding: “[T]hese men don’t really see a reason to live past their fifties. They are not married, they have no children, and their lives are centered on new sexual partners.” Also, “they enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick.”

Those links go directly to the PDF’s of the newsletters in question. And those quote are just a selection of some of the anti-gay rants found in his newsletters. They don’t even touch on the racist and anti-Semitic ramblings and the strange conspiracy theories which were the heart of his newsletters. The 2008 outrage lasted, I think, a week or two, and then Ron Paul’s supporters found a way to shrug it off, pretty much as Ron Paul himself did:

Ron Paul released a very brief statement claiming that he was acting something like an absentee landlord with regard to those now-infamous newsletters:

When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine full-time, a newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have publicly taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.

And that was that. Except that I really haven’t seen him take “moral responsibility,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. He didn’t explain how it came to be that those newsletters with his name emblazoned across the top — some of which raised money for his political campaigns when he decided to re-enter politics — came attached to such reprehensible ideas, other than to just say he didn’t write them. Which is a different story from the one he offered in 1995, when those newsletters, still fresh from the press, became a campaign issue in his run for Congress:

Paul, a Republican obstetrician from Surfside, said Wednesday he opposes racism and that his written commentaries about blacks came in the context of “current events and statistical reports of the time.” … A campaign spokesman for Paul said statements about the fear of black males mirror pronouncements by black leaders such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who has decried the spread of urban crime. Paul continues to write the newsletter for an undisclosed number of subscribers, the spokesman said.

In this 1995 video, Ron Paul talks about his newsletters with a certain pride in ownership:

Here, we see a politician who was not particularly worried about how the themes of his newsletter would play out with his constituents. And he apparently knew his constituents well; he won his seat for Congress.

But now that he’s running for President with a new constituency he needs to convince, the 1995 explanation won’t wash. So today, this is what he’s saying:

“Why don’t you go back and look at what I said yesterday on CNN and what I’ve said for 20-something years, 22 years ago?” Paul said on CNN Wednesday. “I didn’t write them. I disavow them. That’s it.”

Unfortunately, he didn’t CC his Iowa campaign chairman with his new line:

However, Ivers said, Paul does not deny or retract material that Paul has written under his own signature, such as the letter promoting Paul’s newsletters.

When asked whether that meant Paul believed there was a government conspiracy to cover up the impact of AIDS, Ivers said, “I don’t think he embraces that.”

Paul’s newsletters “showed good factual information and investment information,” Ivers said. “It was a public service, helping people understand and equip them to avoid an unsound monetary policy.”

All of this leaves us with just a few possibilities, with only one of them potentially positive from Paul’s point of view. The first possibility to consider is that he is saying today: that he really didn’t write them, and that his role was that of an absent landlord. The problem with that, however, is that those racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic conspiracies found a home in his newsletters for more than a decade. They weren’t just a rare escape of  an editor’s notice. And that presents a significant problem. Paul is running as a different kind of politician, and he asks us to accept him as a man of his word. But which word is he a man of? Do we trust his word today where he claims not to have any connection with those newsletters which provided such a financial benefit to him? Do we trust his word in 1995 when he promoted those newsletters? Or do we trust what was presented as his word in those newsletters — with his good name across the top and, in some cases, a likeness of his signature below? If you’re running as a man of his word, the last thing you want is for your audience to constantly ask themselves, “Which word?”

The second possibility is even worse. Some have suggested that Paul was aware of the content of those newsletters, but that he didn’t necessarily agree with the content. According to this theory, he stuck with it because it was both a good campaign strategy and a good money raiser.  Michael Brendan Dougherty considers that possibility:

At that time a libertarian theorist, Murray Rothbard argued that libertarians ought to engage in “Outreach to the Rednecks” in order to insert their libertarian theories into the middle of the nation’s political passions. …As crazy as it sounds, Ron Paul’s newsletter writers may not have been sincerely racist at all. They actually thought appearing to be racist was a good political strategy in the 1990s. After that strategy yielded almost nothing — it was abandoned by Paul’s admirers. You can attribute their “redneck strategy” to the most malignant kind of cynicism or to a political desperation that made them insane.

If that’s true, then it betrays exactly the kind of cynicism that Paul claims to be running against, and turns the entire mess into an indictment of his character. A cynical politician is hardly shocking, sure, but it certainly says something when a man, who claims to stand on principle regardless of that principle’s popularity, decides to adopt a different set of principles solely for political and financial advantage. This is a worse problem than the first possibility. As much as you don’t want to have to ask, “Which word?”, you definitely don’t want to have to ask, “Which principle?”

And this leaves us with the third possibility: that he was aware of those newsletters and let them go out under his name because they did reflect his views at the time. This possibility at least has the benefit of restoring his integrity. First, it would mean that he was a man of his word then, and it would mean that he’s a man of his word now. And his word now would demonstrate that he is someone who is capable of changing and adapting his views over time. After all, Rep. Paul did vote to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and told one GOP debate audience that “heterosexuals are causing more trouble than gays” in the military. But that’s a far cry from what we see in those newsletters, and it would show an evolution which his supporters could take comfort in.

The problem with that possibility though is that it’s not the one Paul is running on. He’s running on the first one. And yet, he still wants us to believe that he is a man of principle and a man of his word, while also expecting us to swallow the corollary  that he was extremely reckless with what was associated with his good name.

I can’t accept that, and no one else should either. Every time I write something with my name on it, you can be sure that it reflects my opinion and understanding at the time that I write it, however flawed and poorly spelled it may be. You can count on it because my name is firmly attached. I can always change my mind later about an opinion I’ve held, I can always retract when I’m convinced that I’m wrong, and I can always apologize when I offend.

But one thing I can never do as a blogger (which is the 2011 equivalent of writing a newsletter, after all) is run away from my name. And when it comes to voting for president, I would expect that the candidate I support has at least as much integrity as a blogger.

NOM’s Christmas Gift: Deepening Desperation

NOM reports that 61% of New Hampshire voters want to repeal the state’s recognition of same-sex marriage. Disappointing, but we have to remember that even this represents progress when compared to public sentiment a decade ago, so —

Wait, hold on, let me check…

So sorry. My mistake. NOM is reporting that 60% of New Hampshire Republicans want to repeal same-sex marriage.

Only 60%.

Of Republicans.

I’m thrilled with that number. And NOM’s happy about it, too?  That’s quite revealing. Apparently they’ve set themselves a new, lower threshold for what constitutes good news. Perhaps something like:

Yay! Our base is merely eroding quickly rather than extremely quickly.

Or:

Hoorah! 61% of the most conservative 28% of New Hampshire voters haven’t abandoned us yet!

Or:

Yippee! Because, well…yippee!

Actually, they think of it like this, spinning the result in a fashion that blows away any attempt to parody it.

“With more than 3 out of 5 New Hampshire Primary voters favoring the restoration of marriage, the verdict is in: Republicans are united in the fight against the national agenda of wealthy, gay marriage lobbyists,” said Jason Rose of the July Fourth Forum PAC.

Emphasis added.  Anyway, Merry Christmas.  From NOM.

The Daily Agenda for Monday, December 26

TODAY IN HISTORY:
Body Build of Male Homosexuals: 1959. In many ways, just about everyone (including most of the mental health community) saw gay people, particularly gay men, as being so alien as to almost constitute a different species. Well, maybe not a different species literally, but for some, gay men were at least some sort of a mutation of homo sapiens, and were not like just any common man on the street. On December 26, 1959, the august British Medical Journal published a short paper by Dr. A.J. Coppen, of the Institute of Psychiatry in London who believed that he had proven, on the basis of physical measurements of just thirty-one gay men, that there was a distinct body build associated with homosexuality in men — and it was the same body build associated with mental patients.

He came to this determination by measuring the shoulders and hips of three groups of people. “The homosexual group,” he wrote, “consisted of 31 patients who had been either exclusively homosexual or predominantly homosexual, with only occasional heterosexual activity. The patients had attended the Maudsley Hospital primarily for homosexuality; the majority had been referred from the courts after they had been convicted of homosexual offences.” Because a number of them had “psychiatric symptoms” of “mainly depression or anxiety” (is there any wonder?), he included “another control group of 22 heterosexual neurotics, … as any differences found in the homosexuals may be related to the differences widely reported in psychiatric patients rather than to their specific sexual abnormalities.” The third group, a control group, consisted of 53 members of a business organization “who were attending for mass radiography,” and who agreed to be part of the study.

For all three groups, they measured around their shoulders (biacromial) and hips (bi-illiac), calculated an equivalent diameter (he doesn’t say how), and used those measurements to determine what was called an “androgyny score” (3 x biacromial – x bi-iliac diameters, in cm.). And with those measurements, Coppen found:

The results show that homosexuals have a decreased androgyny score and biacromial diameter compared with the control group. This difference, however, is not specific for homosexuality, as the neurotic patients in this study also differ from the controls to approximately the same extent as regards both androgyny and biacromial width. The androgyny score does not discriminate between homosexuals and controls better than does the biacromial diameter, though, as the Chart shows, three homosexual patients have very low androgyny scores, outside the range of the other two groups. It appears, therefore, that homosexuals are similar to people with other psychiatric disorders in having decreased breadth measurements, but that their sexual abnormality is not specifically related to these. Rather it seems that the homosexual is influenced by the similar (unknown) factors that produce the abnormalities in body-build found in other psychiatric patients.

This article from 1959 is an interesting holdover from an early path of investigation that is reminiscent of nineteenth-century Phrenology. That discarded science is perhaps best known today for its busts and diagrams of human skulls with dotted outlines of areas denoted with labels like “Friendship” or “Adhesiveness.” Phrenologists believed that different areas of the brain consisted of “organs” relating to different character traits. Early on, they also believed that it was possible to determine the different developmental levels of these “organs” by relating them to the shape of an individuals skull with its various bumps and bulges. That last theory was soon discarded, but the idea that an individual’s character traits could somehow be imprinted on that person’s physical development was firmly established in the scientific imagination. The appearance of children with Down’s Syndrome, of course, only seemed to confirm the theory. Texts on homosexuality through the 1950s often had several paragraphs dwelling on the physical characteristics of their study subjects, and some even included nude photos to demonstrate how “feminine” some of the subjects were.

By the 1950s, those descriptions had mostly disappeared from the literature, which make this 1959 article something of an interesting anachronism. But today, with researchers now investigating the connection between body-build, body self-image, and health factors in our body-conscious society, some of those physical descriptions and measurements are starting to make a comeback.  Nude pictures, however, have not re-appeared in the professional literature.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. Don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).

And feel free to consider this your open thread for the day. What’s happening in your world?

Merry Christmas

The Daily Agenda for Christmas Day

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY:
Quentin Crisp: 1908. He was always effeminate, going back to when he was the object of endless teasing in elementary school. In 1926, he studied journalism at King’s College London, but switched to art at Regent Street Polytechnic. He also visited the cafes and pubs of Soho’s Old Compton Street, which is still the heart of the gay community in London. It was then that he decided that his life’s work would be “making the existence of homosexuality abundantly clear to the world’s aborigines,” and he did so by developing the flamboyant style that would become his signature. When World War II broke out, he tried to join the Army, but was rejected on medical grounds — “sexual perversion” was the diagnosis. He remained in London during the Blitz, and placed himself at the service of American G.I.’s, so to speak. That’s where Crisp picked up his love for all things American.

In 1968, he achieved success with his third book, an autobiography he titled The Naked Civil Servant. The title referred to his working as a paid nude model for government-supported art schools. He quipped that being an life model “was like being a civil servant, except that you were naked.” The book at first didn’t sell well, but it led to a documentary in which he talked about his life while sitting in his flat filing his nails. That documentary eventually led to the 1975 television adaptation of The Naked Civil Servant, featuring John Hurt as Crisp. That launched a second career for Crisp as professional raconteur and lecturer. He toured Britain with his one man show, and moved to New York permanently in 1981, fulfilling a longtime dream. Before moving to the States, he was reportedly asked at the US Embassy in London if he were a practicing homosexual. He replied, “I didn’t practice. I was already perfect.” But his sharp-tongued wit also got him in trouble. During the early years of the AIDS crisis, he recklessly quipped that AIDS was a “fad.” He made a pact with a New York performance artist named Penny Arcade that he would live to be a hundred years old, with a decade off for good behavior. He died just one month before his 91st birthday.