The Dish

Here’s a roster of the people whom Fidel Castro now has arrested for political opposition. You know. Fidel Castro. Socialite friend of Graydon Carter, Leslie Moonves, Oliver Stone, and on and on. (Thanks to Matthew Hoy’s superb blog.)

The good buddy of the Holy Father, Tariq Aziz, a man who abetted the torture and murder of countless innocents, has finally been brought to justice. Meanwhile, Garner promises an interim authority by next week, which I take as a preliminary indication that the Pentagon is winning the battle for influence over State. At the same time, Garner has ruled Chalabi out as leader, which might indicate the opposite. But since Chalabi has never proposed being leader, this seems superfluous news. Impossible to read from this distance, but I see no real problem with various U.S. factions interplaying with various Iraqi factions to grope toward some kind of new leadership. That’s how these things emerge; too much control is as dangerous as too little. But one thing I can tell from this end is that the media has been waging an almost incessant campaign of character assassination against Chalabi, especially in Howell Raines’ newspaper. Hitch has caught on to this, although it certainly doesn’t require much brilliance to figure it out. Why such contempt? The more I see it, the more inclined I am to think that Chalabi, about whom I confess I know little, is obviously a good thing.

GALLOWAY ON THE GALLOWS: Maybe the American press will begin to cover this story properly now. The Christian Science Monitor has become the second news organization to find documents that indicate that Saddam authorized huge pay-offs to the major anti-war leader in Britain, George Galloway. This time the sums are even more staggering, totalling $10 million in almost three years:

The three most recent payment authorizations, beginning on April 4, 2000, and ending on January 14, 2003 are for $3 million each. All three authorizations include statements that show the Iraqi leadership’s strong political motivation in paying Galloway for his vociferous opposition to US and British plans to invade Iraq. The Jan. 14, 2003, document, written on Republican Guard stationary with its Iraqi eagle and “Trust in Allah,” calls for the “Manager of the security department, in the name of President Saddam Hussein, to order a gratuity to be issued to Mr. George Galloway of British nationality in the amount of three million dollars only.” The document states that the money is in return for “his courageous and daring stands against the enemies of Iraq, like Blair, the British Prime Minister, and for his opposition in the House of Commons and Lords against all outrageous lies against our patient people…” … An Iraqi general attached to Hussein’s Republican Guard discovered the documents in a house in the Baghdad suburbs used by Qusay, who is chief of Iraq’s elite Guard units.

If you want further evidence that Galloway is guilty, here’s a piece by Scott Ritter, defending him. I wonder if Galloway will decide to sue the Telegraph now, after all. And I wonder if the anti-war movement could be more damaged. (The news is also retroactively embarrassing for Diane Sawyer, who cited Galloway as emblematic of British anti-war sentiment earlier this year.) When I first mentioned the possibility of a fifth column, I presumed it would be fueled by ideological fervor. I didn’t contemplate it could be fueled by the mighty dollar. You’ve got to love these Marxists, don’t you?

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “In high school, I had to worry about nosy parents barging in if I was with a girl in my room. In college, I sometimes fear an overzealous roommate who forgets to knock when I am getting my game on. And now, according to Rick Santorum, when I graduate in May, I should have to worry about cops banging down my door if I am getting (or giving) head. Perhaps I’ll stay another year in school. And never, ever, vote Republican.” – just one email from over 1500 now edited on the Letters Page.

Okay, so it’s ironic that Madame Chirac might have stolen a rug that wasn’t hers’. But it stretches irony to new levels to find out it’s actually Nazi loot stolen from murdered Jewish families. Oh, France. Could it get any more, well, French?

YELLOW PERIL: One good reason to be glad you don’t live in Cameroon.

CHUTZPAH AWARD: The BBC head accuses the U.S. media of right-wing bias. Who does he think he is, Howell Raines?

A somewhat typical email I have received this last week:

I was raised during the ’80s in the midwest in a moderately Republican family. Conservative enough, but not rabidly so. Anyway, after the brief fliration with leftism that’s obligatory for all normal people in their early ’20s, I eventually drifted back to the GOP. That was until I met my wife … let me add my black Democrat wife. She thought I was insane when I told her what my affiliation was; she herself was pretty traditional, but couldn’t countenance how any decent person could belong to that party. I defended my affiliation strongly; I told her that the GOP had finally come around. It was enlightened enough to believe that limited government and free markets were good, that morals should be traditional but that one could be gay but still be sober, hard-working and responsible; but most importantly that those principles had gradually overcome whatever residual racism and religious extremism that may still have existed.-Whatever, she said; just you wait and see. After having been with her for seven years, and having gotten too many dirty glares during both our trips together to Texas, I finally had to give it all up earlier this year.-I defended Bush and the party as best I could, even during the Bob Jones fiasco, Bush’s statement that the unsaved don’t get into heaven, and his mocking of Karla Tucker. However, the Trent Lott episode finally did me in. Of course Bush told him to step down, but clandestinely so. However, there has been no denunciation over Santorum’s remarks from the White House yet, nor will there be anytime soon.-I know there are plenty of intelligent, open-minded people in the party, and that they’re fighting the good fight. However, I cannot, on principle, belong to a party that still has someone as high up as Santorum believing and saying the things he does. I refuse to support an organization that pursues American economic and military hegemony overseas in the name of freedom, but will not disown the most reactionary of social principles at home. I will never be a Democrat, but I’m afraid that only my (bi-racial and possibly gay, as my wife has a late gay uncle) great-grandchildren will be secure in a credible Republican party.

I hope Marc Racicot understands why so many want to support this party, but, under the current circumstances, simply cannot. I hope the president does too. People like Santorum and Lott are a big part of the reason. They make tolerant people who support Republicans look like fools.

The first Senate Republican repudiation of Senator Santorum’s disgraceful comments about gay people’s relationships emerged today. Here’s Snowe: “Discrimination and bigotry have no place in our society, and I believe Senator Santorum’s unfortunate remarks undermine Republican principles of inclusion and opportunity.” You can say that again. But Chafee gets the real issue, which is not about gays as such, but about privacy and the power of government to police everyone’s bedrooms: “I thought his choice of comparisons was unfortunate and the premise that the right of privacy does not exist – just plain wrong. Senator Santorum’s views are not held by this Republican and many others in our party.” What a relief that some leaders are prepared to take this extremism on. And what does it say about the president and Bill Frist that they won’t?

KURTZ PUNTS: Stanely Kurtz’s critique of the New York Times’ coverage and defense of the “slippery slope” argument in terms of constitutional law are completely fair enough (even though I disagree). But they are not the point. Stanley simply ignores the implications of Santorum’s full comments, which clearly place Santorum in the position of believing that homosexual relationships should be criminalized, as well as equating homosexuality with child abuse and bestiality. Santorum’s full remarks reveal exactly that. Why does Stanley ignore what is clearly in the public record? Why is it up to decent Republicans like Tony Blankley and Jonah Goldberg to state the obvious? The answer is that many establishment Republicans believe that the criminalization of private gay sex is a legitimate position, even when they personally disagree with it. That’s how close they are to the fundamentalist right. That’s how little they care about individual liberties. I guess, as so many gloating liberals have emailed me to point out, I have been incredibly naive. I expected a basic level of respect for gay people from civilized conservatives. I’ve always taken the view that there are legitimate arguments about such issues as marriage rights or military service and so on; and that fair-minded people can disagree. And, of course, there are many fair-minded people among Republicans and conservatives who do not agree with Santorum, and I am heartened by their support, especially the Republican Unity Coalition and Marc Racicot, RNC head. But something this basic as the freedom to be left alone in own’s own home is something I naively assumed conservatives would obviously endorse – even for dispensable minorities like homosexuals. I was wrong. The conclusions to be drawn are obvious.

The blog today is again devoted to the now-amplified comments of the third leading Republican in the Senate. I make no apologies for this. This is not about homosexuality as such. It is about the principles of limited government, tolerance, civility, compassion and the soul of the Republican party. There are no deeper political issues. No war is worth fighting if our political leaders feel contempt for basic liberties at home. I realized this more profoundly after reading Santorum’s full remarks, which are far more alarming than the small, doctored quote that created the immediate fuss. If you care about basic liberties in the privacy of your own home, read Santorum’s attack on them, my arguments below, and make your own mind up. My own position is similar to this reader’s:

As a Christian, a conservative, and a registered Republican, I am shocked and appalled (well, maybe appalled and a little less shocked than I’d like to be) at Senator Santorum’s comments. I cannot believe that this is what passes for conservative thought these days. I was raised a conservative by two very conservative parents who always told me that they were conservative because they didn’t like the government telling them what they could and could not do, especially in the privacy of their own home. Being a conservative always seemed to be about individual freedom and liberty to them, and it is one of the things that has led me back to conservatism after a brief (and fictitious, ultimately) hiatus somewhere left of center. Now, I feel ashamed to be a registered Republican and am beginning to regret that post-9/11 moment when I decided that the Republican party was dead right on international and foreign affairs and headed in the right direction on domestic issues, headed back to their conservative roots on issues such as these sodomy laws. To deny those who might choose, as free adults, in the privacy of their own home, to engage in behavior that is opposed to another’s morality, whether they are heterosexual or homosexual, is repugnant to my notions of conservatism. If Santorum is somehow representative of what is conservatism in the United States today, then I say no thank you to it.

Me too.

There are a couple of points about the Santorum controversy that are worth re-examining. The first is his problem with the Constitutional right to privacy. As I said yesterday, this is a perfectly respectable position, and one with which I have some sympathy. My preference would be for Texas voters to throw out this invasive and discriminatory law. My second choice would be for the Court to strike down the law on the grounds of equal protection, in as much as it criminalizes the same “offense” for one group of people (gays) but not for another (straights). But as a simple matter of constitutional fact, the right to privacy is very well entrenched. More to the point, one critical precedent for it, as Santorum concedes, is the Griswold ruling, protecting couples from state interference in their use of contraception. Now what is the real difference – in Santorum’s moral universe – between contraception and non-procreative sex, i.e. sodomy? I don’t see any myself. From a Catholic viewpoint, they are morally indistinguishable. So the question emerges: if Santorum believes, for religious reasons, that people should be jailed for private gay sex, why does he not think people should be jailed for the use of contraception? If his goal, for civil reasons, is “strong, healthy families,” then contraception might even be more problematic than gay sex. It actually prevents heterosexuals from forming families at all. Does Santorum therefore endorse making contraception illegal? Would he allow the cops to police this in people’s bedrooms? Will anyone ask him these obvious questions? Of course not.

SLIPPERY, SLIPPERY: The second issue is whether his point about a “slippery slope” from non-procreative sex to incest to polygamy, and so on, is valid. Where do we draw the line in policing private sexual behavior? My golden rule in matters of limited government is an old and simple one. It is that people should be free to do within their own homes anything they want to, as long as it is consensual, adult and doesn’t harm anyone else. Bigamy and polygamy are therefore irrelevant here. Bigamy means being married to more than one woman; polygamy, likewise, means being married to more than two women. There’s nothing inconsistent between saying you don’t want such marriages to be legal (I don’t) and also saying that what people do sexually in their own homes should be their own business, and not the government’s. Do I think it should be a crime for a man to have sex with two women at once? Or an orgy? Nope. It’s none of mine or the state’s business. And that applies to having live-in long-term girlfriends, or any other type of consenting private relationship people might want. The only relevant issue is if a child – an involuntary participant in this private set-up – is the result of such relationships, in which case, we have another party involved, who might be harmed in some way. (This is also, for many, the issue with abortion and privacy.) That changes the equation, and makes some state interference defensible. Incest is more complicated, but it also fails the test because it involves the possibility of a child, in this case subject to physical problems as well as severe emotional ones. What these cases show is that the state’s interest in policing private sex should only be related, and then only at some considerable distance, to the protection of children. But all this shows is that the case of private gay sex is perhaps the relationship that the government should be least concerned about. Why? Because it’s the one least likely to involve children. In fact, as a sexual act, it’s the only one that will never lead to children. So why, one wonders, is it the relationship that Santorum most wants to police? Hmmm.

CRIMINALIZING ADULTERY? Now let me turn the slippery slope argument around. Santorum argues that I should be jailed for having private consensual sex with my boyfriend in my own home. (He lets it slip at the end of the interview when he says: ” If New York doesn’t want sodomy laws, if the people of New York want abortion, fine. I mean, I wouldn’t agree with it, but that’s their right…” [My italics.]) Why does he believe this? Because, somehow, my relationship prevents others from forming “strong, healthy families.” I have no idea how my relationship has such a bad effect on others – but leave that for a moment. If that is the criterion for the government to police our bedrooms, then why should not adultery be criminal? It has a far, far more direct effect on “strong, healthy families”. It’s far, far more common than gay sex – hurts children, destroys families, wounds women, and on and on. To argue that gay sex should be illegal but adultery shouldn’t be, makes no sense at all. Again, Santorum must be asked if he believes adultery should be criminalized. Will anyone ask that? Not on Fox News.

Which gets us to the question of bigotry. I hate this term; and very rarely use it. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. If you care to, read Santorum’s full remarks again. When you do, you begin to understand why he was the protege of Trent Lott. His first comments about homosexuals relate to the recent crisis in the Catholic Church:

In this case, what we’re talking about, basically, is priests who were having sexual relations with post-pubescent men. We’re not talking about priests with 3-year-olds, or 5-year-olds. We’re talking about a basic homosexual relationship. Which, again, according to the world view sense is a a perfectly fine relationship as long as it’s consensual between people.

“Post-pubescent men.” What a bizarre term. They were minors! Doesn’t that make a difference? In fact, isn’t their being under-age the entire criminal issue here? Not to Santorum. In his view, the abuse of minors is a “basic homosexual relationship.” In this quote, Santorum conflates the abuse of minors with adult homosexual relationships. He calls every homosexual in a relationship the equivalent of a child-molester. That is a despicable charge and Santorum must withdraw it. For good measure, Santorum then equates any same-sex relationships – faithful or unfaithful – with adultery. Subsequently, his attention wanders onto marriage where he opines:

In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing.

Here, homosexual relationships are associated with bestiality and – again – child abuse. (In the sentence beginning, “It’s not, you know, man on child, …” the “It’s” clearly refers to marriage, not homosexuality. The referent is picked up again with: “It [i.e. marriage] is one thing.”)

YOU DECIDE: Santorum, of course, doesn’t believe he’s prejudiced against gay people. I wonder if he knows any, or any work for him, or have ever worked for him. He claims his remarks are only pertinent to the Texas case before the Supreme Court. That’s a lie, as anyone reading the transcript can attest. He further says he has nothing against homosexuals, except that if they ever want to express their homosexuality in an actual intimate and physical love, it’s the equivalent of molesting a child or having sex with a dog, and they should be put in jail for it. That’s what the Christian far-right means by “compassion.” In the abstract, I suppose you could argue that if you have no problems with celibate homosexuals, then you’re not a homophobe. Some saintly people might fall into that category, and I wouldn’t like to say it isn’t possible. But in practice, I’m really not so sure. It’s hard to find the right analogy, but it’s not that far from saying that you have nothing against Jews, as long as they go to Church each Sunday. (Which was, of course, the Catholic position for a very long time.) Worse actually. It’s like saying that, even if Jews practised their religion at home, in private, they could still be arrested for undermining the social order. Their very persistence in their identity – which harms and could harm no-one else – is a threat. Do you think someone who said that would remain a leading pillar of the Republican Party?

It behooves me to mention William F Buckley’s recent National Review column where he seems, in his usual elegant fashion, to side against sodomy laws. Good for WFB. (He tries to imply, however, that the Texas case was a set-up by pro-gay advocates looking for a test case. In fact, the arrests were the result of a malicious neighbor with a grudge against the couple.) Buckley has true conservative principles, of course. And he has a long history of defending private consensual adult behavior in which neither party is harmed. His critical sentence is: “The Texas law says that gays cannot do what non-gays can do, and the facts of the matter weigh against Texas.” Exactly. Santorum avoids that issue entirely, and seems to know next to nothing about the Texas case. The real question for Santorum is whether he supports the enforcement of sodomy laws for straights. I presume he does. After all, if you’re really interested in maintaining public morality and strong families, why would you allow sodomy for straights (for whom it is a choice over reproductive sex) and ban it for gays (who couldn’t reproduce or have biological children if they tried.) Think about that: the number three Republican senator wants to allow the cops to police the bedrooms of straight couples to make sure there aren’t any blowjobs. That’s how far out there he is. The rest of the GOP is maintaining silence. Thanks, guys. We get the message. As one reader put it, “I was warming to the Republicans over Iraq. But statements like these have me running back to the Democrats.” I can fully see why.

Good for Romesh Ponnuru, who at least manages to say something about Santorum. But then he says that I’m exaggerating. Ponnuru should become a lawyer his parsing of Santorum’s comments are so, well, fine. Ponnuru says that all Santorumm is saying is that no courts should stop people from selectively (or even unselectively) enforcing sodomy laws and that there’s no “valid moral principle that prohibits the governmental policing of consensual sexual behavior.” That, according to Ponnuru, isn’t radical or extreme at all. I guess that depends what you mean by moral or valid. Could there be such a “valid, moral” principle barring the state from arresting people in their own homes for consensual sex? How about the dignity and freedom of the human person – that he or she should be allowed a zone of privacy, especially in sexual affairs, that is immune from government intervention? Does Ponnuru think that moral case is invalid?

THE BACK-FLIP: But then he contradicts himself by conceding that Santorum – as a simple practical, empirical matter, regardless of any such “valid moral principles” – supports anti-sodomy laws. Ponnuru disagrees with Santorum on this: “Wrong, Santorum may be. I think he is wrong on the question of whether states should ban sodomy.” Ponnuru lets Santorum off the hook because he doesn’t see any evidence of Santorum wanting the laws enforced. Don’t you love this new conservative approach to the law – that it can be ignored if necessary? I don’t remember them making that argument during president Clinton’s impeachment. But the real problem is deeper. Like so many other conservatives, Ponnuru stays mum on the question of sodomy laws except deep in a defense of someone attacking them. But if National Review had a shred of consistency in its own arguments, it would take on sodomy laws as a matter of conservative principle. Even Stanley Kurtz opposes them. Even Bill Kristol. I’ve personally asked Kurtz several times to write about the subject. Silence. I’ve asked other conservative editorialists to do the same (those who agree with me on the subject). Silence. The best you can hope for is the Wall Street Journal referring to these laws as an “anachronism,” an anachronism that recently threw two people into jail. What exactly would it take to get conservatives to defend the principle of limited government and individual privacy? That it not involve any defense of homosexuals? Look at their defense of privacy when it comes to “outing” people. They have a fit (and rightly so) when some journalist dares ask questions about someone’s sexual orientation. But when the government comes crashing through someone’s bedroom door, they look politely the other way. Don’t they see how transparent their double standards are? Or do they only care about these issues when it could affect “someone like them”?

AVOIDANCE ISSUES: It seems to me that the genteel form of conservative obtuseness to homosexual dignity and freedom now comes in this form (these are, obviously, my words):

I don’t personally want to jail people for private sex; but as long as it’s homosexuals alone who are subject to this invasion of privacy, I’m not going to get too exercised about it. If I did, I’d upset a few of my friends on the far right, and, heavens, we cannot afford a real fight over this. And, anyway, they don’t enforce these laws, do they? Except when they do. They’re being abolished anyway. Why should I add my voice to a chorus that’s winning? And, (now talking to himself) isn’t good for the homosexuals to be just a little scared that they could get arrested? Deters a few. Sends the right message. Keeps them in their place, after all. Ensures that our public morality is, well, heterosexual. This is the status quo and it’s not too uncomfortable, is it? Well, I don’t find it uncomfortable. That Sullivan, fine fellow in some ways. What a pity he’s so obsessed by these personal issues. A few people’s lives ruined for doing something I’ve sometimes done with my girlfriend isn’t too high a price to pay for conservative unity, is it? It’s not as if there’s a valid moral principle involved here.

This is the voice of conservative excuse-making. It sickens me.