Civil Rights

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The times they are a-changin’

(with apologies to Bob Dylan)

I spent a lot of years in Virginia as those of you who follow my blog may remember and I still try to follow the politics there as best I can from a distance.  This morning I ran across an interesting story in today’s Washington Post about Creigh Deeds.  So I went to the local Richmond paper and could find nothing to confirm the Post story, but did find some new poll numbers which may help explain the new Deeds tactic.

In an August 5th story, my old friend Jeff Schapiro wrote for the Richmond Times-Dispatch

For the second time in as many weeks, a published poll is showing Republican Bob McDonnell with a double-digit lead for governor over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds.

Public Policy Polling yesterday put McDonnell ahead of Deeds, 51 percent to 37 percent. Four weeks ago, the Raleigh, N.C.-based survey group reported McDonnell leading Deeds, 49 percent to 43 percent.

The poll suggests that McDonnell, a former state attorney general, is getting a lift from pushback among Virginians to President Barack Obama. Though he carried the state last year, his popularity is falling, apparently because of skittishness over the economy.

Jeff goes on to quote another old friends (and dissertation advisor), Bob Holsworth

Regardless, the new poll could stir concerns among Democrats — even in the depths of summer, when many voters aren’t focusing on politics — that Deeds, a state senator from Bath County, is in trouble, said analyst Robert D. Holsworth.

“At the moment, Republicans are far more enthusiastic about this elections than Democrats,” Holsworth wrote yesterday on his blog, VirginiaTomorrow. com.

“I still think there is plenty of time for the Dems to recover. But pulling the covers over your head and pretending that it’s still yesterday rarely works. The Democrats will have to recognize that the climate this year is vastly different than 2001, 2005 and even 2008.”

There are issues with the way the polls were conducted using the telephone push one if you are for McDonnell, two for Deeds method, but putting that aside it is what Creigh Deeds is doing to catch up that is most interesting.  According to the Post

Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate R. Creigh Deeds will launch a campaign this week to portray his opponent’s longtime efforts to restrict abortion as out of the mainstream, a potentially risky strategy for a Democrat in the once solidly conservative state.

Deeds (Bath), a state senator who supports abortion rights, said he will join female supporters in Annandale on Monday for the first of three events across the state where he will argue that Republican Robert F. McDonnell devoted too much of his 17 years in public office working to limit access to abortions. McDonnell has said he is against abortion in every instance, including rape and incest, except when the life of the mother is in danger.

There was a time when the politcally correct thing to say about abortion rights if you were a Virginia Democrat was that abortion was legal and the decision was a personal one to be made between the woman, her family and her doctor.

The early statewide pitch by Deeds is a bold gamble that the demographics and politics of Virginia have shifted so quickly and decisively that raising a divisive issue such as abortion, which Republicans attempted to use to their advantage for much of this decade, is now favorable to Democrats. Although advocates on both sides of the issue rank Virginia as one of the more restrictive states on abortion, a Washington Post poll in September found that 60 percent of Virginia voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, a number that has not changed significantly in recent years.

Deeds’s strategy is a departure from the approach that worked for the state’s past two Democratic governors, who generally played down touchy social issues and focused instead on the issues they said voters cared about more: traffic, schools and other quality-of-life issues.

Deeds said it’s important for voters to be aware of McDonnell’s deep commitment to antiabortion causes. As an example, he pointed to a speech McDonnell delivered to the National Right to Life Committee in Arlington County last year, in which the then-attorney general saluted “all you pro-life warriors for Virginia for all you’ve done to turn Virginia around and make it a pro-life state.”

I hope this works to motivate Democrats and women to vote.  As Bob Holsworth says there is plenty of time.  The economy is turning around and this gamble may do the trick for Deeds.

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What Affirmative Action Means in Real Life

Sonia Sotomayor is now officially Justice Sotomayor.  She took the oath administered by Chief Justice John Robert a few minutes ago.

On Thursday afternoon when the Senate voted to confirm her, the newest Senator, Al Franken the former comedian from Minnesota, was presiding and announced the vote.  Is this a great country or what?

Anita Hill has a very interesting Op-Ed in today’s Boston Globe discussing the role of what she calls “educational democracy” played in Justice Sotomayor’s elevation to the Supreme Court.

A LATINA from a Bronx housing project is probably not what Woodrow Wilson envisioned when he called for “educational democracy’’ as president of Princeton University in 1910. Yet decades later, when Sonia Sotomayor ascended to the top of her class, his idea of an open and accessible university system was on its way to coming to fruition. In Wilson’s day, Princeton admitted no women and Wilson himself is said to have looked with disfavor on the admission of men of color. Nevertheless, educational reform was a springboard for his larger aims of social and political reform and his fight against “the rule of materialism in our national life.’’

Indeed, Wilson would have needed a high-definition crystal ball to foresee Sotomayor’s “incredible journey’’ to become an African-American president’s nominee to the Supreme Court. Yet, as a critical chapter in our country’s pursuit of educational equality, her story of hard work and high achievement is an extension of Wilson’s idea. She represents the positive change that can occur when social institutions – law and education in particular – shed their roles as tools for exclusion and open their doors to those previously barred. It took nearly 220 years for the first Latina justice to be appointed to the Supreme Court, but, in a country constitutionally committed to equal opportunity, it was inevitable.

It was under President Wilson that women gained the right to vote – a reward for suspending demonstrations for suffrage during World War I.  And I’ve always thought that Edith Wilson had influence here also even though I don’t believe that any historical facts have ever surfaced to proved this.

Hill goes on

Sotomayor is poised to prove that the social experiment of the 1970s built on the idea of educational democracy has, thus far, worked. For its full realization, President Obama must correct the documented shortcomings of public schools that weigh most heavily on poor and minority community schools. We can’t be satisfied with one Sonia Sotomayor when we have the potential for so many more. For now, with her confirmation as the first Latina and third woman on the Supreme Court, Obama has reminded us of what egalitarian ideals and the will to pursue them can accomplish.

I think Hill is right.  Educational democracy leads to a critical mass of women, African Americans, or other ethnic minorities ready to take on jobs and challenges that have not been open to them in the past.  This leads to a cascade of changes in our society such as the election of the first African American President. 

I think it is the loss of this exclusivity that has the white Republican men on the Senate Judiciary Committee so frightened.  Perhaps they have seen all along where affirmative action or educational democracy was going to lead and why they have been so opposed to change.  But that is probably giving them too much credit and they are just frightened of change that puts them in a position where they are no longer superior.  One where they have to share power and priviledge.

Congratuations, Justice Sotomayor!  And may the President’s next appointment be someone as wise as you.  Perhaps a wise Asian American man or woman or a wise African American woman.  Mary Frances Berry, anyone?

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Beer, Politics and Race

I ‘m going with Eric Asimov  from the New York Times on this one.  Today in his blog “The Pour” he wrote

I’ll tell you what I would have done if I were President Obama. First of all, I wouldn’t give anybody a choice. I’d throw political symbolism out the door. Then, I’d import a keg of Guinness Stout directly from Dublin, because the kegs from Ireland are simply superior to anything out of a bottle or can. Then I’d import a Dublin publican to serve the Guinness because drawing a proper pint is an art that requires vast experience.

Then, I’d sit ’em down at a bar (because I’d bring in the actual pub – this is the White House, it can do anything). “Gates, you, over there. Crowley, you, here. Sit. Publican, draw us some pints!’’

And as that smooth, deep, dark stout begins to pour forth, and the publican perhaps tells a few stories in his rich Irish brogue, a feeling of calm brotherhood settles over the room. You cannot fight over the first Guinness. Add in 10 more pints and a rugby match and you’ve got a riot. But a pint of Guinness in a Dublin bar at the White House? Skip? Jim? I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

In the end, the two of them will be doing ads for Guinness.

A possible site of the gathering between President Obama, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Sgt. James Crowley.

No, Gates and Crowley won’t be doing Guinness ads but I see a PBS special on racial profiling in their future.  Crowley is, as evidenced by his press conference after the event, is an articulate guy.

And what I really want to know if why no one offered to take Professor Gates’ and Sergeant Crowley’s jackets.  It is July in Washington.

By the way, I had a Harp – out of the bottle.

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Doing the Beer Run

Yesterday, amid all the release of the 911 tape, the radio chatter, and the arrest report (which appeared to show that the arrest report may not have been 100% accurate) came the big news :  The profiler, the profiled and the President will be having a beer and a chat at the White House on Thursday night.  I think this is an excellent thing and maybe some greater good will come out of it, if not for the country as a whole, but  for the City of Cambridge.  Perhaps Mayor Simmons can get Crowley and Gates to lead the public forum she is planning.

And according to Robert Gibbs’ discussion with a reporter at his briefing yesterday, he and the reporter will be doing the beer run.  This exchange reported in Politico.com

The planned reunion was the subject of light-hearted banter at Gibbs’ briefing on Monday:

Q: Okay. And another subject, Officer Crowley is drinking Blue Moon, we hear Professor Gates is drinking Red Stripe or Becks — what’s the President drinking?

 MR. GIBBS: The President had a Budweiser at the All-Star Game, so — why are you looking at me like that? That’s what he drank.

 Q: We’re talking Blue Moon, Red Stripe, Becks —

 MR. GIBBS: What’s wrong with Budweiser? Why do you hate Budweiser? (Laughter.)

 Q: Well, he could get —

 MR. GIBBS: Why do you hate Budweiser, Wendell? (Laughter.) Wendell, how about this — how about you and I, we’ll go pick out the beer, we’ll do the beer run. Uh-oh, hold, please. (Laughter.)

 Q: I’m happy to do that.

All joking aside, I think this is an important meeting and, as someone, maybe the President himself, said a teachable moment.

I’ll be having either a Harp or a Red Stripe.

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The Police, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Racial Profiling

I know the controversy is just beginning.  Volumes will be written about the incident in Cambridge.  Both sides will defend themselves and blame the other side.  Everyone will play the race card.  People who already mistrust President Obama because of his skin color will use his remarks as proof they are right.

The best commentary I’ve seen on the incident so far is from Joan Vennochi writing this morning in the Boston Globe.  In her regular op-ed column Vennochi wrote

The arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. by a Cambridge police officer is playing out along racial lines. But it’s also about power and machismo – on both sides.

Machismo.  That’s the key.  Gates, whether true or not, felt he was being treated differently than a white man would be in his own home.  Years of disparate treatment combined with the ego that comes from being an important and respected person in your field, caused him to lose his temper.  The police sergeant, James Crowley, faced with a potential break-in and a tired angry man reacted, not by backing down, but by arresting him.

Gates was in his own home when a Cambridge police officer responded to a call about a possible break-in at that address. The professor had just returned home from filming a documentary in China. His front door was stuck shut and his taxi driver helped him pry it open. Then, Sergeant James Crowley appeared at his door and demanded to see identification. Gates provided it, although some facts about how and when are in dispute.

The police report states that Gates was arrested after exhibiting “loud and tumultuous behavior, in a public place, directed at a uniformed police officer who was investigating a report of a crime in progress.’’ Gates disputes some information provided in the police report, but does acknowledge that he responded with anger.

…

Human beings of all races have a tendency to react as Gates did, especially when they are tired, frustrated, and privileged. Police officers usually don’t like it. The question is whether this police officer responded more harshly because of skin color.

The answer isn’t obvious, but both men could use some sensitivity training. Gates shouldn’t have yelled at the police officer; still, what he did was irritating, not criminal. Once the officer determined Gates did live in the house, he should have left, no matter what the professor was shouting.

Harvey Silverglate, a criminal defense lawyer, civil liberties defender, and Harvard Law School graduate, believes Gates’s arrest should be investigated, but not only because of its racial implications: Was Gates arrested and held as a way to teach him a lesson? If so, asks Silverglate, “Is this acceptable, regardless of whether the citizen is white or black?’’

In an ideal world, no. When it happens to a black man, racism may be the easy explanation, but that doesn’t make it the only explanation. Life and power in 21st-century America are more complicated than that.

President Obama at his July 22 press conference offered this

Wednesday night’s press conference seemed to be a different deal as the president leaped into a highly charged controversy that has ignited passions across talk radio, the blogosphere and the old-fashioned water cooler.

But in fact, racial profiling was a major issue for Mr. Obama when he was in the Illinois legislature. He was the chief sponsor of a bill, which became law, that requires police to record the race, age and gender of all drivers they stop for traffic violations and for those records to be analyzed for evidence of racial profiling.

Mr. Obama, asked Wednesday what the incident said about race relations in America, noted up front that Professor Gates is a friend and that his comments might be biased. He said “words” had been exchanged and added:

“Now, I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that, but I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and, number three, what I think we know, separate and apart from this incident, is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. And that’s just a fact.” He added later that the incident was “a sign of how race remains a factor in this society.”

He also used biting humor, grinning broadly as he imagined being in Professor Gates’s seemingly preposterous circumstance of being arrested after trying to get into his own home.

“Here, I’d get shot,” Mr. Obama said, referring to his new address of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The whole racial profiling question becomes curiouser and curiouser as we learn that the officer involved spent time at the police academy teaching racial profiling.

I heard a discussion this morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe in which Joe Scarborough talked about the serious question of racial profiling and admitted that he would have probably had a similar reaction to Dr. Gates’ and likely would not have been arrested.  Perhaps what we need is a discussion of racial profiling and we can begin with a civil dialogue between Sergeat Crowley and Dr. Gates – an expert police profiler and one who has been profiled.  They both need to lose their machismo and have a serious talk.  No one would have to lose face and no one needs to apologize. Oh and yes, as Joan Vennochi suggested let’s throw in some sensitivity training.

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Lessons from the Sotomayor Hearings

Over the weekend two very interesting pieces appeared.  One was Frank Rich’s column  in the New York Times, the other Melissa Harris Lacewell in the Nation.  Both approach the subject of Senatorial attitude toward a Latina woman.  One writer is a middle aged white male and former New York Times theater critic, the other a young, African American professor at Princeton. 

Here is Rich

Yet the Sotomayor show was still rich in historical significance. Someday we may regard it as we do those final, frozen tableaus of Pompeii. It offered a vivid snapshot of what Washington looked like when clueless ancien-régime conservatives were feebly clinging to their last levers of power, blissfully oblivious to the new America that was crashing down on their heads and reducing their antics to a sideshow as ridiculous as it was obsolescent.

The hearings were pure “Alice in Wonderland.” Reality was turned upside down. Southern senators who relate every question to race, ethnicity and gender just assumed that their unreconstructed obsessions are America’s and that the country would find them riveting. Instead the country yawned. The Sotomayor questioners also assumed a Hispanic woman, simply for being a Hispanic woman, could be portrayed as The Other and patronized like a greenhorn unfamiliar with How We Do Things Around Here. The senators seemed to have no idea they were describing themselves when they tried to caricature Sotomayor as an overemotional, biased ideologue.

And here Harris-Lacewell

The hearing was a performance of a broader set of social rules that govern race and gender interactions in American politics. Women, and most especially black and brown women, have to prove their fitness for public life by demonstrating the ability to endure harsh brutality without openly fighting back. The ability to bear up under public degradation is a test of worth. America’s favorite black woman heroine is Rosa Parks, a woman who is remembered as silently enduring the humiliation of being ejected from a public bus for refusing to comply with segregated seating.

Sotomayor passed the test. She met the Senators’ questioning with thoughtful responses. Her voice did not quiver. Her face did not scowl. Many women of all races feel inspired by her. But I wonder about this lesson that continues to teach women that we can only have space in the public realm as long as we control all emotion.

They are both describing what Harris-Lacewell calls “the politics of public humiliation.”  The practice of this kind of politics in the year 2009 says more about the Republicans than about Sotomayor – or the current status of women of color.

Rich ties the Republicans to the Class of  1994, the Class of the Contract with America, the Newt Gingrich class.

That the class of ’94 failed on almost every count is a matter of history, no matter how hard it has retroactively tried to blame its disastrous record on George W. Bush. Its incompetence may even have been greater than its world-class hypocrisy. Its only memorable achievements were to shut down the government in a fit of pique and to impeach Bill Clinton in a tsunami of moral outrage.

…

…Today the G.O.P.’s token black is its party chairman, Michael Steele, who last week unveiled his latest strategy for recruiting minority voters. “My plan is to say, ‘Y’all come!’ ” he explained, adding “I got the fried chicken and potato salad!”Among Sotomayor’s questioners, both Coburn and Lindsey Graham are class of ’94. They — along with Jeff Sessions, a former Alabama attorney general best known for his unsuccessful prosecutions of civil rights activists — set the Republicans’ tone last week. In one of his many cringe-inducing moments, Graham suggested to Sotomayor that she had “a temperament problem” and advised that “maybe these hearings are a time for self-reflection.” That’s the crux of the ’94 spirit, even more than its constant, whiny refrain of white victimization: Hold others to a standard that you would not think of enforcing on yourself or your peers. Self-reflection may be mandatory for Sotomayor, but it certainly isn’t for Graham.

Harris-Lacewell puts it this way

All Supreme Court nominees endure tough, ideologically driven questioning. It’s as true for white male conservative justices as for Sotomayor. But this public display took on different meaning as white men repeatedly asserted that Sotomayor was capable of making legal judgments based only on her personal experience and ethnic identity.

I was proud of Sotomayor’s restraint, but I also wanted her to counter attack, to punch back, to show anger. She couldn’t do so in part because she is bound by the rules of judicial decorum. She also couldn’t do so because of the racialized, gender rules of political engagement that allow white men, from senators to firemen, to express outrage, indignation, and emotion, but disallow those same expressions from women of color.

So what have we learned?  We have learned that maybe Lacewell-Harris is right when she compares Sonia Sotomayor to Little Rock Nine student, Elizabeth Eckford.

One of the most enduring images of the Civil Rights Movement is of Elizabeth Eckford. She is being harassed and taunted by a group of white students, parents, and police on her way to desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. On that morning Eckford missed connecting with the eight other African American students of the Little Rock Nine and their NAACP leader, Daisy Bates. Eckford was alone when the angry crowd surrounded and confronted her

Only now the mob is the composed of white, mostly southern, Republican Senators.

We have learned that women, regardless of race, regardless of how successful they may be,  still have to behave differently than men, that there is still a double standard.

We have learned, again, that the Republican Party is mostly clueless when it comes to race.  And I believe that their fear and dislike of Barack Obama will drive most of their behavior over the next eight years.

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Sonia Sotomayor and Senator Graham

Let’s look at this exchange as published in the Washington Post

GRAHAM: Now, during your time as an advocate, do you understand identity politics? What is identity politics?

SOTOMAYOR: Politics based simply on a person’s characteristics, generally referred to either race or ethnicity or gender, religion. It is politics based on . . .

GRAHAM: Do you embrace identity politics personally?

SOTOMAYOR: Personally, I don’t as a judge in any way embrace it with respect to judging. As a person, I do believe that certain groups have and should express their views on whatever social issues may be out there. But as I understand the word “identity politics,” it’s usually denigrated because it suggests that individuals are not considering what’s best for America.

. . .

GRAHAM: Do you believe that your speeches properly read embrace identity politics?

SOTOMAYOR: I think my speeches embrace the concept that I just described, which is, groups, you have interests that you should seek to promote, what you’re doing is important in helping the community develop, participate, participate in the process of your community, participate in the process of helping to change the conditions you live in.

I don’t describe it as identity policies, because — politics — because it’s not that I’m advocating the groups do something illegal.

GRAHAM: Well, Judge, to be honest with you, your record as a judge has not been radical by any means. It’s, to me, left of center. But your speeches are disturbing, particularly to — to conservatives. . . . Those speeches to me suggested gender and racial affiliations in a way that a lot of us wonder: Will you take that line of thinking to the Supreme Court in these cases of first precedent?

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham is viewed as a bellwether for how large a majority of the Senate will vote for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

The Republicans have spent most of their time over the last four days trying to figure out what makes Judge Sotomayor tick.  I think the answer is pretty simple:  Yes, she is a woman and yes, she is Latina and in her private time, she may volunteer for groups that advocate those causes.  But when she is a judge, she is not an advocate.   And that’s why none of you could find anything objectionable in any of her many decisions.  Isn’t that what you said you want from a judge?  Isn’t that why you were all upset about empathy?  Sonia Sotomayor has shown that she has empathy and that she rules according to the facts and the law.  I think that is what you said you wanted.

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The Strange Story of Lloyd Gaines

Never heard of Lloyd Gaines?  I hadn’t either until about 2 hours ago when I read the story in today’s New York Times.  Buried on page 19, is the story of a Supreme Court decision I had never heard of and the mystery surrounding the plaintiff, Lloyd Gaines.

Mr. Gaines left his apartment in Chicago on the night of March 19, 1939, three months after the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Missouri had to admit him to law school.

On Dec. 12, 1938, the Supreme Court ruled that the segregated University of Missouri Law School had to admit Lloyd Lionel Gaines, who was qualified except for the color of his skin, if there was no comparable legal education available to him within Missouri — and there was not.

Despite his victory, Mr. Gaines was troubled. He had told relatives and friends he was having trouble finding steady work to earn money for school (apparently one reason he went to Chicago), and he was ambivalent about being in the spotlight.

“As for my publicity relative to the university case, I have found that my race still likes to applaud, shake hands, pat me on the back and say how great and noble is the idea,” he wrote his mother in St. Louis days before disappearing. “How historical and socially important the case but — and there it ends.” He added, “Sometimes I wish I were just a plain, ordinary man whose name no one recognized.”

For the 1930s, Missouri’s policy was enlightened: since there was no law school at Lincoln, the state paid the tuitions of blacks from Missouri who went to nearby states to study law. And the Missouri legislature had committed itself to establishing a law school at Lincoln someday, should there ever be enough demand.

But Mr. Gaines said he wanted to go to the University of Missouri’s law school, so in 1936 he sued in state court to gain admission. He lost, but lawyers for the N.A.A.C.P. saw his case as a way to attack the “separate but equal” doctrine laid down by the Supreme Court in 1896 in Plessy v. Ferguson, which was used to justify public school segregation.

Mr. Gaines’s team was headed by Charles Hamilton Houston, chief litigator for the N.A.A.C.P., mentor to Thurgood Marshall and later dean of the Howard University Law School. The case reached the Supreme Court on Nov. 9, 1938. Houston argued that the state had blatantly failed to meet the “separate but equal” standard and that paying out-of-state tuition for black students from Missouri was not good enough. The court ruled 6 to 2 for Mr. Gaines. “The basic consideration here is not as to what sort of opportunities other states provide, or whether they are as good as those in Missouri, but as to what opportunities Missouri itself furnishes to white students and denies to Negroes solely upon the ground of color,” Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote.

Justices James C. McReynolds and Pierce Butler dissented, saying the State of Missouri ought to be able to set its own education policies. (There was one vacancy on the court.)

The ruling in Gaines v. Canada (S. W. Canada was the university registrar) would eventually open the doors of law schools for blacks in a dozen Southern and border states. And it was a steppingstone toward Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 decision that repudiated the “separate but equal” notion in outlawing school segregation.

So what happened to Mr. Gaines?  Was he murdered?  If so, by a mugger out to rob him or by segregrationists who had stalked him?  Or did he simply decided he did not want to attend the University of Missouri law school, didn’t want to deal with the pressure and just disappear?

Lloyd Gaines’s nephew George Gaines, a retired Navy captain who lives in San Diego, said recently, “We have never had him declared dead.” But Captain Gaines said he doubted that his uncle would have chosen to drop out of life, or end his life, given the perseverance he displayed.

In the early 1950s, the University of Missouri began admitting black students. Lloyd Gaines is now revered at the university, which awarded him an honorary law degree in 2006. That year, the state bar awarded him a law license, posthumously.

If he had lived, would we be celebrating Gaines v. Canada as we do Brown v. Board of Education?    Would Brown have come sooner?  Would Gaines have been the James Meredith of University of Missouri?  On the eve of the start of Senate hearings on the nomination of the first Latino Justice, it is interesting to think about.

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Hypocracy about marriage

It is 40 years now since the Stonewall Riots first brought gay and lesbian civil rights into the public spotlight.  People who are gay or lesbian still can marry only in New England (except for Rhode Island) and Iowa.  They can’t serve in the miliary if they are openly expressing their sexuality.  The issue of ordination of homosexuals is spliting the Methodist and Episcopal churches.  And it appears that those leaders who are most vocal about the scanctity of marriage being only between a man and a woman are the most likely to divorce and the most likely to be as Jon Stewart put it “…just another politician with a conservative mind and a liberal penis.”

This is the graphic from Charles M. Blow’s op ed in the New York Times on Mark Sanford.

Blow writes

Sanford voted to impeach Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky saga. According to The Post and Courier of Charleston, Sanford called Clinton’s behavior “reprehensible” and said, “I think it would be much better for the country and for him personally” to resign. “I come from the business side. … If you had a chairman or president in the business world facing these allegations, he’d be gone.” Remember that Mr. Sanford?

And this kind of hypocrisy isn’t confined to the politicians. It permeates the electorate. While conservatives fight to “defend” marriage from gays, they can’t keep theirs together. According to the Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract, states that went Republican in November accounted for eight of the 10 states with the highest divorce rates in 2006.

Conservatives touted abstinence-only education, which was a flop, when real sex education was needed, most desperately in red states. According to 2006 data from the Guttmacher Institute, those red states accounted for eight of the 10 states with the highest teenage birthrates.

A little bragging here:  Massachusetts was the first to legalize gay marriage and we are at the bottom of the list in divorce and teen pregancy. 

So we need less hypocacry from the conservative camp and a lot more reality.  I really don’t think anyone, except the politician’s family, cares about them having an affair as long as other laws (Spitzer and Vitter engaging prostitutes which is still illegal or Ensign and potential conflict of interest) are not also broken.  But please, practice what you preach or shut-up and don’t interfere with legal abortions or birth control or with the right of homosexuals to get married. 

As Maureen Dowd put it

Sanford can be truly humble only if he stops dictating to others, who also have desires and weaknesses, how to behave in their private lives.

The Republican Party will never revive itself until its sanctimonious pantheon — Sanford, Gingrich, Limbaugh, Palin, Ensign, Vitter and hypocrites yet to be exposed — stop being two-faced.