David Frum plays moral Twister in a callous attempt to control evangelicals' response to the Haggard scandal

Very occasionally I come across an article that seems to me to be so inherently wrong in its arguments and its conclusions that I am at a loss to appreciate how its author could in good faith have signed off on it. David Frum’s NRO diary piece yesterday is one case in point. Frum is a former White House official, famous for co-writing GW Bush’s 2002 state of the union speech, which gave the world the term “axis of evil”.
In his November 3 piece he directs his attention to the scandal surrounding a highly respected evangelical minister, Ted Haggard, who has stepped down as president of the National Association of Evangelicals amid allegations by a male prostitute, Michael Forest Jones, that Haggard paid him for sex over a 3 year period, and also during the meetings took crystal meth, which was supplied to him by Jones.　The scandal is generating such interest because Haggard is one of a number of influential evangelicals with ties to the Bush administration. He is said to have attended the weekly Monday conference calls which the president holds with religious leaders.

Frum’s piece has left me in such a state of bewilderment that I have not composed myself enough yet to be able to write a structured critique of it. Instead I have, in my state of discomposure, appended to his paragraphs my own short rebuttals. Frum’s text is presented in bold. It is entitled “Hypocrites?”

A sensational but to-date unsubstantiated allegation has been hurled at a major American religious figure. On much of the left, the reaction is gleeful delight: See! He is no better than anybody else! At the outset drawing political lines of battle. The left are capable only of reveling in somebody else’s suffering.
In my mind, however, this story highlights a widespread moral assumption that I have never been able to understand.
Consider the hypothetical case of two men. Both are inclined toward homosexuality. Both from time to time hire the services of male prostitutes. Both have occasionally succumbed to drug abuse.
One of them marries, raises a family, preaches Christian principles, and tries generally to encourage people to lead stable lives.
The other publicly reveals his homosexuality, vilifies traditional moral principles, and urges the legalization of drugs and prostitution.
Which man is leading the more moral life? With only the scant outline of their moral lives offered above, who can say? The easiest answer is to say neither of them. But I suppose if, like Frum, you equate morality with traditional values then moral superiority could be claimed by the former man. Frum’s language leaves no doubt as to his opinion on the matter, even before he shares it with his reader. The former is in all other aspects a model of restraint: preaching (this word doesn’t have negative connotations amongst evangelicals), trying, generally encouraging; while the latter is obviously out of control: vilifying and urging.

But what if the second man has gone through the same inner conflict as the first, only at some point he has gone in a different direction? What if the second man has reconciled himself to his homosexuality, choosing not to seek moral guidance exclusively from evangelical interpretations of the Holy Bible, and after long, drawn-out reasoning and soul-searching has honestly come to the conclusion that legalizing (or decrimininalizing) drugs and prostitution is in society’s best interests, that is to say it will make society stabler in the long run? Then how can this man be leading a less moral life than the first one? Well, he could be if he too were lying to his spouse (significant other) and concealing from him a sexual relationship with another man.

It seems to me that the answer is the first one. Instead of suggesting that his bad acts overwhelm his good ones, could it not be said that the good influence of his preaching at least mitigates the bad effect of his misconduct? Instead of regarding hypocrisy as the ultimate sin, could it not be regarded as a kind of virtue - or at least as a mitigation of his offense?

And what about the bad effect of his misconduct on his wife and children? Are they supposed to sacrifice themselves for the greater moral good? Were they consulted on this? Are they willing martyrs?

For Frum, there is only one moral authority, the will of God as expressed in the bible and interpreted by endorsed religious leaders. Unendorsed interpretations are of no significance. Such a view-point allows for absolutely no nuance, not even in interpreting its source for its moral principles. It has no time for any of the arguments that suggest that tactics in the war against drugs can be morally questionable. It grants no moral life to prostitutes beyond the immorality of the acts by which they engage in economic endeavour. Nor does it grant any moral life to the homosexual who is, according to Frum, a person merely “inclined” to homosexuality. That is, homosexuality is not an essential part of the psyche, of the emotional, spiritual and intellectual life of the person, rather an external temptation.

After all, the first man may well see his family and church life as his "real" life; and regard his other life as an occasional uncontrollable deviation, sin, and error, which he condemns in his judgment and for which he sincerely seeks to atone by his prayer, preaching, and Christian works. But as we’re being hypothetical here, what of a person who engages in gay sex while believing it sinful and immoral and who seeks atonement through prayer and by ensuring that no other people are hurt by his immoral actions?

Yet it is the first man who will if exposed be held up to the execration of the media, while the second can become a noted public character - and can even hope to get away with presenting himself as an exemplar of ethics and morality.
How does this make moral sense?

Let me put it another way:

In every other avenue of life, we praise people who rise above selfish personal wishes to champion higher principles and the public good. We admire the white southerners who in the days of segregation spoke out for racial equalityBut who would have admired them if at the same time they had been keeping slaves?. We admire the leader of a distressed industry who refuses to ask for trade protections and government handouts. But would we admire him if we discovered he was misappropriating funds to weather the economic slump? We admire the Arthur Vandenbergs and (someday) the Joe Liebermans who can reach past party feeling to support a president of the opposing party for the sake of the national interest. Trying to score political points again. First, it must be clearly shown that Lieberman’s support for the government is indeed in the national interest and not a betrayal of it. Morally, though, surely the only thing that matters is if Lieberman honestly believes he is doing the right thing.
If a religious leader has a personal inclination toward homosexuality - and nonetheless can look past his own inclination to defend the institution of marriage and to affirm its benefits for the raising of children - why should he likewise not be honored for his intellectual firmness and moral integrity? Since when was committing adultery and concealing from your spouse a 3 year arrangement for sex with a prostitute a sign of moral integrity? And surely marriage is to be defended not simply for its benefits in raising children (orphanages can do the same, after all, but for the environment in which it raises them. What is the impact on those children and their environment of the behaviour of this hypothetical man?
"I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self." A victory which Haggard did not win, it seems hardly necessary to add.


This article is so absurd in its moral arguments that I can only conclude that its author is being disingenuous. His politicization of the scandal through his opening reference to the left’s reaction and his closing reference to Joe Lieberman encourage me in this opinion.

Is it worth speculating what kind of piece Frum might have written had Haggard been accused of having sex with a female prostitute? Would he have felt it worth engaging in a game of moral Twister in his diary had events been so? Frum is a political operator and I believe the prompting for this commentary was political expedience. Aside from the absurdity of the arguments presented, what is shocking is the complete omission of sympathy or empathy for Haggard’s wife and children. After all, the justification for outlawing gay marriage is the protection of the family. Here Frum reveals what exactly his agenda is.

Japanese Motorcycle Grand Prix, Motegi, September 2006

"The homosexualising of America"

The above is a cartoon from MSNBC.com which I found on Logan Berry's blog: "Yes, the boys saw that "Brokeback Mountain" movie and now they're playing cowboys." Ha ha!

Pleasantville

You can imagine my shock on Saturday afternoon when, as I flicked over to BBC World and the usual newstime images of rioting were broadcast into my room, my complacency was jolted first by a preponderance of tracksuits and Celtic football shirts and then by the realisation that I recognised the street and the white Ford Transit vans with "Garda" on the front and sides.

Oh my god! This wasn't Palestine. It wasn't outraged muslims protesting cartoons in middle-eastern countries. It was Ireland! It was Dublin! It was O'Connell Street!

I imagine everybody's complacency has been shaken by the weekend's events. I had completely forgotten that there was a segment of the Irish population outside the loophole of Ireland's political classes. These are people who don't blog on whatever Kevin Myers writes in the IT about the 1916 rebellion. Nor do they write letters to the editor about it. Sinn Fein has been strong in Dublin's inner-city for decades now - ever since they supposedly sorted out the heroin problem there. Firebrand republicanism mixed with disenfranchisement and marginalisation is a heady concoction. As Sinn Fein move further towards political respectability it is all too likely that they will leave many erstwhile supports behind, for whom the "struggle" would always be of more interest than the progress. Today it's the supposed affront of Orangemen parading through Dublin's capital streets. How ideological is the rioters' braun? How promsiscuous is it? Could it be harnessed in the future for bigotry of a more sinister nature? What of the Gardaí? Did they really not have any intelligence on it? Have 14 people suffered injury thanks to the Gardai's complacency? What happened to the Irish media on Saturday afternoon? Could not even destruction on O'Connell Street and burning cars on South Leinster Street rouse it from its lethargic complacency? And what of complacent middle-class Dublin that just went on with its shopping and with its chattering over pints in opulent bars? When did we become so detached as a nation? When did that happen?

Air to the throne

Prince Charles has taken the Daily Mail to court over its publication of extracts from a journal he wrote on the handing back of Hong Kong in 1997. He claims the newspaper group has violated his privacy and infringed his copyright. As Eddie Izzard once said of the Corinthians' invitation to St. Paul to be their penpal: "well, that backfired in a major way!" The judge ordered for the entire journal to be distributed in the court and so all the media got their hands on it.

Perhaps even more damaging to the prince is the sworn statement on behalf of the defendants given by his former deputy private secretary, Mark Bollands. In it, Bolland alleges that the prince actively sought to influence public opinion and government policy by using "all the means of communication at his disposal, including meetings with Ministers and others, speeches and correspondence with leaders in all walks of life and politicians. He was never party-political, but to argue that he was not political was difficult." British monarchs are constitutionally forbidden to infract on the country's political life. With regard to the correspondce, Bolland says: "These letters were not merely routine and non-controversial letters, but letters written at times in extreme terms from the Prince to various people, including members of the Government, Members of Parliament and other people in positions of power and influence, containing his views of political matters and individual politicians at home and abroad and on international issues."

And just to leave no doubt as to the prince's intentions, Bolland states: "The Prince's very definite aim in all this activity, as he explained to me, was to influence opinion. He saw that as part of the job of the heir apparent. He carried out in a very considered, thoughtful and researched way. He often referred to himself as a "dissident" working against the prevailing political consensus."

I am conjuring up images of the Prince in a Che Guevara beret with a big Cuban cigar hanging off his royal Windsor lips. Expect t-shirts.

Surely, the most damaging of all the damaging revelations in Bolland's statement, though, is this:

"The Prince's office operated in a very old-fashioned way when I was there. Even young people, who you would expect to be computer literate, would dictate shorthand to their secretaries, and when I left the office it still did not have external email or the facility for people to print out their own documents."

Bollands left the prince's office in 2002!!!! Damn it, even remote African villages had "external email" in 2002! What's worse is the idea of young people (were some of the in their 20s???) dictating to short-hand typists!!!!

Out with it all! The prince must drag himself into the 21st century and I know how he can get computer literate and continue his dissidence at the same time: he should start a blog! Not a crappy one on the royal website written by some stiff plonking away on a BBC 64 (that's what they were called, isn't it?). No, the prince needs to get his own blog on Blogger. Maybe he isn't too late to grab http://dissident.blogspot.com - but even if he is, there are loads of possible cool names for an English prince's blog. And he could have his own Halo-scan comments box, as well. Just so he doesn't accidently get cut off from the public mood. Just think how much the tax payer would save! His office could be shut down. All those fancy vellum "from the prince's pen" stationary sheets would remain trees (very much one of the prince's interests). All that sealing wax could be burned away more practically as part of a candle. All those dictating stiffs and short-hand secretaries could find gainful employment, and the prince could blog away to his heart's content on all those matters he finds so vital to the nation's interest.

If I had to be a woman...

Like most people these days, I imagine, I watch TV with the laptop open and connected to the net. The number of screens vying for my attention can get as high as 3 if I find myself having to reply to a text message on my mobile. The whole TV versus internet is a good thing. It means the quality has to get better on TV as the internet, being more interactive, normally wins out. If a film or programme can get me to raise my head from my computer and keep it raised then it's good. Goldie Hawn raised my head tonight in the very funny Housesitter, a 1992 film starring her and Steve Martin. If I had to be a woman, I'd want to be Goldie Hawn.

"Contrary to American Values"

That phrase comes up again and again in the memo outlining the sanctioning of "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of detainees at Guantánamo, which former general counsel to the US navy, Alberto J. Mora, penned for Vice Admiral Albert Church, the man who headed a Pentagon investigation into the abuses.

The memo gives credence to the claims in the recent UN report of practices amounting to torture at the naval base and reveals the complete falsity of Don Rumsfeld's remarks at a recent press conference when he rubbished the report's findings and claimed that detainees were subject to excellent treatment.

Fukuyama on Neoconservatism

Sunday's NYT magazine offers us an idea of what to expect from Francis Fukuyama's forthcoming book,America at the Crossroads. In an essay entitled After Neoconservatism, Fukuyama does an excellent job of making sense. He draws our attention to an inherent contradiction in the philosophy that held sway until recently in the Bush admin.:
"[A] view that ambitious social engineering often leads to unexpected consequences and thereby undermines its own ends" caused Neocons to reject domestic policies such as affirmative action and welfare. Yet "the belief in the potential moral uses of American power ... implied that American activism could reshape the structure of global politics."

Continuing with the theme of consequences, Fukuyama makes this obvious point:

"The reaction against a flawed policy can be as damaging as the policy itself, and such a reaction is an indulgence we cannot afford, given the critical moment we have arrived at in global politics."

But by consequences, he isn't just referring to further radicalization in the Arab world:

"More than any other group, it was the neoconservatives both inside and outside the Bush administration who pushed for democratizing Iraq and the broader Middle East. They are widely credited (or blamed) for being the decisive voices promoting regime change in Iraq, and yet it is their idealistic agenda that in the coming months and years will be the most directly threatened. Were the United States to retreat from the world stage, following a drawdown in Iraq, it would in my view be a huge tragedy, because American power and influence have been critical to the maintenance of an open and increasingly democratic order around the world."

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov's refusal to even consider an application by gay organisations in Russia for a permit to conduct what would be the country's first gay pride parade on the grounds that it "outraged" Russian society should be of interest to all who have followed the Danish Muhammad cartoon furore. Representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Muslim community and the Jewish community have spoken out condemning the planned parade. Chief Rabbi, Berl Lazar, has been the most moderate of the spiritual leaders, limiting himself to saying it would be a "blow for morality". According to Friday's English Independent, Orthodox Bishop Daniil of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk said the plans were a "cynical mockery" and likened homosexuality to leprosy. Not to be outdone, the Supreme Mufti of the Central Muslim Board in Russia, Talgat Tadzhuddin, warned that Muslims would stage violent protests if the parade went ahead, and said:

"If they come out on to the streets anyway they should be flogged. Any normal person would do that - Muslims and Orthodox Christians alike ... [The protests] might be even more intense than protests abroad against those controversial cartoons."

He went on to justify the killing of gays in accordance with the teachings of the Koran and to say that they had "no rights".

Although Tadzhuddin would appear to hold a position of great authority over Russian muslims, the chief Mufti is in fact a controversial figure within his religious community, having apparently been sacked in 2003 after declaring a jihad against the US. As far as I can make out, his position as "supreme Mufti" is due to his seniority in age over his fellow Muftis and I have not been able to establish how he has apparently maintained his title and position in spite of his "sacking". Interestingly, his reaction to the Danish cartoons was quite modest.

If not for the violence of Tadzhuddin's comments, one could relish their irony in light of the worldwide protests over the last few weeks and months.
Taking advantage of their right to assemble by staging a picket of the European Commission's building in Moscow last week, Muslims held banners declaring "freedom is not insulting religious feelings". Now here we have one of their supposed spiritual leaders advocating extreme violence against another social minortiy that wishes to take advantage of its right to assemble.

The reaction in Russia to the proposed gay pride march is interesting as it shows how religious groups may effectively cooperate to neutralise a minority social group's legitimate claims to recognition and respect.

Homosexuality was decriminalised in Russia in 1993 under Yeltsin, but Russian attitudes towards it today are "glacial", according to the Independent. The plan to hold a parade has not been unanimously supported even within Russia's gay community, with some gay rights organisations declaring it "suicidal". The problem of Russia's gay community's lack of a foothold in its society must be compounded by the apparent conformity of Russians' public sexual morals with religious dictates. No doubt the legacy of communism, which punished homosexuality severely, is also brought to bear.

Moscow's mayor's characterisation of the parade as "outrage" is not that far away from the bigoted remarks of the three wise men quoted above. Surely, though, what's outrageous is a community leader's incitement to violence being effectively endorsed by government authorities. And surely, the "blow for morality" was sustained when the claims of members of a community pleading grave insult to their identity at the publication of a few drawings trumped the claims of those whose desire merely to celebrate their identity is met with death threats from a leader of the former group.

In early 2003 the chairman of the Russian council of Muftis, Ravi Gainutdin, declared "no Muslim should now hold prayer with Talgat Tadzhuddin or follow any order or advice issued by him" after the latter's call for jihad against the US. Will Gainutdin now remind Russian muslims of this injunction in light of Tadzhuddin's comments on the gay pride parade? Will he think to inform his community that freedom means a lot more than "not insulting religous feeling"?

Those who have so righteously condemned western newspapers' irresponsbility and "abuse" of the right to freedom of expression in the last few weeks no doubt have been silent about the fate of Russia's first gay pride parade as they have been catching their breath and nursing hoarse throats. I'm sure they will once again be in full voice by the time the curator of the Andrei Sakharov Musuem in Moscow, Yury Samodurov, goes ahead with his plans to mount an exhibition of the Danish cartoons.