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Paul Waldman of TAPPED wrote such a wonderful indictment of the IJNNWACDI tendency towards conservative perversion that I’m reproducing the whole thing here.

Via Steve Benen, we see that former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, who is challenging John McCain in the Republican Senate primary in Arizona, has some interesting ideas about what gay marriage will lead to:

“You see, the Massachusetts Supreme Court, when it started this move toward same-sex marriage, actually defined marriage — now get this — it defined marriage as simply, ‘the establishment of intimacy,’” Hayworth said. “Now how dangerous is that? I mean, I don’t mean to be absurd about it, but I guess I can make the point of absurdity with an absurd point — I guess that would mean if you really had affection for your horse, I guess you could marry your horse. It’s just the wrong way to go, and the only way to protect the institution of marriage is with that federal marriage amendment that I support.”

This kind of thing comes up with alarming frequency from Christian conservatives. For some of them, any issue of gay rights is about sex – — hot, steamy sex, so hot they can’t stop thinking about it. I’ve always said that James Dobson thinks about gay sex more than any five gay people I know put together. And apparently, people like Hayworth think that there is a tide of perversion lapping at our levees, and if we allow a crack in the edifice of heterosexual marriage, it will come down upon us like a tidal wave, drowning us with its forbidden temptations. I wonder what kind of thoughts led them there?

He said it here.

That sounds about right about James Dobson, and one suspects Fred Phelps thinks about it more than every other gay man in Kansas. Any time folks start going into lurid details or taking their proposed prohibitions to extreme lengths there’s gotta be at least a little fire behind all that smoke. Another example, one with almost universally horrific consequences are the white slave-owning men who, while regularly justifying violence against African American men for their “lust” for white women, also happened to have unrestricted and coercive access to African American women. Another example? I always wonder what’s really up when I hear of another regressive state legislator proposing one of those no-exceptions-for-rape-or-incest abortion restrictions. For instance one wonders how long it’ll be before a weeping Glenn Beck upbraids the likes of me for being all nonconsanguino-centerically privileged and just not understanding that, say, Louisiana state legislators deserve grandchildren just like people do. Now I’m forced to wonder whether J.D. Hayworth would support this petition drive... or if he’d change the subject and fulminate about government having no business interfering with private property rights. $%!#%~%

(Quick note, plus attempted guilt expiation for quoting his entire post: I don’t quote Paul Waldman often in this blog but if you’re into politics and social issues TAPPED is a great group blog and you can find a bunch of his other posts here. I particularly appreciated his post Pro-Lifers For More Abortions from yesterday.)

Summary: We all know there’s a double standard where progressive politicians are held accountable for behavior that’s completely ignored when conservatives do it. This post explores the source of that double standard.

So the FBI is investigating allegations that Senator John Ensign tried to pressure a company that was lobbying him into hiring the husband of a woman the Nevada Republican had an affair with. His office dismissed the investigation haughtily. BarbinMD of Daily Kos dryly snarks Ensign’s skin off his back (emphasis mine.)

According to Ensign’s spokeswoman:

“Senator Ensign has consistently acted in an ethical manner to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.”

No word on whether Mrs. Ensign agrees.

She said it here.

Ouch!

Background: Nevada Sen. John Ensign got in a little hot water when he conducted an affair with a campaign employee. He then got in a little more hot water when the employee’s husband (also an Ensign staffer!) discovered the affair and threatened to take the story public. Then he got in a little more hot water by paying the husband quite a bit of hush money out of his parent’s bank account. He now seems to be in considerably more hot water with, for instance, the F.B.I., for possibly suggesting that if a company wanted favors from him they’d have to hire the husband as a consultant.

Actually, unless you follow seriously left/progressive/Democratic bloggers like Barb you may not have heard about any of that. That’s because only sex-and-coverup scandals that really seem to have legs are those of Democrats like John Edwards or Bill Clinton.

There are all manner of excuses bandied about for the seeming double standard. The right-wing noise machine being one, progressive’s peculiarly tone deafness to the importance of public relations being another. Sometimes it’s attributed to the press’s peculiar affection for Republican silverbacks like John McCain. And sometimes (perhaps least improbably) it’s that while the general population and even members of the news industry might be progressive, advertisers, especially major advertisers likely to buy time in major outlets, tend to be very conservative.

Personally I think that for all the narrative about liberals and progressives being the party of Godlessness, Gays, and “Sodom and Gomorrah,” the general public perhaps, well, perversely expects better of Democrats, which makes their misbehavior feel like news. Meanwhile, again for all their talk about sanctity, patriotism, and moral standing it’s… contrary to the lamenting IOKIFYAR acronym (“it’s ok if you’re a Republican”) the real problem is it’s just not news when yet another Republican Senator disgraces himself, when a “homophobic” California legislator turns out to be openly gay, when a “family values” televangelist turns out to be a drug addict or pedophile or to hire male or female prostitutes, or when an “upright” rising star in the Senate turns out to not just cheat on his wife, and not just cheat on his wife with prostitutes, but cheats on his wife with prostitutes who indulge his fetish for wearing diapers. It’s just not news.

Update Oh and this just in the (Republican, naturally) Majority Leader of the Utah House has just admitted that he took a nude hot tub with a 15-year-old. Which might not be an issue (who goes in a hot tub with clothes on) except he evidently took her somewhere to do it, they were alone, and most suspiciously, he paid her $150,000 of hush money. TPMMuckraker caps the post with the IJNNWARD news that “After the confession, lawmakers lined up to embrace Garn and his wife.” Sweet mother of pearl!

Update: Another example from current events. Republican Congressman David Dreier is apoplectic that Democrats are invoking the “deem and pass” procedure that Dreier himself routinely used when his party was in charge. The press and public never peeped when he did it. But look at the interesting outcome if you invoke IJNNWACDI instead of IOKIYAR: it wasn’t news when Dreier did it any more than it’s news when a derelict wino soils himself at a bus stop. But contrary to the backhanded permission-giving of IOKIYAR it’s not ok that they do it. See the difference? Same with the John Ensign vs. John Edwards scandals. It’s not ok that either of them did it… but nobody’s surprised that a conservative did, and therefore it’s just not news.

Incidentally IJNNWACDI also explains why it’s not even hypocritical for conservatives to be upset when progressives do it. Just like the derelict who routinely soils himself in public would be shocked if a doctor or school teacher did it, Dreier, like David Brooks or John Boehner, is shocked because Nancy Pelosi is doing it.

Monica Potts of TAPPED mulls a new, more optimistic study on the non-death of marriage in America. (Emphasis mine.)

Lately, there have been a number of articles on marriage and women, particularly black women, as if the behavior of the American couple were fodder for a Discovery-channel nature show. But people don’t get married because they’re enacting some sort of population plan. They get married and stay married when they’re happy, mature, and meet someone with whom they have something in common. To the extent that policy is aimed at marriage, maybe we should worry about improving everyone’s quality of life first.

She said it here.

Funny about that. It’s also highly contrary to the traditional/conservative (and, I think, traditionally male) notion that marriage ought to be a burden or imposition — something forced on women, say, by economic necessity, forced on men by, say, desire for sex, forced on everybody by unplanned, unwanted pregnancy, etc.

Of course by the same progressive expansive opportunity-enhancing standards, and contrary to conservative coercive opportunity-limiting ones, marriage rights should be accessible and accepted for all relationships.

The bottom line, though, is that marriage is part of a social infrastructure not separate from it. The better the infrastructure the better the prospects for marriage.

Note: Speaking of which, read TAPPED’s A. Sewer on Washington D.C.‘s recently passed and so far not blocked marriage equality act.

Another point that can be extracted from Hugo Schwyzer’s post about the research into men who hire prostitutes...

It’s not hard to see that this belief — part of what I refer to as the myth of male weakness — serves a particularly important self-justifying function. “I need to have sex with prostitutes”, the line goes, “or I might rape.”

...

They want the myth of male weakness to work because it serves their agenda; they know that in their own lives, the myth is oversold. This is cynical, yes, but devastatingly effective.

Read the quote in context here.

It wouldn’t hurt to ask if the same accusations could be made of the socially-conservative philosophy of some of at least some of the researchers behind the original project (pdf).

Because on the one hand, yes, if it’s very helpful to assume all men are potential rapists if one is asserting that all prostitutes are conscripted.

But!

On the other hand, recalling the major point of Hugo’s post, sticking with that dichotomy handily enables men who excuse themselves hiring prostitutes in those terms!

And even though I’ve run out of hands an even more important consideration is that the dichotomy alienates at least two groups that could be really, really useful allies in confronting abuse in prostitution: men in general for one, and the subset of prostitutes (however large or small) who either aren’t or who don’t perceive themselves as coerced.