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Originally Posted by pigglet
Ok, what if I lied about something irrelevant to my job on my resume. What if I said "pigglet was aboard the 1969 Apollo mission that went to the moon. he speaks swahili on alternate saturdays. beat bobby fisher in best of five chess match in central park. honorary member of the Royal Order of the Noble Otter - Grand Poobah." None of that is germane to my job one way or the other.
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Taken together, though, it is germane. Because it probably indicates that you're a habitual liar in various contexts. Not to mention, a bit of a nut.
Lying about sexual orientation isn't equivalent.
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It is standard fare to investigate the lies and hypocracy in our public figures, not only in cases like sexual orientation. Remember Gary Hart? Fucking a female model - but he still got in big time trouble. How about that Clinton guy. Seems like people got all up in arms about that shit - Monica had boobies. This shit happens all the time.
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And I can't claim that I ignored this shit when it came out, but I would if I could go back and do it over. Though I wonder if one could find a few key differences between, say, the Mehlman situation and the Clinton situation. Just a hunch.
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You're essentially advocating that we withhold some information, in terms of sexual orientation, because of the sensitive nature. Fine. But if the public figure makes issues of sexual orientation critical to his public political persona, I say he loses that privelage of having his private life protected.
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No, he loses the privilege much sooner than that. He loses the privilege when he makes the facts of his private life accessible to people other than trespassers. But there remains no positive value in the outing until it bears practical relevance to something public. Hypocrisy doesn't automatically have practical relevance. If the lie's irrelevant, so's the fact of the lie.
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What if he claimed to gain relevance for his social/political agenda from his God-fearing straight wife-missionary-style fucking with four kids a white house and a picket fence existence, where he was advocating a social agenda in lieu of actual "political" issues (taxes, national defense, insurance, social security reform, etc)? That's what these guys do. They run on social agendas. Do I think that's bullshit? Yes. Yes I do. But they choose to run for election based on this horseshit - and live by the sword, die by the sword I say.
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I don't understand how a social agenda isn't an 'actual' political issue. But to address the other point here... no, I don't agree with "live by the sword, die by the sword" when it means that you're punishing politicians for not adhering to a bad consistency. The primary/relevant wrongdoing isn't in the masked private life, it's in the unhidden political life.
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He's claiming he represents their social agenda imagery, through and through.
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But in every relevant way, he
does.
See, this is it right here: I don't see a point in pressuring them to adhere to a bad moral/law/code. I don't think that correcting hypocrisy is necessarily a good thing. It all depends on which way it's corrected.
In the case of outing an anti-gay politician, there's the possible good of getting him to change his anti-gay ways, but if that were the object then there'd be no point in a
public outing.
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Regardless of whether you *think* you undestand your "constituents" desires (presumable who elected you to keep the gays down...just a little bit), it seems to me that there is an inherent schism between your belief system and your constituents.
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But this schism doesn't actually make any visible difference in what you get.
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What if a question comes on a complex piece of legislation, and you have to pretend as though you understand where your consituents would draw the line in discriminatory practices.
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Who says you don't understand? You don't have to share a perspective in order to understand it.
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Originally Posted by host
IMO, <b>to argue in favor of supporting the status of closeted anti-gay, gay republican elected and party officials, is to advocate for the continued hypocrisy and dysfunction of self-loathing folks who are overwhelmed by their own amibition, and who lack a sense of an obligation to be open about who they are, with the folks who they serve.
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Because they have no such obligation. It isn't their constituents' business.
And again, those blanket assumptions of hypocrisy and/or dysfunction and/or self-loathing. I see no reason to take the truth of these accusations for granted. Perhaps you're limiting your comments to those who are actually hypocritical, but even then, I won't assume dysfunction or self-loathing. I doubt it's so black and white.
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To support the closeted hypocrisy of Mehlman, Cheney, Dreier, and Brad Smith, I would assume that one would also support the spectacle of a closeted gay presidential candidate who, when asked about his family situation, simply replied, as Mehlman and Dreier have, that such an inquiry is inappropriate or irrelevant.
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Sure.
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Aren't "we, the people" entitled to know the living arrangements and the family circumstances of all who represent us or run major political parties, especially of parties that "embrace family values", and pledge to exclude homosexuals, just as we would expect to know those details, of our president or someone running for that office? </b>
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No.