Plessner Chronicle Blog

While the vast majority of politicians are certainly loyal to their spouses, too many Republican elected officials seem to live deceitful lives, running on family values while cheating on their wives.

But the Republican predilection to marital infidelity is not limited to conservative politicians. I believe that it is much more prevalent in the general Republican and conservative community. And that is because of unrealistic and unnatural religious beliefs and rules about sex which dominate Republican and conservative culture.

In the larger conservative religious community which dominates Republican politics, religious doctrine taints sex as something other than a God-given gift to humans, which I believe it is.

It should be no surprise that something which is condemned becomes something to be stifled and avoided. Such prudishness has its own reward and that reward if too often infidelity.

If religion teaches its children that sex is dirty or unnatural, then many youngsters, and especially females, will shun or fear it, being subjected to a limited sexual life and ending up with partners who are also sexual cripples. (The exposure some years ago of Christian television preacher Jimmy Swaggart’s visits to New Orleans prostitutes comes to mind.)

Clearly, the condemnation of natural sex by conservative religions, especially in the American South, has contributed to the continuing rash of infidelity among Southern conservative Republican politicians.

On the other hand, predominately liberal Democrats are more open and realistic about sex. No one denies that some violate their marital obligations but the frequency among Democratic politicians is but a fraction of Republican infidelity.

That is because Democrats and liberals probably have healthier sex lives than Republicans and conservatives. Unlike conservative Republicans, liberal Democrats probably just love sex, and especially with their wives! So they are more likely to remain loyal to their wives. And those wives probably have healthier attitudes about sex themselves.

And that is probably why Republicans in Congress are a lot more likely to be philanders.

In the case of Louisiana Republican David Vitter, who campaigned as a saint and then sought funding for abstinence training that advocated limiting sex partners, and who condemned gay marriage as an assault on the institution of marriage, the story is more about political dishonesty, lies and corruption that are endemic to the modern Republican party.

According to Bill Minor, political columnist for the Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Mississippi, Vitter’s political history included the following:

In the 1990s Vitter won elections “with his holier-than-thou public posture while harshly demeaning other pols.”

“A New Orleans woman charged with running the ‘Canal Street’ brothel ring identified Vitter as a client in the 1990s.”

Vitter’s name appeared five times on the list of the accused D.C. Madam.

Contrast that to Vitter’s attacks on President Clinton and his support of impeachment while serving in the House of Representatives, and you have a true measure of the man and the hypocrisy rampant in the Republican-controlled Congress of the 1990s.

Perhaps political hypocrisy is born in the bed of sexual hypocrisy.

America has made great strides since then by providing integrated education, despite the failures of many innovations and the resistance of conservative, racist and frightened opposition. In doing so we have encouraged an open society, enabling all kinds of American youngsters — white, black and otherwise — to learn more, learn about each other, to have better jobs and live better lives.