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Tuesday, August 31, 2004
Apples and Oranges The Congressman's votes against gay rights no more made his private, consensual sexual life a legitimate public issue than Bill Clinton's pro-feminist issues stances made his tomcatting a legitimate public issue. Mark Kleiman believes that Ed Schrock's gay private life isn't "a legitimate public issue." Normally, I'd wholeheartedly agree, but given Schrock's stridently anti-gay voting record, I'm not so sure. I can look past a politician who misrepresents himself, especially if he's hiding the fact that he is a member of a unjustly discriminated-against minority. However, when, perhaps to cover himself, he's advocating discrimination against that same minority, it becomes reprehensible. If Schrock was saying that one's consensual sexual conduct should be legally relevant (to be fair, I cannot find anything where he explicitly does), I don't see how his own can or should be somehow priveleged. And, if Schrock was making the gay sex in Virginia before June 2003, he was breaking the law, which certainly merits public scrutiny. By the way, I am unable to figure out how "tomcatting" and feminism are directly opposed to one another in the same way as are "gay" and "anti-gay." Bill's affair(s) did not constitute discrimination against women or their interests. There is nothing intrinsically inconsistent about a feminist philanderer. 
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