from OurFuture.org:
Night of the HunterBy Rick Perlstein on July 10, 2007 - 7:52pm.
The Internets are ablaze with the news that über-family values senator David Vitter of Louisiana was a habitué of a D.C. prostitute. Vitter is a big-time sanctity-of-marriage sort of cat, one who doesn't "believe there's any issue" more important than the proposed Constitutional amendment to "protect the sanctity of traditional marriages," who indeed finds the breakdown of marriage so dangerous to the republic that he spun an elaborate metaphor comparing gay marriage to "the crossroads where
Katrina met Rita." He is a "true social conservative," adjudge the ones who know.
Thanks to the great Glenn Greenwald for researching those quotes. But Glenn also makes a mistake common to us liberals when he understands the meaning of this event as "hypocrisy"—saying one thing and believing another. The implication being: How many more examples—beyond politicians like Gingrich, Livingston, Giuliani, and Limbaugh; beyond clergy like Jim Bakker and Ted Haggard—do conservative Christians need before they wake up to the truth: that their leaders' pledges of fealty to the concept of "traditional marriage" are meaningless? And that these leaders, as a body, are worthless, only out for themselves?
The answer is: they will never "wake up." The answer is that conservative Christianity is a culture radically different from that of secular (or even religious) liberalism, and that to understand the political meaning of events like this for its members you have to understand that culture's rules. Most importantly, you must understand its rules about sin and redemption. Which are, at heart, an argument about human nature. "True social conservatives" don't reject their sinners—because we are all sinners. They call upon them to repent. Which suggests an entirely different political dynamic than the one native to the secular (or even religious) liberal mindset.
Ted Haggard, pastor of the massive New Life Church in Colorado Springs and leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, provides the best case study. If you believe, as Haggard does, as do all his followers, and their religious tradition going back to time immemorial, that Satan is real, forever laying siege to the faithful, forever providing us tests of our faith, forever reminding us of mankind's inherently sinful nature--well, then, the kind of leader they will most respect would be the kind of person who feels that reality most intensely, and is able to communicate it most convincingly. ......(more)
The complete piece is at: http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/night_hunter