Pia Hansen: Hypocrisy worse than transgressions
What a week we’ve had. On Tuesday, when stories of cross-dressing state Rep. Richard Curtis and toe-manipulating Christian recording artist Nate Schierman, with his fondness for middle-school girls, both ran I put down the paper with a strong desire to take a shower.
It’s been some time since I’ve seen that much perversion in one day. I’m sure we almost qualified for an X-rating.
Such an eruption of sexual deviance is usually followed by a groundswell of self-righteousness: The Washington state GOP erased all traces of Curtis from Web sites, while his family packed up and left town – poof, the sparkly legislator was gone.
Our blogs and letters talked about lost moral compasses and held many suggestions as to what elected officials in Curtis’ situation should do or not do to avoid situations like this. Among the more unusual suggestions was that politicians should submit to a mandatory annual lie detector test.
What specifically should we ask our politicians: Have you had any impure thoughts lately? Do you desire red stockings? Do you own any sparkly lingerie?
I fail to see how that would help anyone – including the politician being questioned – not to mention that lie detectors aren’t as accurate as we would like for them to be.
I think we’d be much better off trying to wrap our minds around the fact that elected officials are, mostly, human like the rest of us, complete with Playboy subscriptions, the occasional four-martini dinner and associated odd desires followed by bad decision-making.
When you run for office – Democrat, Libertarian, Republican, confused, undecided, a little of both – whatever your label is, you don’t sign a plea of normalcy, promising to stick to the straight and narrow as long as you serve.
One could hope that you strive to be a good role model, follow the law, limit the hurt you inflict on others and make ethical decisions, but everyone is human and as such fallible – at least that’s what I learned in Bible school.
I also remember my pastor talking a lot about forgiveness, but I’m not seeing a lot of forgiveness here, especially not from the Christian crowd.
The one thing I do know is that there is no way Curtis is the last legislator whose proudly held public morals will collide with a colorful private life in an embarrassing way.
When that happens, let’s hope the next wide-standing individual involved has the guts to tell the truth: “Yes, that was me, that’s what I did, that’s who I am. It was not my brightest moment, I have some explaining to do, and I’m sorry if I hurt someone as I was busy indulging myself.”
The trouble Curtis found himself in is not about being gay or closeted – who knows, he could be both, he could be neither, to me it doesn’t matter – what matters to me is the underlying hypocrisy.
I can’t stand hypocrites just like I can’t stand people who lie to me.
Unfortunately, we still live in a culture where people can’t always live their lives freely in accordance with who they are, because they fear being judged and ostracized. Maybe it’s about time we start applying a little tolerance instead.