Re: Evil GOP bastards

more on cynical family values

http://www.penguin.ca/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,0_1585424498,00.html
Read the Sancity of Marriage Handbook

Composed of short profiles of some of the right wing's most vocal
"defenders" of marriage, The Sanctity of Marriage Handbook takes a
satirical look at these leaders to see how well they live up to the
sacred ideal they profess to be defending against "defilers" of
marriage, such as gay couples hoping to marry. Seldom has hypocrisy
been so funny. Bryan Harris profiles some of our moral forerunners as
they lead by example. Just a few include:

- Newt Gingrich: served his wife with divorce papers while she was
incapacitated by cancer and receiving treatment in a hospital room. He
is currently enjoying the sanctity of his third marriage.
- Representative Bob Barr, author of the Defense of Marriage Act:
before the age of fifty, Representative Barr had three marriages under
his belt. The old Beltway joke goes, "Exactly which marriage is Bob
Barr defending?"
- Rush Limbaugh: between Rush and his current wife, Marta, there are
six marriages and four divorces. Rush is currently in the process of
divorcing Marta.
- Senator Dan Burton: Republican senator who called Clinton a "scumbag"
and who runs his campaigns on family values. Burton fathered a son out
of wedlock.

This book needs to be thrust into the hands of everyone who voted "red"
because they thought it was a vote for "family values," and it is
required reading for those blue blue-staters who might want to feel a
little sanctimonious themselves.

Why did you write The Sanctity of Marriage Handbook?

Is there really anything funnier than a sex-crazed Congressman who
thumps the Bible with one hand and taps the ass of his mistress with
the other? I wrote this because we're due a few laughs. The dialogue
about family values and same-sex marriage has become so vitriolic that
it needs an antidote. In my book, laughter is an antidote to this kind
of rhetoric. Vonnegut once said "Laughter and tears are both
responses to frustration and exhaustion. I prefer to laugh since there
is less cleaning up to do afterward." I agree with that. I mean, how
can the image of Bill O'Reilly coming at you with a soapy loofah
sponge not be good for a laugh? Or the idea of Bob Barr, family values
warrior, using his tongue to run cleanup duty on the whipped-cream
covered cleavages of two busty women? By revealing these very real
failings of men and women who aim to legislate the morality of others,
we bring them down to size and say, 'Now wait a minute, buddy.
You're no better than the rest of us. In fact, you're a little
worse!'


You know, the cover almost looks anti-gay.

Well, satire and irony are dangerous little worlds. But people have
said that upon first glance, they thought the book was a true
"Sanctity of Marriage Handbook", an anti-gay screed, and it blows
my mind. Fifteen years ago, the majority of people would've seen the
two wedding cake topper brides with Hell fire behind them and said
"That's got to be a joke." Nowadays, the first thought that jumps
to mind is: Great, more Fundamentalist Christian Propaganda. Talk about
a pervasive cultural and ideological transformation! My goal is to get
people to listen to a Laura Schlessinger or a Rush Limbaugh holding
forth on family values and think: That's got to be a joke! Surely a
woman who posed nude for her adulterous lover and a man who popped
illegal pills and has been married three times wouldn't be telling us
how to live our lives!

So, if you don't mind me asking, are you gay?

Provisionally. No, I'm kidding. I'm a straight guy who was having
trouble removing his jaw from the floor every time one of these
right-wing politicians starting spewing hypocrisy bile about same-sex
marriage. What was even more unbelievable to me was the Santorum logic
that had taken hold of the legislative dialogue, the whole 'If we let
same-sex couples marry, the next thing we know, people will be
copulating with lamp posts!" This whole thing shouldn't be the
concern only of the gay population of this country; it should be the
concern of every American citizen, because it's about rights, not
sex. These slick Willies and Wandas want you to think it's about
dirty sex, but if it were, they would be eminently qualified to speak
about it. Since it's not, they're just frothing hypocrites. And
that's kinda cute.

Some of these guys are a little old, like Newt Gingrich. Isn't that
old news?

Newt's never old news. Like Jackie O, he is always in style.
Especially because he was the horny architect of the Republican
Revolution in the mid-nineties, something that set the stage for what
we're seeing today. What I'm trying to do in this book is to
illustrate a pattern of ascendent leaders and legislators who are
legislating morality in this country and judging humanity by a standard
they cannot uphold themselves. In fact, some might say they are
domestic underachievers. By talking about these open secrets, we can
laugh, and then, maybe, take some action.


But, don't democrats do the same thing?

Sure. I'm pretty well convinced we have a ton of politicians in this
country living like Rick James. They're rich, they're powerful and
they're persuasive, so what's stopping them? Here in America,
you're free to party night and day until your ticker explodes or your
brains go mushy. But the difference between a Democrat doing it and a
Republican is that Democrats don't crawl out of bed with their
hangovers and freshly acquired STDs and vote for legislation to stop
everybody else's fun.

Some of these guys, like the Republican National Committee execs, Ken
Mehlman, Dan Gurley and Jay Banning, you're talking about the
ambiguity of their sexuality, or, in the case of Gurley and Banning,
their outright homosexuality. Yet the whole book is countering the use
of sex as a political weapon. Is that fair?

Barney Frank, one of the only openly gay legislators in Congress, was
asked the same question, and I like his answer. He said he wasn't
inclined to out legislators unless the legislator in question was
voting for anti-gay legislation. "You don't have a right to be a
hypocrite; you don't have a right to exempt yourself from the
negative things you do to other people." I sort of took that comment
as my cue. You've got Gurley and Banning who designed Bush's 2004
election strategy, which used same-sex marriage as a wedge issue.
You've got Gurley, who was cruising for studs on Gay.com, overseeing
the creation of an attack ad that featured a Bible with the words
"Banned" stamped on top of it in a swing state. Now that's just
funny.

You're kind of young. Are you excited about this, your first book?

I always thought I'd start out with some small, quiet book on
municipal taxes or something like that, but this project fell into my
lap, and unlike Newt Gingrich and other shining legislative lights, I
removed it from my lap and got to work. I also think being a young
author is a plus when it comes to this issue. I'm too naïve to
realize I'm burning some bridges with this book; but I also like to
think I'm building some, too.

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