Commentary

‘Family values’ leaders are projecting their own fears and desires

‘Family values’ leaders are projecting their own fears and desires

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Thomas Jefferson wrote these stirring words in the Declaration of Independence, but Jefferson and many of the very men who signed onto the final draft somehow rationalized or denied to themselves the unfathomable contradiction that they enslaved, owned, raised, and sold human beings.

Like many of these “founders,” during the history of the world, a great number of our leaders betrayed their words through their actions.

In the not-too-distant past alone, so-called “family values” politicians and religious leaders who vocally and rigorously championed conservative social issues, such as opposition to sex outside marriage, women’s reproductive freedoms, and LGBT equality, were found literally with their pants down publicly exposing their engorged … hypocrisy.

For example, Minister Jim Bakker, Praise the Lord (PTL) founder and creator of the Christian fundamentalist theme park, Heritage USA, paid hush money to a female church secretary to cover up their sexual affair. Prosecutors later convicted Bakker of embezzling $158 million from his parishioners. 

And who will forget the tearful confession televised over the airwaves of televangelist Jimmy Swaggart when reports surfaced of him paying a number of women for sex. By the way, Swaggart fiercely condemned Bakker a few years earlier for engaging in sexual affairs outside of marriage.

U.S. Senator, Republican Larry Craig of Idaho, a legislator with a very long anti-LGBT voting record in both the House and Senate, pleaded guilty to a charge in 2007 of lewd conduct after an undercover police officer arrested him for soliciting sex in a Minneapolis-Saint Paul airport men’s restroom. During his career, the far-Right American Family Association and Family Research Council heaped praise onto Craig for his consistent conservative voting record.

An interesting note is that a co-founder of the Family Research Council, George Rekers, was exposed by the media when he returned home from Europe with a young male escort whom he found on the website Rentboy.com. The young man claimed that Rekers paid him to perform nude body rubs on a daily basis. Rekers is a retired professor from the University of South Carolina and a Baptist minister.

Other recent conservative paragons of virtue who fell off their lofty conservative “family values” perches include Senator John Ensign (R-NV) who engaged in a sexual affair with the wife of his chief of staff, and Senator David Vitter (R-LA), who was discovered to have been a client of female sex workers in the District of Columbia and in Louisiana.

And now we watch as Donald Trump, the Republican Party candidate for the presidency, walks a tightrope of contradictions. Though he bases his run for the White House on building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border to keep out undocumented immigrants, to deport those already here, and to ban Muslims from entering the U.S., in fact, Trump hired undocumented Polish workers at less-than standard wages and under horrendous working conditions to construct his Trump Towers in New York City.

In addition, Trump argued his opposed to the Supreme Court’s judgment last summer legalizing same-sex marriage throughout the United States, preferring rather to allow individual states to decide. He asserted that he is in favor of “traditional marriage,” which must be true if one defines “traditional” as a man engaging in numerous extramarital affairs and marrying three times to three different women.

Some tout their supposed beliefs simply for expediency by pandering for expected gain and advancement. Others, however, who attempt to juggle the contradictions, may have convinced themselves that they actually believe the policies they espouse, even though they have great difficulty upholding these due to their libidinal or economic default settings. In the latter instance, individuals often voice unwavering commitment to their values to shield themselves from unwanted desires and impulses while attributing these to others thereby shifting the blame from themselves onto others.

In psychological parlance, this is referred to as “projection.”

For example, in our current national controversy over supporting trans people entry into the restroom corresponding to their gender identity or forcing them into facilities listed on their birth certificates, some opponents of trans inclusion project their own impulses of entering intimate spaces of another sex to fulfill erotic or prurient desires.

In actuality, there are virtually no instances of trans women or trans men assaulting anyone when they entered restrooms. Trans people, however, often remain at risk for assault by cisgender people.  

A few years back primarily heterosexual men vehemently opposed openly gay and bisexual men from entry into the military. We heard as the primary argument that by allowing these men access to bunks and showers, this would place heterosexual men at risk for assault and undermine troop cohesion.

I contend, rather, that in many instances, the mechanism of projection was in operation within the heterosexual men in order to protect themselves from their own desires to bunk and shower in the women’s quarters. Again, gay and bisexual men are those who stand at greater risk for assault.

Many who adhere to strict fundamentalist religions often oppose the more progressives denominations, as well as women’s equality, women’s reproductive rights, homosexuality and bisexuality, trans identities and expressions, atheism, agnosticism, divorce, unmarried people living together, and the list goes possibly as a repressed envy since others enjoy greater degrees of freedom and more options by not accepting rigid religious dogma.

Psychologist George Weinberg raised an interesting concept within the overarching system of heteronormativity and heterosexism, which he termed “existence without vicarious immortality.” Simply stated, in the public imagination, LGBT people are generally seen as people who either do not or cannot bear children.

Though, in fact, this is often not the case, the very idea of persons without children awakens in some people a fear of death, often unconscious, since offspring provide a continuation of the family line and gene pool of individual members. Therefore, for some people, any reminder of their own mortality can emerge as threatening to the ego, and this fear can transform into prejudice.

So in the final analysis, in addition to our investigating the political, religious, social, and economic systems that construct, maintain, and enhance issues of control and domination over others and over the environment, we must add to this the psychological dimensions, which keep these systems firmly in place. I believe we must especially keep this in mind as we attempt to vet our political candidates and religious leaders.

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