News about sexual misdeeds is everywhere. Frankly, I don't see how anyone can attest to ascribing to strict moral principles and forebear granting to "sexual predators" the legal and political authority to enact laws that govern our society. For voters to do that is tantamount to entrusting the fox to guard the henhouse. After all, individuals thus empowered sit at the top of our society, and insofar as they do, they are our leaders and thus set the tone of what is and is not what America is "all about."
As go the allegations of sexual depravity, it's one thing when most private-sector personalities act thus because while they may enjoy wealth, professional power and respect, and social status, they aren't the people running the country. No Hollywood producer, actor, director, etc. is whom the nation, lo the world, looks to for explicit or tacit guidance regarding our nation's moral mores, formal or informal. Nobody looks to a sports figure for moral guidance.
It's wholly another when a public-sector individual exhibits turpitude. It's also a different matter when "Bible wavers" do so. Quite simply, one does not get to stand on a pedestal and attest to standing for "all that's good in the world, to declare what is right and what is wrong and enact policies that would send less powerful, less wealthy, less well connected people to the welfare line or jail, all the while oneself committing those wrongs and using one's political influence (private sector political influence and public sector influence). When what one trades on is one's reputation and asks others to trust in their integrity, as politicians and preachers do, one's reputation and integrity must be irreproachable.
As go stories of sexual misdeeds committed by federal representatives (appointed or elected), we've heard lots. That's fitting for even though, say, only the voters in a given state may elect a Senator or Representative to Congress, all of us pay those representatives' salary and we have all paid for the settlements Congress negotiated with the people whom representatives have maligned. So, yes, for example, in the case of Roy Moore, while only Alabamans get to vote on Moore's election, every citizen has a stake in the outcome Alabamans' votes. So too do Alabamans have a say in the federal-level politics of every other jurisdiction that sends representatives to Congress.
Why anyone from any state would cotton to the notion that voters in other states would knowingly (or probably know) send a sexual predator and influence abuser to Congress is beyond me. Yes, it's respective residents' of the states to decide whom to send to Congress, but due to the national impact their decision may have, those voters have no entitlement to expect the rest of us refrain from opining on their decision. The voters of those states also have no basis for not being labeled as morally turpitudinous themselves for having knowingly, or with good reason to suspect, sent a moral reprobate to Congress, the WH, or local and state government.
While
Roy Moore's moral hypocrisy has been laid bare for all to see, of state and local officials and candidates, along with religious leaders who lack national noteriety, there hasn't been much news about them. What little I've found, however, suggests to me that it's too often the one's who have waved their Bibles at us and dissembled to create their reputations.
- 30 Sources Expose Sexually Explicit Evidence of Harassment by Ohio GOP Rep. Wes Goodman
Goodman, who always campaigned on “family values,” recently made headlines for all the wrong reasons — he was caught on Tuesday having consensual sex with another man in his office.
(Click the link to see some of Goodman's Snapchat remarks. Apparently one must take a screenshot to preserve a Snapchat comment or photo, and that's exactly what folks did with Goodman's penis pics and suggestive exhortations.)
- Trump's Oklahoma campaign chair [Ralph Shortey] to plead guilt to child sex trafficking
According to Shortey's attorney, the former Republican lawmaker will plead guilty to one count of [felony] child sex trafficking on Nov. 30.
Stevenson described one encounter with Shortey ahead of a vote on an anti-transgender "bathroom bill" in which the lawmaker allegedly told Stevenson that while he couldn't vote against the measure because it would inflame his Christian base, he would abstain.
"Then, not 12 hours later, he sits in the committee and voted in the bill," Stevenson lamented.
This was not the first time Shortey voted against the state's LGBTQ community because of his Christian beliefs. He routinely voted with his Republican colleagues on bills targeting gay and transgender people, including a measure passed earlier this year that would allow business owners to discriminate against gay people.
- 3 pastors accused of luring teen girls, paying for sex -- This story is particularly shocking in that the three pastors appear to have been coordinating their activities.
Three [Toledo, OH] pastors worked together to entice teen girls to have sex, often for money, and shared photos and videos of the girls, federal prosecutors said.
Federal court documents describe how one of the pastors had sex with a girl in his church office and how another used his phone to record himself having sex with a teen. There were at least three victims mentioned in the indictment, the youngest being 14.
While the men — Cordell Jenkins, 47, Anthony Haynes, 38, and Kenneth Butler, 37 — all operated their own churches, federal prosecutors said the investigation was connected and remains ongoing.
- Archdiocese of Baltimore List of priests accused of sexual offenses
From what I can tell, the Catholic Church has dealt with the problem and rooted out many (most? all?) of it's known/credibly alleged sexual predators.
It's not lost on me that the Catholic Church is centrally organized and led, thereby making it easier to identify and deal with the problem, as well as making it easier to "point the finger" at a whole belief community. The disparate nature of Protestant Churches -- sometimes consisting of just one congregation -- makes that somewhat harder to do on a Protestantism-wide basis. To what extent is there sexual depravity among Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, etc. religious leaders? I have no idea.
- Sexual Abuse of Minors in Protestant Churches
- “25 MORE SHOCKING ARRESTS”: PASTORS CHARGED WITH SEX CRIMES
Now I don't mind that people get on a moral soapbox and wave the Bible at us for the Bible contains quite a lot of good and valid exhortations and guidance about how to conduct oneself with regard to one's fellow man. I mind that they stand in their "bully pulpit" or church pulpit yet don't practice what they preach. Doing that, just like every other form of paltering, prevarication and misrepresentation, is unequivocally a betrayal of trust.
One might ask what is to be done so that people know truly what kind of person is asking them to trust them in a governmental or spiritual leadership role. Well, "extreme vetting" and maximum disclosure is my answer.
Currently I "vette" the people who want my vote by getting to know them on some sort of personal level -- partly in person and partly by reputation as told to me by people whom I know well and who know the person well. (I don't mean merely having met them; I mean know the person well.) In the case of my elected city representatives, because I'm indifferent about party, I don't vote for anyone I don't personally know. That is the best I can do -- and, for the most part, if there are "open secrets" suggesting the candidate is a cad, they make their way to me -- but even as it is, and up to the Congressional level anyone can implement that approach, I don't think it's enough.
So what might we as a society do? Basically pass laws that require candidates for elected office become "open books." Some ways to do so include:
- Render null and void all NDAs to which the person is party. (Names and identifying information re: other individuals party to the agreement should be redacted.)
- Federal and state tax returns released in full.
- Unseal any court records that would have otherwise remained inaccessible to the public.
Those requirements strike me as a good place to start.
At the end of the day and because we are a republic, candidates for elected office necessarily bid us to trust them. Well, how the hell can one know whether a candidate deserves one's trust if one has no way to know the full "411" about the candidate? Holding elected office gives one a lot of power, power to hurt and harm the lives of thousands or millions. At the very least, we voters are entitled to know whether the folks in whom we vest that kind of power are of fine character, not just that they aren't "perverts," but also that there are no "skeletons in their closet" that suggest they "shady" in other dimensions.
