Here’s who you would think would be the ideal candidate for voters who proclaim personal morality as their driving principle: A man who is faithful to and clearly in love with his wife, who has only been married once, who is a devoted father, who is deeply religious but doesn’t brag about it, who is measured in his language and avoids vulgarity.
The problem for conservative evangelicals is that the politician who fits this description is Barack Obama. As for the Republican field, well, that’s another story. Yet the fact that the religious right can’t credit Obama for living the type of morally upright life that it purports to promote underscores just how severed its principles are from its politics.
In fact, for a group that expects its leaders to live up to Biblical values, the religious right sure doesn’t seem all that keen on monogamy.
All of the three remaining GOP presidential contenders have their baggage…
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- Donald Trump was carrying on with Marla Maples while still married to Ivana. There are plenty of other rumors of extra-marital flings, which Trump doesn’t exactly deny.
- The National Enquirer has accused Ted Cruz of having five mistresses. (Thanks, Enquirer, for that particular image, which we could live without.) Of course, it just so happens that Donald Trump is a close friend of the magazine.
- John Kasich divorced his first wife and is now on his second. Most people wouldn’t care, but divorce is still a personal failing for conservative evangelicals.
The GOP has a rich history of adulterous, antigay, moralists. A few examples:
- Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House and 2012 GOP presidential candidate, who was having an affair with his next wife while still married to the previous one. Not once but twice, mind you.
- Mark Sanford, the one-time governor of South Carolina who disappeared for six days while carrying on with Argentinian woman. Sanford’s spokesman famously explained his boss’s absence by saying he was hiking the Appalachians.
- David Vitter, the former Senator from Louisiana, whose name appeared on a list of clients for a prostitution service in D.C.
There are plenty of other examples, right up to today. The antigay governor of Alabama Robert Bentley is dealing with accusations that he was having an affair with a top aide despite the fact that Bentley looks like a spokesmodel for Poligrip.
Now evangelicals are all about forgiveness, so they will gladly overlook what the rest of us would call hypocrisy if it comports with their world view. (How else would Kim Davis be taken seriously?) So what if the leading candidate for the Republican nomination talks trashy about women and owns casinos, as long as he holds the right positions? This line of turning a blind eye dates back to Ronald Reagan, who was divorced at a time when that was much more shocking and who apparently married his Nancy when she was already three months pregnant.
But the irony is that the man conservative Christians hate the most is the most moral politician in the pack when it comes to personal integrity. Barack Obama is faithful and clearly in love with this wife and the first couple are raising two amazing kids. Yet the religious right treats Obama as completely devoid of any morals and, at the fringes, declares he’s Satan’s tool.
The Obama’s have a marriage of equals, and one that many couples would envy. Yet Obama has no authority among the religious right because he’s the man who paved the way for marriage equality. His political positions void his personal attributes, much the way that sleazy Republican candidates’ positions void their personal failings.
So what we’re stuck with as a significant portion of the electorate that gleefully touts morality as the foundation of all policy while happily turning a blind eye to the behavior that violates the same morality that its selling. Don’t expect that to change in the 2016 election. In fact, we should expect to hear why Trump’s shenanigans are the equivalent of Hillary’s standing by Bill during his sexual escapades.
It sounds nice to say both sides do it–especially when you know it’s not true.
Photo credit: jshildreth
Kim Singh
The LGBT community; in particular the gay community worldwide is guilty of glorifying youth, worshipping the physique which comes with youth and disdains everyone else; the fat and the older. West Hollywood, Miami and the Castro district area in San Francisco are littered with gyms and shops selling protein suppliers, tans and plastic surgery…Gay men in these gay ghettos look plastic and identical. They have perfect skin and teeth but their innards are corroded from being caustic towards anyone who does not resemble a gym hunk. It is a sad existence indeed.
https://blog.moovz.com/gay-community-loves-fat-shame/
Jean-Claude Poulin
I don’t know how old you arebut if you do some serious research you will realize that human culture has ALWays honored and worshipped beauty and physical fitness. As for fat shaming today is a lot less than it ever has been historically. Truth is the way one takes care of their outside is a direct freflection of how they take care of their inner selves. The problem today is that so many Americans are fat and sedimentary and they want society to accept and even worship it. To do so is against natural instincts of fitness and survival. It’s very difficult to be fit and takes a lot of self discipline and commitment. It is becoming more prevelant to “fitness shame” by people like you. You will not win. It is unnatural for the human body to be overweight.and will never be accepted.
Joseph Carney
Oh thats right because he’s black. That makes them bigots. How Christian is that. One day we all will meet our maker. You’ll pay then for your sins. And your not Christians, your Bigots.
TampaZeke
…John McCain, David Vitter, Mark Sanford, Ronald Reagan…
TampaZeke
Oh, and they supported a MORMON, the biggest sin of all, last election!
I was taught in church that the Mormon cult was by far the most dangerous cult in the world. My church even showed a couple of anti-Mormon documentaries in the main sanctuary. I can remember telling my mother (I was just a kid) that I had a Mormon friend at school who was very nice. She lost her shit and told me I was NEVER to talk to her again. That she was straight from the devil. So imagine my “surprise” when my parents told me that they were voting for Romney. When I challenged them I got EXACTLY the response I expected; “a Mormon is better than a Muslim!” That’s exactly what one would expect to hear from people who have Fox News and Christian radio blasting in their home 24/7.
Mark Pointon
Because they have no basic logic skills, they are also usually brother cousins etc…
GC1985
@Kim Singh: Says the person with a fit guy as their avatar. Learn how to address the subject.
The religious right have a history of supporting adulterers and cheats. This goes back years. Donald Trump is a sleazebag who not only cheated in his marriages, but also cheated on his taxes. His connections with the mafia were extensive and he wants people to believe he didn’t know who he was dealing with. Total slimeball.
joeyty
Obama is “faithful” ? Ithought Queerty disdained the religious.
joeyty
@Mark Pointon: With THAT face you’re joking about inbreeding ??
Bauhaus
Evangelicals have the highest divorce rate; agnostics and atheists have the lowest.
Of course the hypocrites hate Obama – he doesn’t use religion as a truncheon against others. What Obama has in his own life, and what he has extended to us (marriage and equality), the hypocrites can’t attain/retain in their own lives.
Holly Carlson Sill
“You be ashamed”. Apparently Jesus had really bad grammar!
Will Glitzern
Queerty, don’t forget all the anti-gay/religious repubs who got caught having sex with men (Randy Boehning, Larry Craig, Eddie Long, Matt Mikela…too many to list)
NateOcean
http://wonkette.com/314897/exclusive-i-had-sex-with-larry-craig
Why not include Larry Craig on the list?
Didn’t he f*ck a twink in his house (where was Craig’s wife at the time?). After pulling his sh*t-stained c*ck out, he pleaded with the guy not to smear his sh*t on the good linen, and to forget her ever been there.
Yeah, I’d include Larry Craig.
Michael Schmidt
Because the Religious Right are HYPOCRITES, Jesus Christ said “He who is without Sin, CAST the first Stone” This crap makes my BLOOD boil!
DCguy
Easy, because they aren’t really religious. They only want an excuse for hate and bigotry. They use religion as some way to separate themselves. They claim, “Oh, I’m pius and you aren’t so I can tell you what to do.”
So why do they hate Obama but love Cruz or Trump? Easy, they are rac-ists or bigots or both and support people that feel the same way.
Marshall R. Krug
SNAFU !
Mark Goldberg
because Obama is black
Josh in OR
It’s because the modern Christianist is a modern incarnation of the Pharisee: Obsessed with the appearance of holiness, while neglecting the true spirit. Just like the Pharisees, modern Christianists are dogged followers of the law (the various rules of their faith) while being utterly blind to The Law (the reason their religion has those rules in the first place.)
They are, as Jesus himself said (in the Bible they so claim to love), ‘white-washed sepulchres’. What’s more, men like Cruz, Graham, and the rest of the showmen who keep the flock focused outward instead of inward, are CLEARLY false prophets, perverting the core message of their supposed god from a message of love into a message of hate. ‘Woe to them who call good evil and evil good.’ and they openly flout their founder’s wishes when they make SUCH shows of their piousness, holding prayer rallies at the Capital, protesting while carrying their gilded crosses…’those who pray in public for all the world to see do so not for My benefit, but for their own.’
Finally, one last excerpt from their own ‘holy’ book: “By their fruits shall you know them.” The modern Christianist is lost. They follow false prophets who lead them from love and community good into fear and xenophobic outrage.
GC1985
@joeyty:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faithful
The word “faithful” doesn’t always have to do with religion.
You should know better… oh wait, you don’t really know anything at all.
joeyty
@GC1985: Yeah, it does.
joeyty
@Josh in OR: “They follow false prophets who lead them from love and community good into fear and xenophobic outrage.” Glad I’m not religious, then, and free to be proud to be a xenophobe !
Jeffrey Thomas
Ian Watson
EXTREMELY STRANGE THAT!
o.codone
Obama is described as “deeply religious but doesn’t brag about it”. If this is true, and I doubt that it is, his “religion” must be the church of hate of the Reverend Wright. That’s the only religious affiliation he’s had his entire life. Obama is, more than anything, a fraud. He has no religious convictions. His affiliations are all about his vaulting himself into the ultimate position of power, the presidency. And, what a mistake that has been. He was a humiliating, unqualified idiot for 8 years, and Americans are too stupid to even know how embarrassing that has been. OMG, what a fraud, what idiots.
DCguy
@o.codone: stated :Obama is described as “deeply religious but doesn’t brag about it”. If this is true, and I doubt that it is, his “religion” must be the church of hate of the Reverend Wright.
You Obama haters will have to make up your mind. Is he NOT religious, is he a MUSLIM, or is he a member of Jeremiah White’s Christian Church?
AS for a Church of hate, Cruz has gone to events supported by a Pastor who supports legalized murder of gay people. So you will have to explain why you attack Obama’s church as hateful but give a pass to Cruz and the pastors that want to kill you.
1EqualityUSA
I love Obama. He is a breath of fresh air. We are so fortunate to have had someone so intelligent and dignified after, the eight years preceding his two terms. Two terms. You may feel free to assume that there are many disagreeing with you, o’maggie. Keep digging for those ancient truffles.
1EqualityUSA
damn commas. they float about and land as haplessly as bees.
o.codone
@DCguy: I don’t have to explain anything to you. Let me extract a few words from my previous post to make my point again.
“He was a humiliating, unqualified idiot for 8 years, and Americans are too stupid to even know how embarrassing that has been. OMG, what a fraud, what idiots”.
There, that kinda says it all.
GayEGO
@TampaZeke: Don’t you mean “MORON” :>)
TampaBayTed
Adultery is still illegal in 26 of the 50 states. Severity ranges from misdemeanors to felonies. I’m surprised that married gays/lesbians are being persecuted by the whacked out religious right under these statues.
yaletownman
It’s basically the “The Poor White Trash” syndrome. Once the slaves were freed their greatest persecutors were whites on the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. These lowest class whites feared that the newly freed slaves would make better share cropper deals with the former slave holders thus rob them of the only work they were qualified to do. They also feared that the slaves would become educated and rise above them on the socio-economic scale leaving them at the bottom. Remember the human ego finds its self esteem by having something to look down upon. The upper class Whites saw an opportunity in all of this. It was true that they wanted the newly freed slaves to work for cheap and one way of doing this was to keep them oppressed and living in fear. They achieved this by manipulating the lower class Whites into persecuting them. This was done by organizing them and guiding them to burn their houses, lynch them and make it difficult for them to go to school. There worse fear was seeing the blacks rise above them economically, socially and morally. These lower class Whites were referred to as “poor whites trash”.
Which brings us to today. Look what has happened to the Republican Party. Studies have shown that the States with the lowest wages, poorest educational systems, highest rates of high school drop outs, highest rates of poverty, highest gun ownership, poor accessibility to healthcare and highest rates of religious fundamentalism are also the most politically conservative, essentially modern day “Poor White Trash” (the list never ends, see Institutue for Economics and Peace for all the data). Look at who and how these modern day descendants are manipulated. The wealthy, upper class politicians and business owners like the Koch brothers. This modern day “Poor White Trash” are Obamas greatest critics and he’s their worse nightmare come true. He has proven once and for all that African Americans are everything they’ve preached they can’t be in order to feel good about themselves. The head of the most powerful nation on Earth is a Black man who is elegant, classy, intelligent, extremely well educated, morally upstanding and successful. He’s even beloved by millions. What a symbol for them to have to look at and without something to look down upon all they see in the mirror is what they are……”Poor White Trash”.
joeyty
@yaletownman: “White trash” is an anti-black r@cist term, when you think about it. It’s a term that specifies these particular trash folk are white, which isn’t necesary to do re. blacks because the assumption is…all blacks are trash. (It was sometimes also used to describe whites who hung out with blacks socially).
joeyty
And note how anti-religion (especially anti-Christian) leftists will still praise Rev. Martin Luther King, who couldn’t have been more Biblically-oriented.
onthemark
@o.codone: You are a self-described “drug addict” so maybe your drug addiction is causing you to misinterpret Obama’s generally successful presidency.
@joeyty: No – “faithful” does NOT always refer to religion:
“I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant’s faithful one hundred percent!” – “Horton Hatches The Egg” by Dr. Seuss
joeyty
@onthemark: “No – “faithful” does NOT always refer to religion:” It does in this article. (Stop playing games).
onthemark
@joeyty: Nope, “faithful” here refers to marital fidelity.
joeyty
@onthemark: Then how does Queerty know Obama has been faithful in THAT way or not ?
onthemark
@joeyty: Stop playing games, indeed! Well, it’s probably impossible nowadays for a president to get away with marital infidelity. It was easy for JFK, FDR, Warren Harding etc. because the news media “knew” & kept the secrets, but those days are long gone.
joeyty
@onthemark: And consider the source. Queerty also said Northern Ireland was Catholic. As equal a question (since we don’t know of Obama’s fidelity or otherwise) is why the mockingly anti-Christian Queerty excuses Obama’s beliefs (or seeming beliefs).
1EqualityUSA
Because Obama doesn’t push his religious beliefs onto a secular society, whose framework is a set of laws recognizing that all are equal.
joeyty
@onthemark: (Obama probably IS faithful, though. He’s got a goodlooking wife. Even though I know that’s not always a factor in whether a man strays or not).
joeyty
@1EqualityUSA: I understand. But the Queerty position still is that one has to be an idiot to follow any relgion at all.
o.codone
@onthemark: “his generally successful presidency”. At least you said “generally”. I think you’ve got some research to do. He is successful only if you listen to the clapping seals in the media. Or the gay clapping seals on Queerty. History will not be kind to this dangerous idiot of a “president”.
joeyty
@o.codone: Why do you think that about Obama’s presidency ? If you could just hit on some stuff ..? I’m not challenging you, I’m just seriously asking.
o.codone
@joeyty:
http://thefederalist.com/2014/09/16/10-ways-obama-has-failed-as-president/
He lied about Benghazi, trying to pass it off as a youtube video.
He orchestrated the overthrew of Kadhafi, creating a vacuum for ISIS to enter.
He armed ISIS, hoping they would overthrow Assad. (Benghazi was an arms deal).
Instead ISIS used American dynamite to blow up Palmyra (a World Heritage site).
He pussied out on the “red line” threat. They are still using chlorine gas on the Kurds.
He cannot work with Congress.
He’s lazy vacationing pussy. And a pathological, entitled narcissist.
He’s pro-choice extremist, (funds PP. They slice-up babies and sell the body parts. Even the Nazi’s didn’t sell body parts).
And on and on and on.
o.codone
@o.codone: @o.codone: He has brought in 750,000 Muslims since he took office. In case you haven’t noticed, Muslims hate gay people. He wants to bring in more, so does Hillary. The USA has no obligation to bring these extremists here. Those Muslims are going to show up at Pride and hurt us. Even if 1% is dangerous, that’s a whole lot of anti-gay Muslims that we do not need in our country. He is putting gays in harm’s way. Liberals.