A scummy child-molesting Republican. What a shock.

The BBQ Pit
81

Yes!

Oh . . .
Well son of a gun! Ya learn something new every day.

Sorry, SB. I thought you made some good points about the pettiness of tribalism, but I think you’ve lost it here.

I agree with Pizzaguy, everybody loses.
And now so do I.

Can we all at least agree that Octopus has made the stupidest post thus far in this thread, followed by a close shared second from Clavenhouse and Stringbean?
I’ll be happy to accept 3rd place if we can agree on that.

(Oh, yeah. My view on child-molestation and apparently systemic hypocritical shenanigans among self-proclaiming “family values” politicians? Ah’m agin’ it!)

82

So someone who has a family values agenda is a hypocrite for commiting violent rape, but a person who does not have a family values agenda is not? Because only people who extoll family values are against rape, and everyone else isn’t?

Child molestation and rape aren’t family values issues, and it’s quite bizarre to pretend they are.

83

I’m pretty sure that when most politicians (right-wing in particular) talk about “family values” that avoidance of sexual vices is a significant part of their definition.

So, yeah, I think violent rape would make a “family-values” politician a hypocrit. But at that stage, that would be the least of the criticisms that should be made of them.

(“That child-raping politician is a criminal, a monster, and a reprobate. Oh . . . And he’s also a hypocrit!”)

84

If a Christian murders someone, he’s not a hypocrite because all religions condemn murder?

85

If a pro-gay democrat were caught having sex with a guy, it wouldn’t be terribly huge and newsworthy. But we have a lot of those stories when those anti-gay crusaders turn out to have their gay trysts. And those are notable for their blatant hypocrisy. The people who most warn against the dangers of homosexuality were actually repressed homosexuals. There’s a battle between pro and anti-gay rights groups, and it’s notable when someone at the head of one of those groups goes directly against their ideology.

However, there’s no pro-murder/anti-murder factions in our society. Murder is more or less incidental to any sort of ideological groupings we give ourselves, since there are no pro-murder ideological groupings. Murders (assuming they aren’t terroristic/political) are an individual failing, not the responsibility of a group that a person happens to incidentally be in.

If a Christian killed someone, would you start a thread with the title “A scummy Christian killed someone. What a shock”? Almost certainly not, because them killing something had nothing to do with their Christianity (assuming we’re not talking about an abortion clinic bomber or something)

Compare this, to, say, Sarah Brady buying an illegal gun and then shooting up a school. That would be noteworthy for its hypocrisy because she spent her whole life dedicated to banning guns. Her ideology in that case wasn’t some incidental belief that almost everyone holds (like child molesting/rape/murder is wrong), and it’s noteworthy that the most outspoken person against something did something.

“Family values” Republicans are mostly a codeword for being anti-gay, or censorship depending on the context. It has nothing to do with being against child molestation, anymore than it has anything to do with being anti-murder or pro-environmental conservation or any other incidental belief that some of its members might hold.

If Hastert kidnapped someone, we wouldn’t say “A scummy republican kidnapped somoeone, what a shock!”, and if Hastert got drunk and ran someone over, we wouldn’t say “a scummy republican killed someone while driving drunk!”, so why would we say “a scummy child-molesting republican, what a shock”?

You could still pit the guy as doing any of those things, but the attempt to paint him as a hypocrite like those anti-gay crusaders who get double penetrated in truck stop bathrooms falls flat, and the OP looks like a partisan idiot for trying to use child molestation as a way of attacking his opponent’s ideology, rather than one particular guy.

86

Holy smokes! I left the “e” off “hypocrite”.
(Good thing I’ve never represented myself as a spelling-values type bloke.)

87

See my earlier post. You are conflating that fact that almost anyone is a hypocrite if they molest children with the idea that pretty much no one is a hypocrite for doing so.

Agreed, it’s no relevant, but it’s still true.

88

But the key point is that you’re not particularly hypocritical if you’re a family values guy and you molest kids. Anymore than you’re particularly hypocritical if you’re an environmentalist and molest kids or you’re pro-gun and you molest kids. It’s incidental. It really has nothing to do with it. Just because it has “family” in it doesn’t mean it has anything to do with child molestation. It’s just a euphemism for anti-gay, or prudish/censorship.

Unless you contend that an important part of the family values platform is not molesting kids, and that the people who are against the family values platform are okay with molesting kids. Which would actually be the case if he were caught having consensual gay sex, rather than assaulting a child. Because being against consensual gay sex is part of what defines and separates the family values group, whereas child molestation does not, since everyone is against it.

89

If that person has made a point of presenting themselves as a champion of Christian values, then yes, they are both a murderer AND a hypocrite.
(Thou shalt not kill, love they neighbour, etc.)
More so if they have previously accused other people of lacking Christian virtues.

Likewise, someone who has claimed to uphold “family values” (with the understanding that the definition includes chastity/monogamy, etc.) and has denounced other people for infidelity then commits rape, that person is both a rapist AND a hypocrite.

Quite so. And thus a sleazbag like this Hastert chap is twice a hypocrit, because he molested boys.

Look, I get it.
“A scummy child-molesting Republican. What a shock. ” is not a great way to present the OP.
Like you said, it reeks of tribalism.

But your insistence that the accusation of hypocrisy doesn’t apply to a “family values” politician who commits rape or a self-professed Christian who commits murder is baffling.

In short, some of your ideas intrigue me, but I won’t be subscribing to your newsletter.

90

Does “Family Values” include having extra-marital sex OF ANY KIND???

Does “Family Values” include abusing children for whom you are acting in loco parentis?

91

Wait. So he’s a hypocrite if he has consensual gay sex, but not if he rapes a man (or boy)?
Because . . . what? The criminality of the act somehow erases the underlying hypocrisy?

92

Family values means, “I want to make sure sluts can’t get birth control or abortion, and I want the homos to have as miserable and persecuted a life as we can get away with instituting.”

I wrote that as a joke, but really, after looking at it, what else does family values even mean?

I guess they don’t want anyone to see porn…

93

You dropped the word “else” right after “anyone” in that sentence.

94

Yeah, if anything he’s a bigger hypocrite.

Extolling oneself as being for “family values” whatever that means, is suggesting that you have superior moral standing. So an affair is worse, IMHO for the family values guy, because he’s the one clucking about his superiority.

95

I mean, if he raped someone, would you think it’s notable that the extra-marital sex went against his family value stands, or would you just think he’s a fucking horrible scumbag who raped people? The former thought is much stranger.

No, it’s not the criminality, it’s the fact that it’s universally agreed upon by everyone. Everyone believes molesting children is wrong. Everyone agrees rape is wrong. So the people who label themselves as “family values” don’t use their stance on rape and child molestation to separate and define themselves apart from their opponents. And so it’s silly to say that “don’t rape people” or “don’t molest children” is somehow part of the family values agenda. It’s not. They’re not fighting some pro-molesting and pro-rape group. And so it doesn’t make sense as though he was somehow being hypocritical on the specific values of the family values movement, since anti-rape and anti-molestation are not values specific to the family values movement.

Compare this to gay rights, where they actually do define themselves by trying to keep gays persecuted, and they oppose other parts of society who believe gays shouldn’t be persecuted. Now that’s an issue on which their “family values” label is actually defined. It’s a core of their platform, not something incidental that’s not specific to their platform that everyone believes.

If this explanation doesn’t work, I give up, because I actually don’t care about this at all. It’s obvious to anyone that the OP was shitty and this is just arguing over minutia and semantics.

96

Sometimes I’m shocked that stuff I read on the Dope can still astound me, yet here I am again.

This has to truly be the strangest argument I’ve ever seen on these boards. I have no words to understand how anyone couldn’t see this as hypocritical if the target holds a ‘family values’ stance.

Family values = all that is pure and right and good. Blowing underage boys = definitely NOT family values.

97

The vast majority of people in the US are Christian. Murder is hypocritical for Christians. Should every pitting of a murderer be titled “A scumbag Christian murderer. What a surprise”? If not, why not?

The answer I’m looking for here is “because his Christianity had nothing to do with a murder, and by labelling him just as a Christian, you’d be attempting to smear and score points against a group you dislike for what is a personal failing of an individual”

I’m actually painfully bored of this thread and unsubscribing.

98

From where I sit, this is a little less victory lap, and a little more walk of shame.

99

No, because that would be silly, as it wrongly suggests that murder is a typically Christian thing.
Now if it said “Bible-thumping ‘love-thy-neighbour’ Christian commits murder! What a hypocrite!” That would be quite right (while perhaps burying the lead, since murder trumps hypocrisy on the badness scale).

Christianity (as with many other religions) has specific teachings against murder, and violence, and vice, and crime.
A self-progressed Christian who murders is (among other things) a hypocrite.
The more so the louder they preach their religion and demand others subscribe to it.

Sure, if all someone is trying to do is frame the murder in terms of hypocrisy in order to smear a group by some loose association, than I fully agree that that is a douchey thing to do and a ridiculous argument, but it isn’t necessarily incorrect to call it hypocrisy.

I know! It must be painful beating that brick wall against our heads!

100

Which Democratic politician could do what Hastert reportedly did and NOT be a hypocrite?

That is: is there any politician of Democratic stripe who favors molesting teenagers, so that if he did it, he could say, “Hey, at least I’m not a hypocrite?”