Defense Tactics

by digby

Here’s a right wing hypocrite I can defend with a whole heart:

The lawyer for a former Baptist church leader who had spoken out against homosexuality said Thursday the minister has a constitutional right to solicit sex from an undercover policeman.

The Rev. Lonnie W. Latham had supported a resolution calling on gays and lesbians to reject their “sinful, destructive lifestyle” before his Jan. 3, 2006, arrest outside the Habana Inn in Oklahoma City.

Authorities say he asked the undercover policeman to come up to his hotel for oral sex.

His attorney, Mack Martin, filed a motion to have the misdemeanor lewdness charge thrown out, saying the Supreme Court ruled in the 2003 decision Lawrence v. Texas that it was not illegal for consenting adults to engage in private homosexual acts.

“Now, my client’s being prosecuted basically for having offered to engage in such an act, which basically makes it a crime to ask someone to do something that’s legal,” Martin said.

Both sides agree there was no offer of money, but prosecutor Scott Rowland said there is a “legitimate governmental interest” in regulating offers of acts of lewdness.

The issue here is whether the man should be tried for soliciting an undercover cop for a blow job. Money was never discussed, so the “crime” is simply that he asked. That is the sex police at their worst.

Now, I’m sure that prior to his arrest the Reverend Latham would have absolutely agreed that the government had an interest in regulating offers of acts of lewdness, but that’s beside the point. This is not a matter for the legal system if prostitution was not involved. The hypocrisy of the victim is not at issue.

As for the Reverend Latham’s joining the burgeoning ranks of religious right closet cases, that’s something else entirely. When you see this kind of cruel hypocricy on the part of Elmer Gantry after Elmer Gantry, it’s not hard to see why some of the non religious might just think all this righteousness is a con that is not worthy of the kind of special respect and deference for religion that our society seems to require.

I try to be respectful and I do not believe that religion is a con. I enjoy discussing this issue with religious people of good will and I count many among them as my friends. But I also think you have to cut people a little slack when they fail to make all the proper distinctions among believers in light of the massive number of revelations these past few years about the Catholic Church and the Protestant fundamentalist leaders who fail spectacularly to practice what they preach. These are people who are at the forefront of the religious right movement and are in direct and often aggressive opposition to progressivism and liberalism. Most importantly, they are constantly represented in the media and politics as being the true religious face of America.

So, I’m not inclined to go completely ballistic on the hard core anti-religios. When you look at the big picture you see that the religious are as politically varied as the population as a whole and that Democrats are as religious as are the Republicans. But the culture war is being waged by churches, if not all churches, and day after day these sexual scolds and allegedly traditionalist leaders are being exposed as frauds after years of self-righteous finger-pointing at anyone who doesn’t toe their line. It results in real damage to real people. It should not be surprising that some respond with anger and hostility to such hypocrisy and attack religion as a whole rather than make distinctions among them. It’s as predictable as a rightwing Republican preacher soliciting sex from a male prostitute.

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