In response to the recent revelations about Sen. Larry Craig (R), many have pointed out the odd coincidence that so many social conservatives who so loudly fight on behalf of what they believe to be burning moral issues seem guilty of these very immoralities themselves. In response to these observations, I would like to suggest that this is not a coincidence at all, but that the moral vision advocated by social conservatives actually invites or produces these sorts of outcomes.
Read on
Double lives such as Sen. Craig's are not an accident, but are a psychological product or logical consequence of how social conservatives relate to their conception of the moral law. The Apostle Paul clearly recognized this in the book of Romans. As a bit of a disclaimer, I am not here offering a religious argument (in fact I'm an atheist). Rather, I am drawing attention to a particularly brilliant insight into moral psychology (the mechanisms that occur in thought when we submit to rigid moral laws) made by Saint Paul. Outlining a particular emphasis on Judaism's alleged focus on written moral laws and the psychological consequences that follow from this, Paul wrote:
For when we were controlled by the sinful nature, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "Do not covet." But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang into life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. (Romans 7:5-10)
This is a powerful passage and a psychologically astute observation, regardless of whether one endorses Paul's theology. Rather than focusing on that theology, instead set it aside and focus simply on what he is claiming about the psychological impact of prohibitions. Often this passage is interpreted as an expression of the "yin and the yang" (i.e., that there cannot be sin if there is not law). However, when read carefully the point is quite different. Paul is making a profound point about human psychology with respect to the impact of laws and prohibitions. Paul's thesis is that the law produces or creates the desire for its own transgression.
When Paul claims that the law "condemns us to death", his point is not that sin is inescapable and that we can never live up to the demands of the moral law (as so many Christians would interpret this passage). Rather, the whole point is that the law creates obsession. "I would never have thought to covet my neighbor's wife had the law not forbid me to do so." Yet when confronted with the prohibition and the desire to take the prohibition seriously, I find that I'm now obsessed with my neighbor's wife... I find that I am constitutively unable to prevent myself from desiring her or thinking about her. Those of us who have suffered from obsessions or compulsions know that often the compulsion is experienced as a sort of living death. The person locked in compulsion or obsession no longer governs or directs themselves as a living, free person, but rather is like a sort of undead zombie, governed by the object of their obsession. In short, Paul is claiming that law creates this sort of obsession for the forbidden or prohibited object.
Take a modest case. Suppose, prior to leaving the house for a trip to the market around Christmas, you tell your children "while I'm gone you can do anything you're like, just stay out of the attic! (where the presents are hidden)" With this prohibition, the parent creates an irresistible desire for the child to go in the attic. All the child can think of is what must be in the attic. The "No!" makes the very thing prohibited desirable. Similarly, why does nearly everyone in a 65mph zone go 70mph or 75mph? Again, the prohibition or law creates the desire for the thing prohibited. In this case, speeding.
Looking at all the hijinks among social conservatives, one might conclude that the republican party somehow attracts perverts and hypocrites of various stripes, who then hide behind their religious and nationalistic ideologies as a way of manipulating the populace and hiding their own lifestyles (that would put them at a political, social, and economic disadvantage due to reigning social prejudices). However, the case is precisely opposite. These people really do, genuinely, believe these things but that very belief insures that they will perpetually fail, that they will be haunted for the very things that their stern moral law prohibits. It is these extreme religious ideologies, with their incessant focus on very strict moral laws and the Old Testament, with their obsession, in particular, with sexual issues, that produce the desire for the very thing prohibited.
Take the social conservative issue of chastity and abstaining from premarital sex. This constant obsession with chastity leads to a certain moral ideal: innocence (why do social conservatives have no problem with the death penalty, but are outraged with removing a brain dead woman from life support or aborting a fetus?: vegetative women and fetuses are the only true innocents!). However, sexual desire being something biological and basic, it isn't eradicated with these strict moral prohibitions and their obedience. These biological drives are still there, as strong as before; they simply displace onto new objects to express themselves. How can it be denied that the rapture of the sublime sometimes described by the devout follower, priest, or nun doesn't, in many respects, resemble an intensely sexualized erotic experience transferred onto another object (usually an icon)? How can it be denied that the flagellant monk, such as that depicted in The Da Vinci Code, doesn't experience a sort of orgasmic rapture in his self-punishment, simultaneously gratifying his sexual desire and punishing himself for it?
As a result of these prohibitions, the sexual desires get transferred to the moral ideal of innocence-- innocence itself becomes the object of desire --and lo and behold, a certain portion of social conservatives find their thoughts pervaded by pedophiliac fantasies obsessed with young children. A similar logic occurs in the case of homosexuality, where the endless focus on marriage, childraising, and strict gender identities ends up creating the desire for everything these laws are not. And is not the standard social conservative stereotype of homosexuals and women who get abortions that of a segment of the population that leads an excessively promiscuous lifestyle, engaging in wildly varied sexual acts and having numerous partners? Why is the woman who gets an abortion always described, by the social conservative as one who uses sex as birth control, who has all sorts of partners, rather than someone who lives in extremely difficult economic straights, who has health problems, who is a victim of rape or incest, etc? Is this characterization of women who get abortions and homosexuals a displaced projection of the sexual conservative's own lurid fantasies produced as a result of their moral prohibitions surrounding sexuality? Hence you end up with sad creatures like Craig, who live their desire in the shadows.
It is not that these people are "perverts" who hide behind religiousity, but rather that their particular brand of religiousity produces exactly these desires in much the same way that a mobius strip appears to have two surfaces but in reality only has one surface. It is not that social conservatives are hypocrites and fail to live up to their moral standards; but rather that the rigid and strict moral law and its perverse transgression are two faces of one and the same thing. They are interdependent and reflective of one another (here we might also think of the delicious burst of enjoyment when we violate some taboo or law, and expressions like "sex is not good unless it's bad!").
The strict moral law is always attached to its transgression in some form or another. If the Paul of Romans is read as a moral psychologist-- not unlike the philosopher Nietzsche --rather than an apostle, it is clear he understood this deadlock all too clearly, that he saw that focus on the strict moral law would only produce more transgression, and he was trying to think of a way of social life beyond the strict and suffocating moral law that would avoid these sad compulsions and obsessions. Sadly, the Christian right seems to entirely miss this logic and end up exacerbating their own problems and misery, as well as the suffering of the rest of us through their political actions. We will see much more of this in the future as the fundamentalist movements in the states continue to gain strength and numbers. It is intrinsic to the very nature of these types of "moral" universes.