By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO– From my vantage point on the other side of the United States, the fact that two Jewish politicians who resigned their offices in separate sex scandals are now seeking to return to elective offices in New York indicates that America continues to change its sexual attitudes. Someday, we may become as blasé about sex, in its many variations, as the French have been historically.
Former Congressman Anthony Weiner, who resigned after he sent pictures of his penis by wireless telephone transmission, has jumped into New York City’s mayoral race, and by all accounts, he is considered one of the top contenders to succeed Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
More recently, former New York State Gov. Elliot Spitzer, who quit the Empire state’s top office when it was revealed that he was using the services of a prostitute, has declared his intention to become New York City’s controller, the man who keeps a sharp eye on how the city’s pension funds are invested.
Neither man is untrained in electoral politics. You can assume that long before either of them announced his ambitions for political redemption that they carefully polled the New York City electorate to see exactly how damaging in the voters’ eyes their sexual escapades were. Given that both decided to announce their candidacies in their respective races, the answer must have been “not very damaging at all.” Oh sure, there will be people and opponents who will criticize their sexcapades every chance they get, but both men apparently are convinced that such hectoring won’t have traction with the voters.
Combine this with South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s successful political rehabilitation — winning a congressional seat last year after resigning his state’s governorship because of an extramarital affair that had him sneaking out of the state — and we see that what previously might have been unacceptable sexual behavior now is tolerated, even winked at, by American voters.
Going further back into our history, the fellatio that White House intern Monica Lewinsky performed on President Bill Clinton during his second administration was not considered a significant enough error on Clinton’s part to warrant his impeachment. Rather, the charges brought against him — and which he survived — were not that he did it, but that he lied about doing it.
On the homosexual side of our nation’s mores, same sex marriages–which were once considered taboo — now have the legal sanction of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Clearly, the times, they are a-changing.
In contrast to the sexual freedom that Americans seem to desire, the Islamic world and Christian and Jewish religious fundamentalists seem to becoming ever more sexually repressive. Honor killings befall many Muslim girls who “shame” their family by having sexual relations before their marriages, in some cases even if those relations were forced upon them.
Islamic fundamentalists admonish women to dress modestly, or face dire consequences, and this demand is echoed by Haredi Jews who will stone women who are perceived as flaunting their sexuality. by, say, wearing short sleeves. Fundamentalist Christians make less noise about it, but no doubt some of them would be happy to return to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s days when wayward women were branded with scarlet A’s.
I asked my daughter, who now has two children of her own, how she feels about the more relaxed attitudes about sexuality. Her answer reminded me of what my mother–her grandmother–would have said. “I just wish they (Weiner and Spitzer) weren’t Jewish. it’s embarrassing.”
But concerning both men’s suitability for holding office, in her view, as well as in the view of many voters, “I don’t see how one thing has anything to do with the other. Politicians have been doing things like this forever; we just hear about it more often today.”
True enough. It was only after their administrations were over that we got confirmation that Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy all had extra-marital affairs.
My wife, Nancy, was more willing to forgive Spitzer his prostitute –“that’s a matter between him and his wife” — than Weiner his “sexting.” Pictures like that end up on the Internet, she explained, where they can be viewed by children.
In the worldwide effort to demonize Jews, I can imagine that anti-Semites and Israel haters will jump on Spitzer and Weiner as a pair of Jewish “degenerates,” even as they once tried to exploit young Monica Lewinsky as an example of how Jews are leading the Western world on the path toward perdition.
Call me square, but I wish we wouldn’t be so anxious to pass them the ammunition.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com