John Ensign on Marriage

Maybe he just took his support for “Biblical marriage” a bit too seriously.

I see he’s making the traditional face.

I don’t see how his private life is anybody’s business or why he should apologize to the public for what he did in the sphere of his intimacy. Just like gay people’s lives shouldn’t be judged by others, including him.

at the top of that on the issues page it says ensign “Voted YES on defining unborn child as eligible for SCHIP” but, further down, that he “Voted NO on adding 2 to 4 million children to SCHIP eligibility.” i am thinking the consistency of his views on marriage are the least of his problems.

While gay marriage is certainly “same sex,” do we really want to call the other kind “opposite sex marriage”? They are different sexes, but men and women are no more “opposite” than chocolate and vanilla ice cream are “opposite flavors.”

Rich B: clearly what we need a ban on man/antiman and woman/antiwoman marriages. They could destroy civilization as we know it!

Ensign is just another endless example of a moral fake. Hope people

learn more before voting for such hubris. In response to the comment

from Kato concerning the Nevada lifestyle. I have been in many other

towns, and Nevada ranks high in interests and many things to do. Many

other places have nothing to do and are boring. Try really to spend time

here, instead of writing from an opinion thought. Your rant sounds like

many others who could not make it there.

While gay marriage is certainly “same sex,” do we really want to call the other kind “opposite sex marriage”? They are different sexes, but men and women are no more “opposite” than chocolate and vanilla ice cream are “opposite flavors.”

Mixed sex marriage maybe?

My wife, who is black, and I, who am white, were at a Christmas party hosted by a lesbian couple. (Maybe if we get a working Senate in NY they can get married.) At one point, most of the other couples had left and another group had yet to arrive. I looked around at those still at the party and said (quietly) to my wife, “we’ve often been the only mixed couple in the room, but usually for different reasons.”

(Sorry for the rant, but the current situation in the NY Senate has infuriated me all over again that Spitzer surrendered to the moronic inferno without a fight.)

Spitzer may br sitting back thinking or knowing what was coming and took the best door out.

Of course if the Repubs move quickly for censure and impeachment of Ensign…

Ensign is also the only Pentecostal in the Senate (he belongs to the church founded by Aimee McPherson). Pentecostals believe “once saved, always saved,” which can lead to a certain antinomianism in ethical practice.

I’m seeing comments like 18 on various liberal blogs and I don’t get it. If the rule is that politicians’ private lives are private, except for those who’ve made unctuous or hypocritical comments on the family, well then, the rule is just that politicians’ private lives *aren’t* private.

Really, the view among some liberals that “family values” politicians should be subject to a higher level of personal scrutiny is just as silly as the view among some conservatives that they should be subject to a lower one. No, there are no special rules for Ensign, in either direction.

Ensign made his private life public by making public comments about it. He has revealed himself as a hypocrite, and I see nothing wrong with taking him to task on that.

Clinton, by contrast, lied to his friends, his cabinet, and his party, and abused their trust by alling on them all to expend political capital defending him. I can see why family values voters might forgive Ensign, though I hope that the pointing out that he actually has damaged the institution he pretends to defend might give them pause for thought. I am still, after all this time, mystified why anyone forgives Clinton, but then I never liked him in the first place.

I don’t see how his private life is anybody’s business

He had a press conference about it.

The kinds of behavior that would (and do) count as hypocritical enough to justify outing/cause concern vary according to one’s political stance. For example, legal but aggressive tax avoidance is clearly problematic for a social democrat, much less so in the case of a market liberal.

I don’t think “making unctuous statements about the family” violates an assumed right to privacy unless the person concerned asserts that particular family arrangements are superior to others, and acts in a way contrary to this assertion. In the modern/liberal understanding, we are all members of families and all family arrangements are presumed good unless proven otherwise.

“the person concerned asserts that particular family arrangements are superior to others” – like, maybe, voting against same-sex marriage?

Hmm. I learned everything I need to know about this issue from King Henry V:

The mercy that was quick in us but late,
By your own counsel is suppress’d and kill’d:
You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy;
For your own reasons turn into your bosoms,
As dogs upon their masters, worrying you.

This has always been on the way to my position, which is that people should not be allowed to get married. Either that or they should be forced to get married. These people clearly haven’t heard of the 14th amendment.

NS

Subtle is overrated. Especially as many people have trouble with obvious.

Ensign’s case being a good example.
Bad: cheating on your wife
Worse: cheating with an employee in your office.
Obviously Ridiculous: cheating with an employee in your office, whose husband and son also works there while campaigning on family values.

Though I guess subtle might be the suggestion that he appears to value that family…

I don’t agree with you, alex, about C.S. Lewis — the fiction is certainly unsubtle, but his little essays in Christian apologetics are full of surprises (about marriage, psycholanalysis, what it takes to be moral, etc). Not deep, on the whole, but interesting, and intellectually honest. Of course, the guy wouldn’t have got any references to Fred Kite or even, I dare say, Bluebottle, but you can’t have everything.

I find the discussion about whether their private lives are none of our business, our at least not professionally relevant, to be incredibly interesting. But leaving aside the ideals of whether or not it *should* be, this seems to be a case of the chickens coming home to roost, and roost, and roost. When the GOP put Clinton’s extramarital affair on trial as a relevant part of his professional performance, I wonder if they knew how many gay-bashing gay republicans or promise-keeping philanderers they had among their ranks.

I have a hard time considering any effort at Xian apologetics to be genuinely subtle, as opposed to just wriggly, but there you go, diff’rent strokes…