Pat Buchanan's Compulsions

Pat Buchanan goes for the long bomb in this defense of Larry Craig's biffy tryst.


He is basically saying that gays -- all gays -- are powerless to control their sexual urges and therefore Larry Craig is blameless: he can't help himself. He's just like an alcoholic who is powerless to control his urge to drink.

Okay, where to start? First, I don't think Pat Buchanan is gay, so assuming for the sake of argument that his compulsion theory holds water, he isn't in a position to know what homosexual urges are like. (And please, FSM, I don't want to know if he does.) Second, I don't think Mr. Buchanan is an alcoholic, so he can't speak from experience on knowing what it's like to be powerless to control the urge to drink. (He may not be an alcoholic, but he has definitely ingested something that has damaged his programming.) So he's talking out of his ass and making wild assumptions about things he knows nothing about. In other words, just another day at the office for Pat Buchanan.

It may seem pointless to argue with him, but just for grins, let's start with the claim that Larry Craig is the victim of a sexual compulsion and that in spite of his views on gay marriage, gay rights, gays in the military, and so on, he can't control his urge to get it on with strangers in a tea room. Mr. Buchanan seems to think that that is strictly a gay thing. I don't know where he gets his information, but sexual compulsions aren't just limited to gay men. Lots of straight people have shown this kind of behavior; it was even suggested by the right wing -- and probably Mr. Buchanan -- that President Bill Clinton suffered from the same disorder when he was hooking up with Monica Lewinsky, and I'm pretty sure that Bill Clinton is straight. So saying that Larry Craig's sexual compulsion is unique to Teh Gay ignores the fact that a lot of sex addicts -- be they a former president or not -- are not gay.

Making the link between alcoholism and homosexuality is just plain nuts. Yes, alcoholism is a disease. I know that from close personal experience. But I also know that there are millions of people who drink and live a life without wondering when they're going to have another drink. There are millions of gay men and lesbians who lead perfectly normal sex lives and to whom the idea of picking up a stranger in a public place for a sexual encounter is repulsive, including me, and for Pat Buchanan to assume that we all hang out in airport restrooms looking for Mr. Right-Now is pathetic.

This outburst from Mr. Buchanan shows yet again that the right wing is obsessed not just with sex, but with gay sex. They can't get beyond the image of two people of the same sex being intimate, and they can't accept the idea that the gay sex life can be just as normal, fulfilling, or as thrilling as straight sex. (At least that's what I've been told.) But this wingnut adolescent fascination with other people's sex lives is almost like a compulsion: they go along day to day, living their normal white-bread picket-fence middle class Republican lives, then suddenly they're overtaken by this overwhelming urge to spout off anti-gay rhetoric that comes out as foaming gibberish. It's like he can't control it.

So instead of blaming him for being a flaming asshole, we should be compassionate. To paraphrase the immortal Ann Richards, the late governor of Texas: "Poor Pat. He can't help it. He was born with a fascist foot in his mouth."

Let's just hope that's the only odd thing he's had in his mouth.

(Cross-posted from Bark Bark Woof Woof. HT to Petulant via Melissa for the YouTube link.)