The gnarly Hastert debacle: LGBTQ identity politics and pedophilia

Watching the media wrestle with the layered complexity of these latest revelations about a member of the GOP has been fascinating and disturbing. To cite but one example: On Friday on MSNBC, Jonathan Capehart and Barney Frank, two out gay men interviewed separately, came to wildly different conclusions about Hastert's offenses and his actual orientation/identity. Frank opines that Hastert is a cut/dried closeted gay male, whose actions with a (likely some) 14-17 year-old(s) in the early 70s grew from an anxiety-based, era-specific refusal to accept his attractions, and refusal to seek the sexual/emotional companionship of peers. In other words, that he turned to the vulnerable teenagers in his daily charge because they were most accessible and available. He ties Hastert's behavior, in part, to an era of acute repression (to my ears, he's describing the 70s more like the early 50s, i.e. the Lavender Scare under Eisenhower/McCarthy; this was post-Stonewall, and the gay world was very alive and certainly accessible to a man with Hastert's resources and worldly pursuits.) On the other hand, Capehart bristles with any mention of Hastert as a gay man, and insists that this is another cut/dried case of pedophilia, in effect suggesting that the gender of the victims is borderline irrelevant. He kept telling Andrea Mitchell not to describe this as a case of closeted gay identity.

Isn't the truth here, critically, in between, and far subtler and more nuanced? Frank spoke fairly of Hastert's clear-cut case of homosexual attraction to males. Capehart spoke fairly of Hastert's misuse of authority over older adolescents. Pretending they do not intersect is not correct and certainly useful.

And Hastert's voting record on LGTBQ issues, appalling, add another layer of complexity. But there seems a real danger in defining Hastert only in either or terms, as a closet case or a pedophile. Some GOP spokespeople have leaped to a bizarre new defense that oddly enough echoes Frank, i.e. that the repressive times drove Hastert underground, and that his hypocritical votes lined up with prevailing winds of public opinion. (This reminds me of those championing a new world order, that if priests were allowed to marry, they would never turn to boys, i.e. that the constricting sexual atmo of the church is the equivalent of a dire, meg-repressive societal taboo against gay people; ludicrous.) The GOP, including Hastert's former spokesperson suggest he should get a pass on the past hypocrisy because during Hastert's time, the country was supposedly against marriage equality (and attendant issues) by a wide majority, supposedly embraced by but a slender margin. This stance, of course, obfuscates fundamental civil rights questions that are timeless, untethered to that era or any.

And some GOP folk now love to write this whole debacle as a simple clearly diagnosed case of pedophilia that should not be viewed in the context of Hastert's voting record, or even (creepy, maddening) as proof of his being unfit for public service. He had an illness like alcoholism, right? Ah, so now we know. But he was otherwise a worthy fellow who served his country. It's a dark new spin: the pedophilia defense. He is attracted to children, a known, diagnosed disease like addiction, so let's compartmentalize that and ignore the myriad ways his service and leadership were interrelated, including the personal misuse of position to serve white male privilege and hegemony, i.e. the charge to impeach a sitting President for having a sexual relationship with a young person.

Though it can be parsed to highlight many facets, and 'abuse' is a controversial charge with contention about definition, pedophilia is still generally agreed upon as a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent demonstrates a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to pubescent children 11 years or younger (see Duggar, Josh).* To write off Hastert's involvement with older teenage boys as unrelated to gender or homosexual attraction is naive at best, specious at worst. Yet the fact that Hastert sought teens, the young men he supervised, trained, traveled with and had intimate access to is not irrelevant. When discussions attempt to separate and isolate these facts to make sociopolitical points of any kind, Hastert's behavior -- and its coverup -- is too easily minimized. It will be important to watch the ways this is framed and annotated in days ahead, damage control here is complex and shape-shifting, to cover GOP agendas in the current election cycle, and of course to keep the brand away from this gnarly, ugly case.

*"...the term pedophilia is commonly and mistakenly used to refer to any sexual interest in minores below the legal age of consent, regardless of their level of physical or mental development." Federick Berlin, PhD.

Updated On: 6/7/15 at 08:11 AM

^So thoughtful and informative. I learned much. This is the discussion which to me is MIA in the media, as sides are drawn and easy points are attempted to be scored.