“And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.”
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
As the Republican National Convention gets underway, a sordid scandal surrounds a passionate defender of the Republican presidential nominee and one of the most influential and adored figures in the American Evangelical conservative movement.
It involves sex, politics, hypocrisy and, yes, a pool boy — more later.
The last three items remind me of an episode about which I wrote nearly 10 years ago, which proves that politics and hypocrisy don’t change very much with time. Just to be accurate, that episode also included bigotry and xenophobia.
The piece was titled “‘Don’t Touch My Maid,’ or My Pool Boy” and it was written during the first presidential term of the first Black American president, Barack Obama.
It was written during the heyday of the Tea Party and when, in Texas, anti-immigration “feelings” and the “birther movement” were alive and well.
Witness Texas state Rep. Leon Berman’s introduction of a bill in 2011 that would have required presidential candidates to present their birth certificates to the Texas secretary of state “because we have a president whom the American people don’t know whether he was born in Kenya or some other place.”
It was the same representative who earlier, in 2009, introduced bills “restricting illegal immigrants to certain geographical regions and denying them access to higher education.”
Fortunately, that legislation failed to gain traction, but in 2011, another Texas state representative, Tea Party favorite Debbie Riddle, introduced a bill that would make hiring an “unauthorized alien” a crime punishable by up to two years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
I can perhaps see the bigotry, the reader might say, but where is the hypocrisy?
The hypocrisy is in the “unless”: Hiring such an “unauthorized alien” would be a crime, “unless that is, they are hired to do household chores.” Thus, the hiring of an undocumented maid, caretaker, lawn worker, pool boy or any type of houseworker would be allowed
This view was seconded by Texas state Rep. Aaron Pena, also a Republican, who told CNN: “When it comes to household employees or yard workers it is extremely common for Texans to hire people who are likely undocumented workers…”
Letzgetreal.com called this story at the time: “Don’t Touch my Maid.”
Which brings me to “Pool Boy 2.0”: Sex, politics, hypocrisy and, yes, a pool boy, involving the evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr., head of the Christian Liberty University, a school that has as part of its honor code, “Sexual relations outside of a biblically ordained marriage between a natural-born man and a natural-born woman are not permissible at Liberty University…”
The lurid details of a years-long, bizarre sex affair between Falwell, his wife, and an at-the-time pool boy, can be read ad-nauseam “everywhere.” One of the more extensive descriptions can be read at Reuters, starting with:
Giancarlo Granda says his sexual relationship with the Falwells began when he was 20. He says he had sex with Becki Falwell while Jerry Falwell Jr, head of Liberty University and a staunch supporter of President Trump, looked on.
Many will probably join me in paraphrasing, “It’s not the sex. It’s the hypocrisy, stupid!”
Most Americans have long since stopped caring what adult couples do in their marital bed so long as no one is exploited or hurt. The problems arise when it involves people who like to tell others how to behave and really like looking down on our GLBTQ friends. That is when it becomes a story.
The Washington Examiner puts it this way:
The Liberty University president touts himself as an ardent evangelical and serious man of faith. Yet in both his political activism and personal life, Falwell is a complete and utter hypocrite.
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What makes this hypocrisy so pernicious is Falwell’s in-your-face moral judgment of others, especially on matters of homosexuality and sexual morality, where Falwell takes a hard-line, socially conservative stance. In fact, a student can be expelled from Liberty University for being gay and acting on it.
New York Magazine says simply and powerfully, “Jerry Falwell Jr. Joins the Ranks of Evangelical Hypocrites.”
