Another prominent married couple in the party of “family values” has decided they don’t value their family as much as they have pretended to. Another politician who defended the “sanctity of marriage” has decided his marriage is not all that holy after all.
What is it with these Republicans? Are they so eager to stick their noses into everyone else’s families that they have no time to take care of their own?
Republican Congressman Mike Rogers and his wife, Diane, on Monday (June 25, 2007) filed papers seeking a divorce after two children and 17 years of marriage. Then they issued a statement to the Livingston Press & Argus which said, in part, “We ask for respect of our family's privacy during this difficult time.”
Privacy for a family? Since when does the Republican Party believe in privacy when it comes to family matters? Rogers has spent his entire career trying to destroy the privacy that women need when facing a difficult pregnancy. Twice, he has voted for amending the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. And as the folks over at Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood point out, Rogers has voted more than 90 percent of the time with the platform of the Family Research Council, which deplores divorce.
As Rogers himself told www.nationalreview.com, “The marriage of a man and a woman is a sacred union and a fundamental element of building strong families and a strong nation.”
Yet political commentators like Bill Ballenger of Inside Michigan Politics tell the Livingston Press & Argus that Rogers’ divorce will not hurt his political fortunes.
All of which leads to the question, which the reporter should have asked, “Why not?”
Why won’t it hurt a Republican politician to say one thing and do another, to tell everyone else how to live their lives and to do as he pleases himself? Why doesn’t being hypocritical undermine the moral authority of someone like Rogers to take stands on legislation that would punish other people’s private choices?
Part of the reason is that the media will enable it. The Livingston Press & Argus story on Rogers’ divorce plans never mentioned his votes and positions on issues of privacy for other people, just blandly printed Rogers’ plea for the privacy he denies other people. Neither did the newspaper call the Family Research Council and ask how the divorce will affect that group’s view of Rogers. The next time Rogers and his cronies in the family values crowd float out a press release about the sanctity of marriage, no one in the media will point out how many of those quoted are divorced – or how many times.
Instead of meekly respecting the “privacy” of this hypocrite whose salary is paid by the taxpayers, shouldn’t the media ask a few probing questions first?
1 comment:
You seem to have forgotten to read this passage:
Generally, Ballenger discounted the idea that voters would change their minds about Rogers simply because of a divorce.
“How many people would make that decision? It’s got to be a fraction of 1 percent,” he said.
Post a Comment