Well, duh.
http://www.mail.com/Article.aspx?articlepath=APNews%5CTop%20Headlines%5C20080320%5CSex_And_Politics_20080320.xml&cat=topheadlines&subcat=&pageid=3
( Archived - Statehouses Often Look Like Frat Houses )
Politicians are people. It's absolutely absurd the standards we hold them to. Cheating on your wife? Yeah, that's bad. Lobbying for discriminating laws against homosexuality while secretly fucking young boys? Yeah, that's bad. But whether the guy who fixes my car does it or the guy who sits on Capitol Hill does it is completely irrelevent. These people, politicians and celebrities, are held up to impossible standards of living where they are expected to be "on stage" at all times. While it is true that choosing a job such as politician or actor or musician does naturally involve letting the general public partially into your life, what you do on your own time is your own time.
I am only concerned about what other people do when it A) breaks the law (then I either want them to be punished according to the law or I want to fight to change the law, depending upon what it is), B) affects how they perform their job and/or C) negatively affects other people.
If a man seeks a prostitute, who is wilingly engaging in the sex industry in an exchange of sex for money, that's his fucking business. If he cheats on his wife to do it, well, social disapproval for hurting the wife is fine, punishment for breaking the marriage contract (according to said contract, such as is spelled out in a pre-nup, as is any contract subject to violation consequences) is fine, but is otherwise none of the public's business. The wife giving him permission to do so makes it doubly none of our business. How he gets his jollies off in his free time has nothing to do with how he performs his job.
When it *does* affect how he performs his job, well, then it becomes my business as it pertains to his job affecting me. Putting someone who is unqualified in a job position because he's fucking her or him? Yeah, that's a problem. Using my tax dollars to pay for the hooker? Yeah, that's a big problem. But these kinds of things are *already* accounted for in our system. Fraud, embezzlement, nepotism, etc., are legitimate complaints against an employee or boss, regardless of the industry or the details of the infraction. Who my checkout clerk fucks when he's off the clock and not on work property should not matter at all in his ability to perform the job he was hired for. Who my senator fucks when he's "off the clock" should not matter at all in his ability to perform the job he was hired for.
Our politiicans are hired to manage legislation. They are not hired to be the living examples of morality standards for our country. And for that matter, what are "morality standards"? Everyone has their own set of ethics and religious beliefs and I think that's fine. We're supposed to be a country built on tolerance and a mixture of different cultural backgrounds. It's only when one set of beliefs infringes upon another's civil liberties that the government should have any say in it. Our government is not supposed to dictate "morality" - look at the countries that do and you can see how oppressive and intolerant they are (the Muslim nations, with their intolerance and death squads and severe oppression of women, for instance). The politicians will have all the same flaws and foibles that any other human has. And that's OK. When they break the law or otherwise do not perform the actual duties set out in their job description, that's when I care.
The idea that people should not "fraternize" at work is completely absurd. We expect to throw supposedly mature adults into an environment for 40+ hours a week, a good 1/3 of our waking lives (way more for some jobs like these politicians), expect them to get along with each other but not develop physical attraction or emotional attachment to each other? WTF? Where else are we supposed to meet people? Our co-workers often have reasonably similar education levels and backgrounds and some interests - after all, we were all attracted to the same job or company. That's a far better starting point than walking into a bar where you don't have any baseline at all for compatibility.
So the politicians get together for days or weeks at a time to do intense, politician-type stuff. In the few hours they have free, they go to the nearest establishment to blow off steam and tension with some drinking, some dancing, some flirting, some fucking. So what? This is surprising?
Sure, by all means, reduce sexual harassment (unwanted sexual advances, sexual offers or threats in exchange for work favors, hiring based on looks and not skill) and fraud. I'm all for that. But that goes for all industries and is actively fought in most industries. But just because they're famous, it doesn't mean they're not human. And some of our best politicians have widely-known sexual exploits, so clearly sex does not *automatically* negatively affect one's job performance.
So please quit wasting my time and tax dollars following people around and punishing them for what they do in their free time behind closed doors. And while we're at it, make prostitution legal so the government can regulate it and tax it, which will make it much less susceptible to oppression and abuse, because there's nothing wrong with two consenting adults engaging in a consenting sexual relationship. And we have the judicial precedent to back that up. Can you imagine what would happen to all the absuive pimps in the country if the hookers unionized? I can just see some asshole in a wife-beater, cranked up, and reaching up to smack some poor hooker, only to have his wrist grabbed by a large teamster with a pack of more teamsters standing behind him serving him with a set of contract papers and locking him in a room for the next 3 weeks while they "negotiate". This amuses me. But this is another rant.
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