GemFireAir
DC SEX ~ A RED TIE Affair
marty kleva
November 13, 2006
“How interesting it is . . . that the one tiniest article of clothing that men wear — the one they wrap around their neck — call it a tie — is usually a red one to flex and broadcast their power, and is worn as the ultimate power symbol of the business and political culture of the western world.
Then, may I be so bold as to say aloud, that perhaps this display of so much red is meant to send the not-so-subliminal message that “sex equals power”, as the red-colored penile-shaped tie wraps around their throats and drapes down over their hearts to cover the solar plexus.”
- excerpt from “Love In All the Right Places”
Most likely, we could not count the thousands of red ties being worn in one day on Capitol Hill, the symbol that has come to represent the male sex organ in a city that wields world power. Unfortunately, the symbol is worn unconsciously by so many who haven’t a clue how to use it in its best form. It has become the symbol in an all male contest to prove who has the biggest dick. The design of the contest is about who can screw anyone who treads on or in the territory known as ‘dirty’ politics.
This practice is fostered very early in age by the religious right faction of the Republican Party, the party that has had the major political power in Washington since 1994. A well-known leader in that Christian conservative movement is Dr. James Dobson, founder of the organization, Focus On The Family, located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Dr. Dobson has written a number of books, sends out a regular newsletter and has a national radio show with an audience of 3-5 million that he uses to “fight for moral values” and to “keep you informed of the threats coming against the institutions of marriage and parenthood.”
He has said that his ministry has come from the voice of God, and outwardly proclaims himself as our presidential watchdog "determined" to be the one who sets the moral standards for our political leaders. He also believes that homosexuality is “curable” and actively encourages his followers to support a Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
One of the teachings and practices Dr. Dobson promotes is through the advice from the writings of Dr Joseph Nicolosi, to encourage fathers of boys to take their sons into the shower with them and to compare penis sizes, showing that the father’s penis is larger than that of the son as a method of instilling the son with knowing that his father is bigger in all things that count as power.
There is no objection on my part of nudity within the family when it is a natural thing, but when adult agendas are attached to a sexual body part such as the penis, there is a warped message that gets delivered, because a child does not yet have the mind to comprehend what is the nature of his inherent sexuality. All he knows is that “Daddy says that he has a bigger penis than I”, and that it means that “he has more power” and so, the father rules the child’s world — with his penis.
This is a psychological declaration of war by the father on the son that has a great many classical archetypal overtones. How do we expect that the son might respond? Do we really believe that he will just give over and succumb? Well perhaps in the early stages of childhood he might, but as he begins to develop his own sexuality and realize that there is more than what his father might have told him, or that there is a difference in what he is experiencing and what his father told him, then what?
Does he discuss this with his father, or might he keep mum about it? I hardly believe that it might be something that would be discussed except in terms of Father still having a bigger dick. Now how long this practice goes on I’m not sure. What does a father do who discovers that his teenage boy’s penis is going to surpass the size of his own? What will he do to his son for having the arrogance to have a bigger dick than he?
As if this homophobic way of thinking isn’t twisted enough, there are those in the Christian coalition like Herman B. Hayes, who believe that:
“There is only one problem. Dr. Dobson did not take it far enough.
Mind you, I do agree that showing your impressionable young son the glory of your fully developed male organ is a prophylactic against contracting homosexuality. I personally do not believe that it is enough. Your son has to be terrified of the adult male genitalia. For the rest of his life, he has to shake with fear at the mere thought of being exposed to another man’s penis.
You have to convince your son that looking upon a penis other than his own, or his Dad’s, will kill him.
You must tell him that a penis that is foreign to him will disembowel him where he stands, be it a school locker room, the gym, or in the home of another man. You must place into his sponge-like brain the horrible images of him being eviscerated by a male sexual organ. Only when he bursts into tears when thinking of a penis will your job be done, and your lineage secured.”
Now invite into that scenario of securing a lineage of fear, into the fundamentalist religious belief that God is the Father Almighty, and then that the Son was crucified on a cross for the sins of all men. What could a young man possibly make of that? How many make the transference and arrive at the conclusion that he is the next sacrifice in the making? The incredible fear instilled must be enormous, whether it is conscious or unconscious. This would then color all that young man’s actions not only involving his penis, but also anything that has to do with sex, a topic that continues to become more complex as he grows older.
Recently, the federal government has given $50 million to install the Abstinence Education Program under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). They are using this money to promote an ideological agenda to those who are single and in their 20’s to practice abstinence. This agenda is far removed from the real world that they have created. The onus once again is being placed on the underage to do what the adults themselves cannot do.
Here is Big Daddy with the largest penis, now telling teachers of sexuality to say that students should repress their sexuality rather than teach them how to express it in a healthy way, rather than teach them how to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies, and which “HHS officials say is just another option for states to combat what they call an alarming rise in out-of-wedlock births.”
If we want fewer out-of-wedlock pregnancies, we should be teaching young people the possible repercussions of having sex in plain language and then give them the tools to prevent conception and the spread of disease. We should be teaching them how to protect themselves when they do decide to engage in sexual intercourse. Some will know that they want to wait until all the things they value are in place, others may decide to act before then.
As I have pondered the propensity of the Republicans and their sex scandals, these are things that come to mind. It isn’t about the matter of them having sex at all, but more that there is hardly one story that presently holds the media’s attention which is about heterosexual sex affairs. All this is within the party of “family values” and homophobia. It is also about the additional behavior of violence that goes along with their sexual exploits, such as in Pennsylvania’s Republican Representative Don Sherwood cheating on his wife, also beating his mistress, and then arranging a civil suit that delivers her monetary settlements in two parts, the second one being delivered only after this mid-term election is past, buying her promise not to talk before.
Of course we have the now famous scandal that surfaced in October of Rep. Mark Foley of Florida where it came to the fore that he is gay. Not a problem for me that he is. The problem is that for years he has been stalking young underage male pages in the House of Representatives. This is not rational behavior, nor is it acceptable in this culture. What is most bizarre is that additionally, as chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, he has headed legislation to crack down on sexual predators over the Internet. He helped to create the laws that define exactly what a predator is and what behavior is classified as criminal. He knew exactly how far to go before he broke the ‘law’. And he did it over and over again.
This is not the action of a man who has a healthy working concept of his sexuality. He has psychological problems that he has never dealt with, except to use the power of his political station as a means to procure ineligibles to become future sex partners once they were of age. In sexually explicit instant messages and e-mails he exchanged with current and former male pages, he discussed his sexual fantasies and compared penis sizes. In one he asked, "Do I make you a little horny?" (scroll to September 29th).
His behavior is beyond being questionable. It is no surprise to find out that he claims to have been sexually abused by a parish priest while he was between the ages of thirteen and fifteen. The profile is right in front of us. He is repeating the same behavior that was inflicted upon him at an age when he could not have really known his own preference.
Psychologically speaking, he has never gotten beyond the development of that teenager he was when he was abused and traumatized. Exhibiting this undeveloped teenaged behavior, he was known to ‘cruise’ the dorms (scroll to October 13th) where pages were housed. He only has access to an immature psyche to try to heal his wound. What he apparently never did was to seek professional help, and certainly, he never admitted to himself as an adult that he had a problem in the first place. In his mind, he made sure that he acted according to the letter of the law, not seeing that regardless, he was only repeating the heinous act(s) that he once had to withstand.
And so in his fantasy world, he acted them out on other male teens under his care, repeating the original act over and over again, until the young pages could become of age and he could then do it legally. But in the meantime, he set them up with premeditated actions of phone calls, instant messaging, and e-mails.
When he resigned, Mr. Foley quickly booked himself into an alcohol rehab place, saying at first that it was all due to the fact that he had an alcohol problem. By doing so he removed himself from the media completely. Even though the usual stay allowed by insurance is limited to thirty days, that time limit has come and gone and Mark Foley continues to be inside a rehab facility and unavailable to answer any questions. Adding insult to all Americans, Foley “will be eligible for his congressional pension no matter what, even if he faces jail time, according to Pete Sepp of the National Taxpayer's Union.”
Aside from all this there is the issue of who in the House of Representatives knew this was going on, how long did they know it, and what did they do or not do about it? As it turns out it seems that many people knew. Male pages were forewarned about his ‘friendliness’, and there was the complaint by a page’s family about a questionable e-mail he received from Foley once the page was back home again.
The picture of what the congressional leaders did when they were told of this is still unclear due to the political covering up for each other and the very vagueness of the testimony that has been delivered so far. There is this report from ABC News that says that Republicans in fact did hold “damage control” conference calls on the Wednesday and Thursday before the scandal broke.
Within “Six hours after his resignation letter was read to the House by a clerk, the chairman of a panel that oversees the page program issued a one-page written statement that deflected any blame from House leaders.” There is no accountability from these Republican leaders. They are not willing to take responsibility for their tacit agreements and culpability in this affair with underage teen pages. It has remained for the pages themselves to act, even knowing that there will inevitably be some victimization backlash on them personally that can kill their hopes for future careers in politics.
As time has moved on, there are more Republicans being outed as being gay. Last week on CNN’s Larry King show, guest Bill Maher named Ken Mehlman, head of the Republican Party. There is a list of Republicans who are known to be gay, with House Republican Majority Leader Denny Hastert not escaping notice. Hastert and his staff were the very ones who were supposed to be ‘protecting’ the House pages, and now post-election, Hastert will step down from future Republican leadership.
Sex scandals are not a new thing to either political party, but it surely seems that the Republicans have more than the fair share. Aside from extra-marital relations, or sex with another consenting individual, and violence in a sexual relationship, there is a mountain of evidence brought forth to the public light, including criminal charges, prosecutions, and incarcerations. They are so abundant that I will not go into them all here, but provide a link for you to follow.
In the time period of this recent mid-term election alone there are so many cases of any of the above assortment being brought to light, one might think that the Christian Fundamentalists were just waiting for the opportunity to have their “sins” be revealed.
This is how the ‘game’ is played and boasted about, then casually dismissed as political ‘dirty tricks’. Meanwhile lives are inalterably changed by immoral actions that more resemble the mean-spirited fun that accompanies the immaturity of male teenagers. In adult males, and particularly those of the Christian Conservative Right of the Republican party, there is an additional fanaticism that has part and parcel been at the helm of this country far too long. If you never viewed the Hollywood movie “Skulls”, now’s a good time. It provides a clear view of the understructure behind all-male secret societies and clubs like the Skull & Bones of Yale that George W. Bush was a member.
Christian evangelists and fundamentalists preach a “fear of God” that has become confused and entwined with their sexuality and their politics. The repression has boiled over and is projected onto society as homophobia. A homophobic gay man who does not address the fear of his own homoeroticism is trying to kill his Christian ‘sin’ in the outer world. This self-loathing turns into a war within that cannot be acknowledged because to do so would place too much doubt on the origins of the problem, that problem being his relationship with both his biological father, and God the Father.
This latter doubt especially, must be crushed. That doubt has been projected in the world as a ‘shadow figure’, which has been named ‘evil’ and called the ‘terrorist.’ Their actions taken are to enlist the American people’s fear to activate a “War on Terror.” While our military decimate another country and people in the name of Terror, the terror continues to rage in the illusionist minds of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, and those politicians who broker the evangelical souls. As for the rest of us Americans, we are being terrorized with the understanding that though this is an irrational fear, our Constitution rights are being shredded by a president who calls the Constitution “nothing but a goddam piece of paper."
There may be one saving grace that has come forward in all of this in the form of two gay men. Both are Christian, and both are gay. That’s where the resemblance ends. Mike Jones of Denver, an admitted Christian gay man outed his relationship with Rev. Ted Haggard, national leader to over 30 million evangelical Christians, head of the National Association of Evangelicals and pastor at the 14,000 member New Life Church in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Yes, the same town as James Dobson’s Focus On The Family.
Mike Jones revealed through the Denver press, days before the mid-term elections that he has been having sex monthly with Ted Haggard for the past three years. But Mike knew Haggard by the fake name of “Art” and first found out about the deceit when he saw and recognized Haggard on TV a few months ago.
Mike Jones’s personal out of Ted Haggard is also proving to be a collective outing for those in the Republican Party who have publicly denounced homosexuality and who have politically done everything they could possibly do to pass a constitutional amendment against it proclaiming it to be the bane of our Christian society.
How can anyone be so ignorant to think that passing a constitutional amendment will be the deciding factor about a person’s inherent sexual truth? Well only someone who has not truly done their own due diligence about their sexuality might think so.
We all could learn a lot by not assuming we are straight if that’s the type of sexual preference we have always demonstrated, especially if homosexuality makes you uncomfortable. Examining the reasons behind who we are can provide a helpful and more conscious reason for our sexual preference. It can also provide more strength in the understanding of our preference, so that we’re not straight because we were taught that not to be straight is a sin, or an abomination too dark to acknowledge, but because we prefer it.
There is a very interesting story told by Jeff Sharlet of how the evangelicals led by Rev. Haggard came to Colorado Springs and through an organized campaign as “soldiers of Christ” ran non-believers out of town. In it he quotes Haggard as saying, “I teach a strong ideology of the use of power . . . of military might, as a public service.” Sharlet claims that Haggard “is for preemptive war, because he believes the Bible's exhortations against sin set for us a preemptive paradigm, and he is for ferocious war, because “the Bible's bloody. There's a lot about blood.”
Haggard’s greatest fear is that, “my children will grow up in an Islamic state.”
I suggest that there is a confused psychological link in Pastor Ted’s evangelical mind between homosexuality, the Islamic state, and violence, all bound up within the chains of his distorted religious beliefs, because Ted Haggard did not get to this place of loathing and self-denial by himself. There’s a long repressed history of some type of abuse here.
Since Ted Haggard is the symbolic ‘head’ of the 30 million evangelicals, it looks like they all have some inner work ahead of them. If there is a direction for them to look none can be more looming than to examine their beliefs and perceptions of who God is. To examine deeply whose word they are accepting as to the origins of God. To start from scratch and examine all those predecessors who have taught the fear of God. I suggest that they first find all those projections of God by human beings who for eons have run their own personal agendas on we the people, and to smash the effects those violent and self-loathing projections have had on humanity, and finally to send those projections back to where they originated.
It seems that Mike Jones did exactly that when he refused to become the shadow-side of Ted Haggard. Mike could have kept his little secret with Haggard who must be worth at least a bit of hush money, but Jones didn't choose to do that either. Instead, he just told the plain truth.
As author Jeff Sharlet states in his assessment of the beliefs of evangelicals and Ted Haggard, "The gay man" is the new seductress sent by Satan to tempt the men of Christendom.” and that Haggard would say “Evangelicals . . . aren't more obsessed with sexuality these days; rather, homosexuals are, somehow, more homosexual.” Here is a psychological split of the feminine from the masculine. In the world of fundamentalist evangelical Christians, the homosexual male has replaced the female in the role of sexual expression and partnership.
When demons are not acknowledged as coming from within our own minds and psyches, we project them outwardly onto the world. They are our own shadows that walk with us 24/7. Because we are afraid to turn around and see them, they become very powerful secrets that are in fact no secret to everyone else in the world; that world which has been patiently watching our country and most especially the Republican Bush Administration, try to run away from the shadow that will forever stick like glue.
In “Sex As A Weapon”, author Jeff Sharlet decodes the “literature of the Christian men’s movement.” He talks of the erotic power of Christ that he held over “followers of all persuasions” about which evangelical Christian theologists attempt to use metaphors to explain the mystery of our relationship with God’s sexuality and to translate that “into codes of combat, and clichéd ones at that. The "enemy," of course, is Satan, but his names are legion: pornography, homosexuality, feminism, humanism, the monolithic foe Christian conservatives call, simply, "the culture."
In my psychological view, all those roads lead to the ultimate fear and hatred in the phallic symbolism of the male penis, even as Sharlet says, “they preach a metaphorically violent, domineering, and paternalistic vision of manliness.”
Gordon MacDonald writes on “Christianity Today”
“When I see a leader who becomes stubborn and rigid, who becomes increasingly less compassionate toward his adversaries, increasingly tyrannical in his own organization, who rouses anger and arrogance in others, I wonder if he is not generating all of this heat because he is trying so hard to say “no” to something surging deep within his own soul. Are his words and deeds not so much directed against an enemy “out there” as they are against a much more cunning enemy within his own soul.
More than once I have visited with pastors who have spent hours immersed in pornography and then gone on to preach their most “spirit-filled” sermons against immorality a day or two later. It’s a disconnect that boggles the rational mind.”
Ted Haggard, who has confessed, "I am a deceiver" has very close ties with George Bush who claims, “I am the decider.” The not-to-be-missed political point is that Pastor Ted talks to President George W. Bush or his advisers every Monday. Ted Haggard has the ear of the White House. Here then are the two men who are leaders of both the religious and political power of this country, yet neither is in touch with reality. What then can we say of the rest of the Evangelical leaders? Are they having the same problems as Ted Haggard?
Did other evangelical leaders know about Ted Haggard’s homosexuality and dismiss it like the Republican leaders of Congress dismissed Tom Foley’s sexual innuendos with House pages?
Haggard wrote in his confession to the congregation that, "There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life," This should be nothing new to those of us of Judeo-Christian upbringing who are either presently, or who have been at one time engaged in a war within about the sin that these beliefs project onto all of us.
Rev. Larry Stockstill who addressed the same congregation of Ted Haggard’s church said, "God chose this particular moment to reveal Ted's sin." This declaration, though well meaning in the context of the evangelical Christian movement, is like a death-knell for them. For even as it is taught that Christ was crucified for their sins, they still haven’t gotten it. They, men and women alike, have been instilled with the fear and hatred of their own sexuality. The men are warriors and the women are virgins to be kept clean and holy, surely there is no greater weapon to use against the acknowledgement of their personal sexual desires, desires that come from and which are linked from birth to our Creator. This disconnect of virginal sexuality within this context, is another split of the Divine Feminine from our experience.
This perversion of our sexual truth is the greatest separation from God that can be projected onto humanity. We here in America seem to have a greater burden to bear concerning this than most other countries. Perhaps is because this has been further ingrained by our Puritan heritage where we persecuted women for their liberated sexual behavior saying that it was Satan’s doing.
Now that we women seem to have taken hold of our own powers — at least outside of the realms of many radical and fundamentalist Christian churches such as the evangelicals and the Mormon belief systems — Satan has now come to focus on the male of our species.
Although the focus on gay men is more recent, that does not mean that the practice of homosexuality is likewise. Homosexuality is as old as, and perhaps even known prior to that which we call humanity. I believe that what is more recent is the kind of homosexuality where men have integrated their masculine and feminine sides that fosters less sexual violence within a gay relationship. There are now more public places where gays can meet other gays, and it is more acceptable for men to have affectionate feelings of tenderness toward other men. Recent movies, such as "Brokeback Mountain" are models of such behavior.
Previously in history, when a gay man approached another man, it was done covertly, and he was likely to meet with violence in return. Perhaps this fear caused homosexual men to seek out boys because they could be more easily overpowered physically. This is not however the profile of an admitted gay preference. The profile of violence against boys is more fitting with a man who has not come to terms with his sexual preference, a man who wars against his truth and must seek sexual gratification in the darkest and most dangerous unconscious realms of his psyche.
In this culture where homophobia is rampant, is it no wonder that we have had the sexual humiliation of the Muslim men who are locked up in Abu Gharaib at the hands of our own U.S. military.
In his article “The Haggard Truth”, Gordon MacDonald states of evangeicals:
“ Like it or not, we are pictured as those who support war, torture, and a go-it-alone (bullying) posture in international relationships. Any of us who travel internationally have tasted the global hostility toward our government and the suspicion that our President’s policies reflect the real tenants of Evangelical faith”
We are not without the proof that professed heterosexual men inside the power of Washington DC politics including the White House, past and present Bush administrations, also prefer homosexual activity with both men, as we witnessed with the Jeff Gannon Affair, and underage boys, in the scandal known as The Franklin Coverup.
In 1997, a former Bush economic adviser remarks,
"The sex? That's done all the time. If a foreign diplomat wants a companion, the State Department provides it. It doesn't matter if it's a man or woman. They have a special fund set up for that."
If you cannot fathom this happening, here is more evidence already printed by reputable media than you or I could possibly imagine.
In a culture where practicing sex with underage children is one of the most heinous crimes we can think of, the truth is that these practices have only whetted the appetite of the powerful political brokers who on Sundays profess such activity to be the work of Satan.
I began this article using the red tie as the ultimate symbol of sexual power in politics. Surely we can all understand that the male penis is the most powerful instrument of regenerative power that a man has. In the rituals of the Freemasons, they all wear 'aprins' covering their phallus. There are early pictures of George Washington in his Masonic Aprin. There are also photos of George W. Bush officially signing a document of some kind surrounded by Freemasons — all wearing their aprins.
There is no happenstance in the ways of the Brotherhood. Everything is done for a reason and everything is designed and worn for a reason, just as in the rituals of the Roman Catholic Church or the rituals that take place within the boundaries of Bohemian Grove.
There are also no coincidences in the manner that the city of Washington DC was laid out by the French architect and designer Major Pierre Charles L'Enfant in the manner that it is. Although there are those who would disagree with my understanding, there are embedded meanings behind the situated buildings and monuments surrounding the White House, the spatial geometry behind the shape of the pentagon, and the fact that the Washington Monument is in the shape of an Egyptian Obelisk, a Phallic structure which in the image of the Reflecting Pool points directly at the White House and the Oval Office. The inference not to be missed is a symbolic one of the phallus impregnating the ovum.
If you had your instincts engaged on the eve of 2000 as the TV cameras showed a split screen of New York Times Square and the Washington Monument in DC at the moment of the dawning of the 21st Century, you would have recognized a phenomena that in some arenas is called “squaring the circle”. You would have also recognized the symbol first made by the circle or ball in Times Square descending onto the Washington Monument as the feminine form of the sphere was impaled onto the triangle of the capstone . This was no accident. There were occult rituals being played right out in plain sight for the world to see with the inclusion of President Bill Clinton.
There are some times that the aprin of the Freemasons is exchanged for the red tie to symbolize the regenerative power of the male penis.
Are these men using this power or are they abusing it? Where is the Divine Feminine in this reality of disconnected psychological splits? Has their illusionist reality degenerated too far to be reclaimed?
Certainly, from my perspective it appears that way. But hey, I’m only a woman!
As I said in “If I Were a White Man,”
“Those men who are presently incarnated into the form and body of a white male, among other things, are here collectively to both magnify and transform the meaning of all aspects of the White Brotherhood, the Patriarchy, the Misogynist, the Terminator, the King of the Mountain, and the White Supremacist.
History will show that all of these archetypes are blatantly apparent in the United States today.
This does not exclude those of us who also operate our lives within these same attitudes inside the form of a female body, or the form of a different-colored male. Where it may be easier for a white man to epitomize the archetypes mentioned above, the rest of us have some part in the dynamics that are being played out.
This is not a soliloquy for the white male. We are all being forced to look at the principles of power: how to define it, to work with it, to hold it, to retrieve it, to own it, and to make use of it responsibly.
For me personally, as a woman in this lifetime, I am aware that it is my charge to transform feminine power for the collective. It demands that I explore and bring to light new perspectives; that I work along with males who are willing to take on the challenge of transforming the meaning and representation which the above White Male Archetypes embody.
And so, If I Were A White Man is the view I have been given as a white woman inside the psyche of a white male, different, yet not separate from him.”
If I Were A White Man . . .
Who had not yet begun
to address
My place in
the echelons of power
present—
today
I too would be afraid
of the dark man following
Me —
into the shadows of
My own denial
to annihilate
those who are
of a different kind —
a different
mind
before My Draconian
demonic fear
annihilates Me.
~ mek
(full context here)
From this woman to all of you, with ‘hayam’ (love that wanders the earth),
I wish you good hunting.
There’s enough here worth a lifetime of learning.
Con Amore,
~ mek
Links
* please note that I do not recommend everything on all links. Be discriminating with accepting what is someone's else's opinion and perception, especially when it comes to words and their interpretations.
The Eagle Has Landed
Freemasons In Space
Assorted Photos and Symbols having to do with Freemasonry.
Washington DC
Myths In Stone
Bro. George Washington and the Society of the Cincinnati
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