Not only was this Comment of the Day a sharp analysis of a weird story: I learned about “The Lavender Scare.” under President Eisenhower.
Here is our Netherlands correspondent Cees Van Barnveldt’s COTD on the post, “Ethics Observations On Byron Noem’s ‘Bimbofication’ Scandal'”...
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I am not going to milk the hypocrisy on the side of the Democrats angle here, except to says that a member of a party that celebrates people like Admiral Rachel Levine as Assistant Secretary of Health, and Sam Brinton as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition and transgenderism in general should be ethically estopped from ridiculing Bryon Noem for his particular sexual interests. You cannot explain to me that transgenderism is normal and acceptable, and Bryon Noem’s sexual interests are not.
In the 1950s there was a Lavender Scare, in which LGBTQ+ people were disqualified from working for the U.S Federal Government. President Dwight Eisenhower signed EO 10450, which defined “sexual perversion” as a security risk (blackmail), leading to the firing of over 10,000 employees. Intense investigations involving lie detector tests and interviews with families and neighbors were launched to identify gay and lesbian employees; those who were not cleared in these investigations were forced to resign. EO 10450 was rescinded under President Obama.
Sexual morals have liberalized since the 1950s. The election of Ronald Reagan as POTUS ended divorce as a disqualifier for high office in elections. The Bill Clinton impeachment fiasco settled issues as well: consensual sinful sexual conduct is not a disqualifier for the Presidency. That settled the matter for conservatives too: popular politicians do not have to resign for extramarital affairs and other sins. Trump as POTUS is supported by conservative Christians despite his colorful marital and sexual past. Elon Musk has 14 children with multiple women, which did not disqualifying from DOGE. Scott Bessent as Secretary of Treasury is openly gay. Many do not see transgenderism as a kink or perversion anymore, disqualifying a person from office (Rachel Levine). So why is Bryon Noem’s interest in cross dressing a matter of ethical concern? Shouldn’t we simply see this issue as a personal matter, only of interest to the Noem family?
One of the main reason the issue is raised is that the Noem family professes to be evangelical Christians. The double life of both Bryon and Kristi Noem violates Biblical morals. Kristi had a longstanding extramarital affair with Corey Lewandowski, which I think was an ethics issue due to the work relationship of Kristi and Corey. Many were surprised that husband Bryon, who was fully aware of the affair, did not file for divorce. Did he not have any self respect? Was he tied to Kristi with golden handcuffs? Did he perhaps have a cuckold fetish? Now we know what was happening. Bryon quietly quit the marriage a long time ago, indulging in his own sexual interests. And Kristi knew about it, and did not care. This is not the picture of a Christian marriage. But not living up to Biblical norms does not make it an ethics issue in a society that has said farewell to Christian sexual ethics.
Ethics Alarms 
I knew about the Lavender Scare. The easy way around that would have been to prevent being gay from being a reason for disqualification. Of course, workers having extramarital affairs or suffering addictions could also be blackmailed. What should be disqualifying for federal workers? What actions or proclivities can be subject to blackmail? How can such a thing even be measured in the modern day?
If the show “Daredevil” is correct, being heavily in debt can hinder you from moving up the government ranks, on the theory that money problems can make you vunerable to bribery or extortion. I would also think that getting caught with illegal drugs like meth, heroin, or forged percriptions would get anyone in trouble.
What’s particularly bad about the Noems is they presented themselves as conservative Christians, with their present activity being anethema to the right-wing base. I’m thinking the left-wing equivelant would be servants in a Democrat adminstration getting caught attending a die-hard conservative church, or exposed emails, messages, or posts saying “the N-word” in any context on any forum, or expressing doubts about certain groups assimilating or moving up the economic ladder, or saying anything against the LGBTQ agenda.
The reason why I brought up the Lavender Scare where the the arguments about security risks and blackmail that were brought up against the Noems. These were the same arguments that were used to excuse the Lavender Scare (which coincided with the Red Scare) in the 1950s.
In 1947, at the beginning of the Cold War and the heightened concern about internal security, the State Department began campaigns to rid the department of communists and homosexuals, and they established a set of “security principles” that went on to inspire the creation of a dual loyalty-security test which became the model for other government agencies, as well as the basis for a government-wide security program under President Dwight D. Eisenhowers’s administration. Under the criteria of the State Department’s security principles, “disloyal” persons included communists, their associates, and those guilty of espionage, along with persons known for “habitual drunkenness, sexual perversion, moral turpitude, financial irresponsibility or criminal record,” and were to be denied federal employment. (Source: Wikipedia)
The real reason for firing the gays and the lesbians was moral panic and bigotry. Gays and lesbians were regarded as disloyal Americans, similar to communists. Homosexuality was proof of moral turpitude, and included as a perversion in the DSM. In many states there were criminal statutes against sodomy. Cruising areas and gay bars were raided by the police (Stonewall).
The argument about security risk through blackmail falls short, as an openly gay man who is out of the closet cannot be blackmailed. However the moral panic leading to dismissals and public shaming forced gays to stay in the closet, making the blackmail argument a self-fulfilling prophesy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavender_Scare
Now back to the Noem family: the argument about security risks due to Bryan Noem’s crossdressing fetish are also disingenuous for a number of reasons. First, Bryon Noem did not hide his kink very well, and did not care about being discovered. Second, the appointment of Sam Brinton during the Biden administration proved that an interest in kink and fetish is not a disqualifier anymore for high federal government due to changes in sexual morals, as long as it is kept within legal boundaries (Brinton was eventually fired for theft).
So what is really going on here? The left loves to kink shame conservatives, simply to embarrass them. And traditional conservatives are often the fool in this game, allowing themselves to be played like a fiddle by snickering liberals. In the past liberals played the hypocrisy card against conservatives, resulting in resignation of officials and politicians (e.g. Senator Bob Packwood, R-OR, Senator Larry Craig, R-ID), but in the meantime liberal politicians as Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and President Bill Clinton were untouchable. The Clinton impeachment train wreck was a watershed moment in American politics in the handling of scandals, as conservatives got sick and tired of double standards were they were being played for fools. And that means that minority expressions of sexuality are not necessary lethal to political careers of Republican politicians. That surely includes homosexuality and extramarital sex. As there are no reasonable ethical objections against kink and fetish outside appeals to the Bible, Bryon Noem’s hobbies are of no concern to the general public and should not be a political issue.
All our languages have a singular (personal) you and a plural (impersonal) you, but of course in modern English the thee and thou was dropped (I always wondered how that came about)(?) But the “you” I use here is different: it is an abstract, general, non-specific, expository “you” more proper to sermonic exhortation! Richard Weaver said “all speech is sermonic”. The idea has stuck with me.
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When you examine the histories of the uniquely American Christian reworking of Protestant Christianity — Pentecostalism, Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism, Christian Science, Southern Baptism — you find evidence of radical modifications of formerly more strongly defined Christian religious tenets. It is interesting to consider these radical religious interpretations in the context of American progressive and revolutionary tendencies of freedom-seeking, pragmatism and innovation.
So for those who value such ‘innovation’ over dreary old convention, it is the individual who takes the power to make the choices, and those who”metaphysical certainties” or notions of supernatural authority are modified according to the whim of that individual. This process of re-working the principles often extends to interpretive remodeling of the “sacred texts” and scriptures. For example, why not define Jesus Christ as a homosexual man? And since he sought out only sinners, why not see him as the very source of toleration toward all (formerly) sinful activities?
From a Platonic perspective, everything in the physical material domain exists in mutability. There is nothing in the natural world that does not shift and change. The *meaning* of defined metaphysical ideas, or the sense of their existence, is that a reference-point outside of mutable existence is established, more or less like an anchor in precisely what is extra-physical and, so the idea goes, immutable.
Americanism if you really think about it is semi-anchored in strongly defined metaphysics. Like the entire notion of “God-given rights” or even (ir even especially) the metaphysical notion of the sacred individual or the “soul”. But you must understand that Americanism is also innovative transformation of defined values. In this sense Americanism is also unmooring or lifting up of anchors.
And to the degree that those Eternal Principles are completely subverted by men and groups of men (organizations) given over to an Organizing Principle based not in exalted metaphysics (such as still are expressed in older school pre-Vatican ll documents pertaining to Social Doctrine) but given over to the exigencies and pragmatics of the striving moment: the need to make money, extend control and ‘market reach’, and with a latent telos of eventual total control over the human entity…
… it is to that degree my friends that the very System of Americanism is subverted to purposes formerly defined as ‘demoniac’. The System itself will demand the creation of citizens incapable of free-thought because they do no longer conceive of an “anchor” in principles that are conceived as non-mutable — eternal. The science of public relations slowly transforms itself into sheer propaganda and, next gloriously step, mind-control. You notice all this, but you never have realized what the ORIGIN of these evil impulses were. It is not “the dread Democrat” but something else entirely. You say (crow, brag, bluster) that you are Conservatives, but you conserve nothing! You actually and more honestly undermine metaphysical principles because you do not believe in them! Your “ethics” is really definitions defined mutably in mutability.
How weird: To participate here is to be forced to assume the rôle of psychological and intellectual Cassandra. Your laxity your non-seriousness in regard to the MOST SERIOUS THINGS evokes in me reaction. I speak and you do not hear — or you ridicule.
In a previous post, you lamented that people spend too much time criticizing your style. Now you write of ridicule. Actually, while there can be significant critique of content around here, there is very little criticism or ridicule of writing style in these forums. It only happens on occasion…when a response given is so opaque as to be indecipherable while simultaneously being so long-winded as to put readers to sleep.
The fact you receive that response here on semi-regular occasions – when it almost never occurs – should be indicative of something to you. I have critiqued your writing style as often-unintelligible. I WANT to understand what you write, but most of the time I cannot. I think I’m smart, but could be persuaded to the contrary. In the previous post, it was johnburger2013 who was confused…in this thread it’s Cees Van Barnveldt. I KNOW both of those individuals are smart…very smart. If they struggle to figure out what your point is, the problem isn’t them.
Look, I think you have contributions to make here, but if your method of delivery is such that your point is either missed completely or buried in high, ivory-tower language, then you gain nothing. If you sense “laxity and/or non-seriousness” toward what you write, it could be because you appear to be lax and/or not serious about “writing for your audience”, which is an important thing.
This is NOT meant to be unfriendly critique at all, though it IS a critique. Feel free to take it for the two pennies it’s probably worth.
Oh they are certainly smart, but the essential misunderstanding lies in another area. I will make an effort to explain what I mean. I need for this purpose an example, and for this reason I will start with Cees (who is intelligent, thorough, capable and certainly an asset to this blog).
I mean absolutely no disrespect. But the issues we discuss are vital ones. Therefore, the persons here are not relevant, the ideas are.
Cees defines himself as Christian (unless I have misread him). But what is Christianity in its essence? It is the entrance into our world of an avatar figure (the incarnation of God in Christian terms) into this world. What is it not? It is not an invention of man, or a convenient creation. So, to be a Christian involves 1) accepting the rule of a metaphysical authority. And 2) adapting oneself to that rule. What “Jesus Christ” represents, and it is best expressed in Johannine Christianity (the Gospel of John) is metaphysical principles that are applied within the individual by choice. Assent is the essence of it. This is what Christianity, and more especially Catholicism is. Factually, Catholicism is the mother of every Christianity.
And this is one of the reasons, but not the only reason, I focus on it. Not as an apologist for it, but because I am interested in explaining ‘What has gone wrong in America”. That is the reason, mostly, that I bother to write here. I am answering, or trying to answer, the question that NO ONE HERE EVEN ATTEMPTS TO ANSWER. If the Question was not defined, there can never be an answer.
Cees wrote:
“There is a lot of stuff about Christian morals and Sacraments in your posts; I wonder whether this is all relevant to ethics and to politics. Christian morals is not the same as ethics. As separation between Church and State is part of the USA’s DNA I do not think that morals that are specifically Christian are necessary for politicians and government officials.”
Then the question is actually: What relevance, on any level, for anyone int he culture, and for ethics and philosophy, and indeed for existence, does the revelation of Christ have for Occidental men and women? If ethics can be, and are considered separately from metaphysics and revealed truths, then just abandon it altogether! Because why? Because the essence of Christianity is to respond to, to have a relationship with, and to modify oneself so that one acts through response to metaphysical impulses, not the brutality of animals in Nature. Nature — our matrix — has no metaphysics. It only has processes. And they have NOTHING to do with ethics as defined on this Blog nor, certainly, with morals of a higher order.
My view? If this is not understood, one has missed the entire point of the conflict and struggle between Organized Naturalism and religiousness defined as subscription to metaphysical principles.
On this Blog there is constant referral to the destruction of the principles upon which the Nation of the US was built. But if you deny the influence of metaphysical religiosity in the reasoning and the intelligence of those who founded it, you are making a supreme error. If you do not believe in the realness of the existence of metaphysical principles (the entrance of invisible but transformative concepts into our world) then you have become, or you are becoming, truly American in the later, derelict sense of Americanism.
If you actually believe that politics and ethics are somehow separate from what is essential and meaningful in Christian existentialism and our civilization, then you have actually become, or you are becoming, a post-Christian. But post-Christianity defines America and Americanism in our present. Therefore, to define and understand the differences that are tearing this nation into bits and pieces, one must understand this essential conflict.
Joel Mundt wrote: If they struggle to figure out what your point is, the problem isn’t them.
I disagree. You do not, or they do not, understand what I am saying because the concepts are not familiar. Or they are ‘rejected concepts’ because of other priorities or perhaps simply focuses.
I should probably give up though since on the whole what you-plural desire to converse and debate (though there is really no opposition!) is superficial issues dealt upon superficially.
I WANT to understand what you write, but most of the time I cannot.
You are going to freak out and maybe even run from the room, but I humbly (I think this is still possible!) suggest that you would do well to consider reading Richard Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences.
The issue: abandoning transcendentals:
“Like Macbeth, Western man made an evil decision, which has become the efficient and final cause of other evil decisions. Have we forgotten our encounter with the witches on the heath? It occurred in the late fourteenth century, and what the witches said to the protagonist of this drama was that man could realize himself more fully if he would only abandon his belief in the existence of transcendentals. The powers of darkness were working subtly, as always, and they couched this proposition in the seemingly innocent form of an attack upon universals. The defeat of logical realism in the great medieval debate was the crucial event in the history of Western culture; from this flowed those acts which issue now in modern decadence.
One may be accused here of oversimplifying the historical process, but I take the view that the conscious policies of men and governments are not mere rationalizations of what has been brought about by unaccountable forces. They are rather deductions from our most basic ideas of human destiny, and they have a great, though not unobstructed, power to determine our course.
For this reason I turn to William of Occam as the best representative of a change which came over man’s conception of reality at this historic juncture. It was William of Occam who propounded the fateful doctrine of nominalism, which denies that universals have a real existence. His triumph tended to leave universal terms mere names serving our convenience. The issue ultimately involved is whether there is a source of truth higher than, and independent of, man; and the answer to the question is decisive for one’s view of the nature and destiny of humankind. The practical result of nominalist philosophy is to banish the reality which is perceived by the intellect and to posit as reality that which is perceived by the senses. With this change in the affirmation of what is real, the whole orientation of culture takes a turn, and we are on the road to modern empiricism.
It is easy to be blind to the significance of a change because it is remote in time and abstract in character. Those who have not discovered that world view is the most important thing about a man, as about the men composing a culture, should consider the train of circumstances which have with perfect logic proceeded from this. The denial of universals carries with it the denial of everything transcending experience. The denial of everything transcending experience means inevitably—though ways are found to hedge on this—the denial of truth.
With the denial of objective truth there is no escape from the relativism of “man the measure of all things.” The witches spoke with the habitual equivocation of oracles when they told man that by this easy choice he might realize himself more fully, for they were actually initiating a course which cuts one off from reality. Thus began the “abomination of desolation” appearing today as a feeling of alienation from all fixed truth.
This is not the picture of a Christian marriage. But not living up to Biblical norms does not make it an ethics issue in a society that has said farewell to Christian sexual ethics.
It used to be that (in the Christian conception) Seven Sacraments. I know this has all gone by and down the river, but fir fun it is interesting to recall them: Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Eucharist, Penance (confession), Extreme Unction, Holy Orders, and Matrimony.
In regard to Matrimony, you (the individual) cannot innovate here! Once you grasp the metaphysical principle, and should you believe it, you would not desire to innovate. You’d see the illogic of it.
All the Sacraments fit within a context, and I assure you that each can be sensibly explained in clear and intelligible terms. But this is exactly my lonely point: Our culture creates individuals who no longer recognize the value of metaphysical principles. And recognition implies “seeing”, and this seeing, obviously, is done on the plane of intellect.
Once lost, how will it be recovered?
(Boys: you can’t marry your boyfriend. Girls: you can’t marry your girlfriend!)
Sorry, people, I just have to work this out on my own!
Our culture creates individuals who no longer recognize the value of metaphysical principles. And recognition implies “seeing”, and this seeing, obviously, is done on the plane of intellect.
This is really, I think, what Progressive Activist Radical Democrat means. This created individual and semi-citizen is given the role, embodies the role, of “acidic agent”. He and she dissolve principles. Any “principle” that is of metaphysical origin is sensed as an impediment to “free action” and license. Any restriction evokes a rebellious will. And the groups form and “agendas of activism” outlined.
The cataclysmicly tragic thing is that this Operative will instinctively subvert and destroy all established principles, and ultimately those principled conceptions upon which his and her freedoms have been built!
This Individual actually begins the construction of a machine-reality in which they are just cogs and mechanical parts.
And this appears to be the *meaning* of the advent of machine systems (vast computer systems a zillion times more pragmatically capable than persons) that overlord humanity but in truth human conscience and consciousness.
I don’t know, maybe at least some of the tenets of The French Revoked might need to be reconsidered … 😵💫
Alicia I read your comments on this post and I am unable to understand what you are trying to tell. I would appreciate an executive summary.
There is a lot of stuff about Christian morals and Sacraments in your posts; I wonder whether this is all relevant to ethics and to politics. Christian morals is not the same as ethics. As separation between Church and State is part of the USA’s DNA I do not think that morals that are specifically Christian are necessary for politicians and government officials.
Executive summaries are one of the things AI does relatively well.
An executive summary will not help. However, if you indicate what is not clear I will do my VERY BEST to explain.
Alicia I read your comments on this post and I am unable to understand what you are trying to tell. I would appreciate an executive summary.
I do thank you for the attempt in any case. I responded to Joel Mundt who attempts to enlighten me that it is my problem that I am misunderstood. I will be completely honest (but not closed to correction) I disagree. If you refer to that post you will find, maybe (?, something like the executive summary you seek.
I feel often that I must fight (to be understood, to communicate my ideas) so “I have been here before”. I can honestly say that if you DID understand me you would 1) understand better some core differences within religious community and 2) I don’t think it would be unhelpful to your own, often rigorous, communication of principled ideas.
French Revolution.
As a canon lawyer let me help with the question regading the sacrament of Marriage. Under our law (the law of the catholic church) marriage has two major properties- the property of unity and indissolublity. Unity refers to the oneness of the couple- all others are not to be included, especially regarding conjugal rights.
Indissolubility refers to the impossibility of any person or entity to destroy the martital bond if it was validly entered into. Under indissolubllity is the concept of permanancy.
The code of canon law defines marriage as an indissoluble covenant willfully entered in to between a man and a woman This covenantl relationship is directed toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of children. Adding it is an intimate partnership of the whole of life. Note the imporance of the prepostions “of,” and “a” .
The code also proffers that marraige is raised to the “dignity of a sacrament” by Christ, when the the exchange of consent is between two baptised people. This inidcates that marriage is establsihed by the free and will full consent of the parties. In additon it points to the reality that marraige existed as a human phenomena before Christ and continues to do so outside the Christian realm.
Other religions have different definitions of marriage. Unfortunatley, in the recent past many”christian” denominations have elminated certain aspects of marriage from their defintions.
I certainly understand!
It just occurred to me that being a closeted gay is in fact a blackmail risk. Any sort of hidden thing that someone is ashamed to share is a risk. Regardless of how open society in general is, fear of revelation provides potential leverage.
An it harm none, do what thou wilt.
I’ve never been able to understand cross dressing. But so what? How many people would understand my hobby of making 1/144 WW1 model aircraft?
I did have an unhealthy hang up before transition. I was gender dysphoric, seriously so. Had I started to dress the way I felt I should, like an alcoholic taking a first drink, I couldn’t have stopped.
When my body started to change, yet was still not fully feminised, I went to a cross dresser for advice. He helped me out, and a few weeks thereafter, I got my ears pierced and stopped wearing male attire. July 2005.
I’m still more into pants than skirts, black cotton or leather rather than lace. But it’s good to have a choice, and it not matter so much either way.
Enough about me. There are worse kinks to have than bimboification. Not my scene, but so what? Many of the most anti trans and anti gay men in the GOP and Heritage foundation spend vast amounts of money on being pegged and humiliated.
“For in the town it was well known when they got home at night, their fat and psychopathic wives would thrash them, within inches of their lives” as the Pink Floyd song has it. A Stereotype, but true.
Not that Kristi Noem is fat of course.
Hello Zoe, I hope you are well.
Many of the most anti trans and anti gay men in the GOP and Heritage foundation spend vast amounts of money on being pegged and humiliated.
Now why in the name of heaven is that? Please do not tell me what “pegged” refers to, but what is the purpose of humiliation? Why would someone seek to be humiliated? I though everyone wants to get away from that?
As to low Earth orbits and all that, I just had to give it all up — for travel on inner planes to planets far far away.
To each her and his (okay and ‘their’) own I guess.
🌞
And why pay for humiliation?! There are so many places to get it for absolutely free …