The Righteous, Behaving Badly

A trio of news items this week lend support to my theory that the folks screaming the loudest about other people’s morals or lack thereof are the ones with closets full of skeletons.. usually skeletons dressed in leather and handcuffs.

Exhibit A, and the mildest of the bunch: James Oddo, New York City Councilman, whose participation in a Norwegian “Daily Show” style fake news interview came rather abruptly to a halt:

Now, to be fair, I couldn’t find many specifics about this guy’s politics. But he’s a Republican, the party of the Christian Right and “family values”. Are threats of physical violence and shouts of “get the fuck out of my office!” acceptable to this crowd? All he had to do was say, “I’m sorry, this interview is over. Please leave.” Better yet, he could have just played along.

Exhibit B: Gary Aldridge, Liberty “University” graduate and cohort of the late and unlamented Jerry Falwell, was found dead in his Alabama home back in June. It’s not his death that lands him on this list, though, it’s the circumstances surrounding it, as revealed by the autopsy report released this week:

The decedent is clothed in a diving wet suit, a face mask which has a single vent for breathing, a rubberized face mask having an opening for the mouth and eyes, a second rubberized suit with suspenders, rubberized male underwear, hands and feet have diving gloves and slippers. There are numerous straps and cords restraining the decedent. There is a leather belt around the midriff. There is a series of ligatures extending from the hands to the feet. The hands are bound behind the back. The feet are tied to the hands. There are nylon ligatures holding these in place with leather straps about the wrists and ankles. There are plastic cords tied about the hands and feet with a single plastic cord extending up to the head and surrounding the lower neck. There is a dildo in the anus covered with a condom.

Apparently God hates gays, nudity, and premarital sex, but I suppose the Bible doesn’t specifically rule out rubber-leather-bondage-asphyxiation fetishes, so those are okay.

(But honestly, if a scuba suit and a rectal dildo or two among consenting adults is what you’re into, then go for it – but please spare me the details. The breathing thing, though? Kind of important. Try to remember that good respiration trumps a good orgasm every time.)

Exhibit C: Now we turn to a man whose hypocrisy is just the filler in a big ol’ casserole of evil: Christian Von Wernich, a Roman Catholic priest who used his position to support a brutal Argentine military dictatorship in the 70s and 80s. Convicted of complicity in 7 murders, 31 torture cases, and 42 abductions, Christian says his efforts were justified because those people were all possessed by the devil.