Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Let the Good Times Roll!

By Jeffrey Lord on 3.28.13 @ 6:09 AM

Hacked Clinton e-mails: Adultery supported in April 1 announcement.

Uh-oh.

A draft statement for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, released from an anonymous hacker and dated April 1, 2013, reveals the potential 2016 presidential candidate will become the first presidential hopeful of either party to formally endorse legalizing polygamy, polyamory and adultery.

Clinton is also lending her name to a new coalition being formed by a number of celebrities including former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, South Carolina ex-Governor Mark Sanford, and golfer Tiger Woods.

The Clinton draft statement for April 1 reads this way:

Like so many others, my personal views have been shaped over time by people I have known and loved, by my experience representing our nation on the world stage, my devotion to law and human rights and the guiding principles of my faith. Marriage, after all, is a fundamental building block of our society. A great joy, and yes, a great responsibility.”

For example, I have learned much from the wisdom of my great friend Jacob Zuma, the President of South Africa. Jacob, as you can see here, is the world’s most prominent polygamist, having married his lovely sixth wife, Gloria Bongi Ngema. Ms. Bongi Ngema already shares First Lady duties by accompanying the president on official trips, along with President Zuma’s three other current wives. In truth, President Zuma’s several wives have shared their husband with much more grace than I shared my own husband with Monica Lewinsky or Gennifer Flowers or Paula Jones or the many other women, famous and unknown that were my husband’s various attractions.

I owe each and every one of those women an apology. I was unaware at the time just how bigoted were my reactions, and I was wrong to have felt as I did.

My great friend Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud has, as I know was reported years ago, four wives, seven sons and fifteen daughters. He is a wonderful man who has provided me with much wisdom on this subject. And of course, our British allies, the United Kingdom, have begun the long journey to civil rights and fairness by legalizing polygamy for Muslims in the UK.

A few years ago, Bill and I celebrated as our own daughter married the first serious love of her life. I wish every parent that same joy. To deny the opportunity to our own daughters and sons to have multiple partners solely on the basis of how many they love and when they love them is to deny them the chance to live up to their own God-given potential, as Bill has so often said to me.

I know that many in our country, like my friend Maria Shriver, still struggle to reconcile the teachings of their religion, the pull of their conscience, the personal experiences they have in their families and communities. And people of good will and good faith will continue to view this issue differently. So I hope as we discuss and debate, whether it’s around a kitchen table or through flying dishes, as Bill and I have occasionally discussed the issue of multiple partners for so many years, or in the public square, we do so in a spirit of respect and understanding.

For those of us who lived through the long years of the civil rights and women’s rights movements, the speed with which more and more people have come to embrace the dignity and equality of Polygamous, Polyamorous and Adulterous Americans has been breathtaking, and inspiring. We see it all around us, every day, in major cultural statements and in quiet family moments. Who can forget Big Love, the touching HBO series on plural marriage? Or the sheer joy of Ellen DeGeneres celebrating the reality TV show Sister Wives, the true story of the courageous Kody Brown and his four wives? As Ellen noted on her show that day, “I don’t judge because I really believe whatever works for somebody should work for somebody and it’s nobody else’s business.”

Amen to Ellen.

In my own personal life, I can never forget the wonderful and deeply courageous women who have made my marriage to Bill so richly diverse and distinctly memorable, whether in our days in Arkansas or the White House. But the journey is far from over, and therefore we must keep working to make our country free, fairer and more chilled out.”

Over the years I have come to realize the sheer bigotry, not to mention futility, of keeping people from loving the people they want to love.

There is no reason in the world my marriage can’t be shared with Monica, or as I call her “Sister Wife Number 17” not to mention with Gennifer (Sister Wife Number 5), Paula (Sister Wife Number 6) and, well, not to bore with names, Sister Wives Number 2, 3, 4 and 7 thru 16.

Over time, I must say my husband and I have reached agreement that adultery laws are antiquated relics. I mean, who’s kidding whom, right?

Clinton’s stunning statement comes on the heels of the blockbuster news she is to be the honorary chair of a new human rights organization called Proud, Polygamous, Polyamorous and Adulterous Too (“PP —PAT” for short). Serving as honorary co-chairs with Clinton will be her husband, former President Bill Clinton, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, golfer Tiger Woods and polygamist Kody Brown. Particularly notable is that Clinton tried to enlist Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul, a GOP 2016 presidential prospect, as an honorary co-chair. Senator Paul’s office issued a statement that fell short of endorsing PPPAT but calling for Americans to “embrace liberty in the personal sphere.”

Political observers noted that one Clinton staffer had smirked when questioned as to why Clinton’s potential 2016 opponent, Vice President Joe Biden, had not joined the group. Biden, an outspoken supporter of gay rights, was called a “bigot” and “so yesterday” for his refusal to join what the Clinton aide called “the next fundamental fight for civil rights and marriage equality.” Adding a reference to Mrs. Biden, the Clinton aide said sadly: “And the shame of it is Jill is so hot.”

PPPAT is also challenging the Human Rights Campaign’s support for what it calls the “LGBT” community, saying the HRC’s refusal to include polygamists, polyamorists, and adulterers effectively and ironically makes the longtime human rights group guilty of discrimination.

“It’s outrageous Establishment BS,” said PPPAT Executive Director Mary Ralph Pelosi, the longtime San Francisco activist who identified herself as the openly bisexual cousin of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Aiming her remark directly at the Human Rights Campaign and liberal gay rights groups, Mary Ralph Pelosi said: “What’s the point of being bisexual if I can’t have a husband and a wife? To shut the door on the civil rights of polyamorists is outright bigotry and a violation of our civil rights. It is a disgraceful attack on marriage and relationship equality.”

In what is apparently to be an organized campaign to, in the words of a Bill Clinton e-mail to his wife, “fulfill my wildest dreams”, conservative lawyer and former Bush Solicitor General Theodore Olson and liberal lawyer and former Al Gore attorney David Boies have prepared a draft article supporting the Hillary Clinton PPPAT initiative for publication in the Wall Street Journal. PPPAT has joined Olson and Boies by filing a friend-of-the-court brief with a law suit in favor of marriage and relationship equality that Olson and Boies have taken to the Supreme Court. The lawsuit is aimed at a referendum supporting opposite sex marriage passed by South Carolina voters.

The Olson-Boies article reads in part: 

Four years ago, the two of us joined forces and launched a federal constitutional challenge to Proposition 1,373, a ballot initiative which eliminated the right of polygamous, polyamorous marriages as well as adulterous relationships in South Carolina. Our lawsuit was joined by former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, a conservative Republican, along with 100 prominent Republicans with similar interests as well as former President Bill Clinton, former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and television star Kody Brown.

We represent 277 loving and committed polygamists, polyamorists, and adulterers. In many ways, our clients’ relationships are indistinguishable from our own: They have lives, they breathe air, they go to the bathroom, and they are raising children — lots of them — they have jobs, they pay bills, they run errands. They experience together many of the joys and sorrows and laughter as a family in America. Not long ago, the Boston Globe wrote a touching story of practicing polyamorists, revealing just how widespread is this consensual practice between human beings whose only desire is to share their love. Newsweek has also focused on the unfairness in making polyamorous marriages illegal, saying the obvious to many of us: “It’s enough to make any monogamist’s head spin. But traditionalists had better get used to it.”

But South Carolina has locked our clients out of the institution of marriage and the relationships of their choice because they are polygamists, polyamorists, and adulterers. Governor Sanford himself was forced to flee to Argentina to conduct his affair. As the official voter guide expressly stated in 2008, Proposition 1,373 was enacted to communicate, with the force of law, that polygamous, polyamorous and adulterous relationships are not ‘okay.’ This sent the unmistakable message that such relationships are unworthy of the respect, dignity and status that society accords to opposite-sex and same-sex marriages — a status even our opponents describe as ‘indispensable to the integrity of the individual.’

While we file this case some suggest that the American people are not ready to embrace polygamous, polyamorous, and adulterous men and women as equals with respect to the right of marriage and relationship equality.

In fact, public opinion has shifted dramatically in favor of polygamous, polyamorous, and adulterous marriage and relationship equality. This very month, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 58% of Americans favor marriage equality, compared with just 36% against. The same poll found an astonishing 99.999% of adults under 30 in favor of sex with as many married or unmarried partners  as possible. That poll came on the heels of the above mentioned friend-of-the-court brief on marriage equality filed by, among others, more than 100 prominent sex-starved yet decidedly proper Republicans.

As we have proved during a 12-day trial we won in a South Carolina federal court in 2011, laws like Proposition 1,373 cause devastating harm to the lives of polygamous, polyamorous, and adulterous men and women. President Clinton was unfortunately almost excluded from the White House. Governor Sanford was threatened with the loss of his governorship and is, as this is written, the target of a campaign to deprive him of an opportunity to serve in Congress once again. Former Governor Schwarzenegger has been forced to star in D-list movie flops.

Exclusion because of participation in the institutions of polygamy, polyamory, and adultery marks those targeted with a badge of inferiority, doomed to result in famous and lucrative television shows, bad movies, appearances on the Ellen DeGeneres show or, most horrifically, condemned to raise money for activities at which Lady Gaga must shake her booty in their face or force a once-distinguished governor to canoodle on South American beaches. The damage this does to their hearts and minds and wallets and egos and private parts is immeasurable — and the damage it does to all of us and our belief in the nation’s ideal of equality is incalculable.

For one to say that the Supreme Court should leave the question of marriage and relationship equality to the political processes of the states is to sully the reputation of one of the Court’s own, the late Justice William O. Douglas. Justice Douglas proudly committed serial adultery in the course of three of his four marriages, each of which are now known to have involved so-called “cheating” as he married successively his second, third and fourth wives almost immediately following divorces from wives one through three. As the Justices of this Court well know, a humiliating impeachment resolution targeting Justice Douglas was filed in Congress by then-Congressman Gerald R. Ford, a future president. For this pain to have been imposed on Justice Douglas, accompanied in the media by suggestions that his adulterous affairs were somehow not “okay” and therefore not a fundamental right caused devastating pain and humiliation not just to Justice Douglas and his wives 1 through 3 but to the governmental harmony of the United States itself.

The Constitution forbids such an indecent result. It did not tolerate it in separate schools and drinking fountains, it did not tolerate it with respect to bans on interracial marriage, and it does not tolerate it here.

Because of their sexual drive, a characteristic with which they were born and which they cannot change — our clients and hundreds of thousands of polygamous, polyamorous, and adulterous men and women in South Carolina and across the country are being excluded from dozens and dozens and dozens of life’s most precious relationships.

Opening to them participation in the unique and immensely valuable institution of marriage and hot sex will not diminish the value or status of marriage and hot sex for those who prefer a two-couple marriage, whether gay or straight. But withholding marriage or adulterous relationships causes infinite and permanent stigma, pain and isolation. It denies polygamists, polyamorists and adulterers their identity and their dignity; it labels their families and their relationships as second rate.This outcome cannot be squared with the principle of equality and the unalienable right to liberty with presidential interns, Argentine hotties, or even a gubernatorial housekeeper — happiness — that is the bedrock promise of America from the Declaration of Independence to the 14th Amendment, and the dream — the fantasy — of all Americans.

This badge of inequality must be extinguished.

A covering e-mail also released by the anonymous hacker was a simple one-line sentence from former Secretary Clinton to her staff. It read:

After long and intense discussions with my husband, I finally decided: “What the hell.”

There was also one last e-mail, an incoming e-mail from Bill Clinton to Hillary. It read:

“Go baby!!!!”

About the Author
Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com. Blogged 4/16/13

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