What the Pence Policy Tells Us About Liberal Values

By: American Decency Staff

 

A big part of writing on current events is research.

So, since the big scandal with Mike Pence broke last week, I’ve been pouring over the internet compiling stories of sordid political affairs that started with politicians following the Vice President’s policies.

Ok, that’s not true, but I did check Wikipedia real quick, and I didn’t find reports of any affairs that started by deliberately not ever being alone together.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it all started when the Washington Post published a profile of Vice President Pence’s wife, Karen, which mentioned an interview with Pence from 2002 in which he revealed that – out of respect for his wife and their marriage – he doesn’t dine alone with other women, he doesn’t attend functions involving alcohol without his wife, and doesn’t work late alone with a female staffer. This caused liberal minds to explode all over the internet.

Because he is a Republican, and because he is Donald Trump’s VP, the left applied their enduring rule of ‘anything-Trump-does-is-sinister’ to Pence’s common sense protections against actual or manufactured scandal.

Suddenly, Mike Pence was misogynistic for denying access to women. He was deliberately denying women the chance to climb the political ladder. He was no better than the Taliban. He must either imagine himself irresistible or not trust himself to not jump across the table at any woman he is alone with.

If you’re determined enough, anything can be used as a political weapon.

Anyways, what I did find on Wikipedia, is this helpful (though depressingly long) list of sexual scandals involving politicians arranged by decade.

Going back to just 2000, there have been at least 16 sex scandals involving a house or senate member which a policy like Pence’s might have prevented.

And, of course, only going back so far as 2000 would exclude the most infamous example: President Bill Clinton’s exploitation of and affair with intern Monica Lewinsky.

Just imagine what those criticizing Pence today would have to say if news came out tomorrow, that the Vice President was unfaithful to his wife? Would their reaction be, “at least he had dinner with another woman?”

This story for once, however, doesn’t just point to liberal hypocrisy.

Instead it delineates the traditional values of conservatives influenced by Christianity, from the newly internalized, central values of liberalism: diversity and equality (which sounds nice, but when you look closer, it just means people look different, but think the same).

I would be surprised if many liberals wouldn’t agree with my analysis that they would prefer to have Pence lose his marriage than that he practice this cautionary “discrimination,” and that is because of something that conservatives, including Pence, have been warning of for at least a decade: the devaluing of marriage.

We haven’t often heard the words, “attack on marriage,” since the Obergefell decision in 2015 legalized homosexual marriages, but that decision was a symptom of the same problem.

In our day and age, when marriage is unmoored from its definition, marriage rates are declining, traditional spousal roles are maligned, when the only exclusive perks marriage offers is health insurance, and where divorce is not only easily acquired, but completely destigmatized, marriage is just one of many equally good options and it’s failure is hardly something to be upset about.

It is more important to liberal enforcers that a Vice President put himself and his staff at risk of emotional entanglements to appease their sense of fairness.

That’s a shame.

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