To Rick, With Love

By Michael Blanding, AlterNet. Posted July 16, 2005.

Dear Sen. Santorum,

On behalf of the depraved, morally relativistic citizenry of Boston, I just wanted to thank you for finally giving us the credit that we deserve. In fact, I was just taking a break from some man-on-dog sex with my Weimaraner, Hank, when I read your comments about our moral cesspit of a city. You called Boston a sick culture that sanctions alternative lifestyles, and said it was no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political, and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm of the Catholic priest child sex abuse scandal of a few years back.

Honestly, I admire someone with the guts to finally expose the Athens of America for the modern-day Gomorrah that it really is. That pussy, Dick Armey, actually apologized after his slip of the tongue before the Democratic National Convention, when he said that if he were a Democrat he'd feel more comfortable having a convention in Boston, than say, America. Even our own governor, presidential opportunist Mitt Romney, softened his tone after taking heat for criticizing Massachusetts on gay marriage during a recent swing through South Carolina.

But you, you stick to your guns. Despite making those comments two years ago -- before the priest scandal became a nationwide phenomenon that included your own home state of Pennsylvania -- you bravely held your ground when questioned about them this week, saying that a worldview like Boston's that affirms alternative views of sexuality can lead to a lot of people taking your words the wrong way.

With all due respect, however, I don't think you've really considered how far the wrong way Boston has taken them. Truth be told, our sick culture of sexual depravity goes back a lot further than gay marriage and Catholic priest abuse. Take the Puritans. I mean, talk about alternative lifestyles! The constrictive clothing, the stocks and irons, the public hangings, the dunking tanks, the flamboyant letters pinned to their breasts ... Massachusetts Bay Colony was like an S&M dungeon waiting to happen. And those were the same folks who founded Harvard University, spouting some crap about the need to train a literate clergy. Whereas we all know that literacy just gets in the way of the quick snap judgments and moral superiority that right-wing clergy (and for that matter, certain senators) really need to do their job.

And that's just the beginning. The Boston Tea Party? Please, have you ever heard of a more gay-sounding political protest? And all that bunk about not firing until you see the whites of their eyes. We're lucky Colonel Prescott and the boys at Bunker Hill didn't get so lost in the eyes of those strapping, young redcoats that they forgot to pull their triggers. Don't even get me started on Paul Revere and his horse! Some might say that political liberalism was the backbone on which this country was founded -- you know, the respect for liberty and the rights of the individual passed down from John Locke to Thomas Jefferson. But you and I both know that really leads to nothing but dog-sex and child abuse. We're lucky this county ever got founded at all!

After that dubious beginning, as you know, things went from bad to worse here in Beantown. I won't bore you with all the particulars, since you've clearly made a quick study of our corrupt metropolis, but let's just take a few of the highlights.

The abolitionists; have you ever seen a sicker bunch of folks? True, the impassioned speeches from the pulpit by William Lloyd Garrison and Frederick Douglass provided the moral impetus to the Civil War. But we both know they were just thinking ahead to the time when their arguments could be twisted to make gay marriage a civil rights issue, rather than the destruction of society we both know it is. (Though to be fair, appropriating the abolitionists' words does come in handy when you and your friends want to affirm the rights of an unborn fetus or brain-dead Terri Schiavo.)

Then there were Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose essays supposedly inspired the modern-day environmental movement. Ahem. Two men alone in the woods? Enough said. Do I even need to mention the great Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster, who once used the filibuster to try and prevent the expansion of slavery to Texas? As you rightly pointed out on the Senate floor a few weeks ago, Rick, anyone who supports the filibuster is equivalent to Adolph Hitler.

Michael Blanding is a freelance writer living in Boston. Read more of his writing at MichaelBlanding.com.

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