Hey, I don't mean to whine about gays in the military or anything....

But Strom Thurmond was personally as well as politically opposed to homosexuals for his entire career, and believed that not only should they not be allowed to serve in the military, but that they shouldn't be given security clearances.

Here's something I always wished I could have said to the guy:

What, you might ask, would I have said to Senator Thurmond in response to his simple but admittedly personal question? Well, by way of suggestion, here's an example:

"Well Senator, you have asked me a personal question, but since you consider it relevant, my answer is YES, I am a ho-mo-sex-u-al! But since we're onto personal questions, I have one for you: How does a 90 year old manage to get a 20-year-old wife and have children? What's your secret? Boy! I wish I could do that!"

Something like that might have broken the ice with the old coot. Might not have melted his cold, cold heart, but it's just more human than hiding behind quasi-presidential skirts, aloof judicial robes, or some other man-behind-the-curtain power.

This story, while an entertaining account of Thurmond's 78-year-old "love child," inexplicably leaves out a crucial detail which I found in my local paper -- the mother of the love child was sixteen!

Essie Mae Washington was among the bright lights in the Class of 1945 at S. Horace Scott High School in the Chester County steel town of Coatesville.

She was also the secret daughter of Strom Thurmond - the product of a sexual union between the 22-year-old son of the most prominent family in Edgefield, S.C., and the 16-year-old black girl who cleaned the family's house.

Thurmond's relatives stepped forward yesterday, six months after his death at age 100, to acknowledge that Washington, now 78 and using the married name of Williams, was, indeed, the senator's child.

Or of engaging in (gulp) "moral relativism"?

But hey, I thought stuff like having sex with sixteen year olds would mean you wouldn't get a security clearance. For years, this man was the chairman of the committee which helped promulgate such regulations.

Strom Thurmond Chairmanship (1995-98)

By the time James Strom Thurmond (R-SC) became chairman of the Armed Services Committee in the 104th Congress (1995-97), he was, like Senators Russell and Stennis, a much-revered and esteemed figure in the Senate. He was the only Senator who had been a member of that body when the Republicans last controlled both houses of Congress in 1955. He was also the last link to the earliest years of the committee--the last Senator who served on the Senate Armed Services Committee through most of the Russell Era and all of the Stennis Era.

Sheesh!

I guess in some parts of the world I'd be called a moral relativist for raising similar questions about Aisha.

Am I allowed to ask if hypocrisy is all relative?

UPDATE: Here's a valuable post I missed. I am glad I am not alone on this one. (Link thanks to InstaPundit.)

UPDATE: I am also glad to know that One Fine Jay doesn't think I am smearing a dead man.

MORE, AND ADMITTEDLY OVER-THE-TOP: My standards are very low, which is usually a good thing, for it helps me to overlook the worst in people, and to carry on with life as best I can.

But occasionally something violates my very low standards, and then I have a problem. What I read here pushed me over the top.

I wrote this outside my blog in a fit of anger over Strom Thurmond. (So angry that I couldn't see straight.) That man epitomizes all I hate, even though I know it's wrong to hate him. I'll take it to my grave, I guess.

An ardent segregationist, an advocate of laws against miscegenation, he practiced what he would imprison others for. Even his own daughter he damned -- by the evil laws he loved -- to a life of inferior, second class citizenship.

This was a man who refused to compromise his "principles." He wasn't just opposed to in-your-face, activist homosexuals (of the kind who "just won't shut up"), he was one of those guys who believed in specifically asking whether you're a homo!

Intolerable.

Was it a coincidence that his god decided to take him on the same day sodomy laws were thrown out in the United States of America?

I don't know, but I don't believe in his god.

I prefer the one who'd be hated today as a moral relativist because he didn't think it was a good idea for people to be enforcing laws they didn't obey themselves.

UPDATE: This editor in the Philadelphia Inquirer notes that had Thurmond been black and the sixteen year old white, the situation would have called for lynching. (Lynching, of course, was a gruesome form of murder -- often including castration -- carried out by mobs in the name of "sexual morality.")

According to Jonah Goldberg, "Strom Thurmond didn't just oppose voting rights for blacks -- he opposed anti-lynching laws."

And if this is true, Thurmond never actually repented his racist views.

As I said, moral relativism!

It isn't for everybody....

UPDATE: It seems that in South Carolina in those days, the age of consent was 14 -- so there was nothing illegal about the young Mr. Thurmond's affair. (Via InstaPundit.) Not that I said there was -- but I don't like to create misleading impressions. (As to adultery, who knows?) My anger was not based on criminality, though; just hypocrisy.