by Larry Jones
When one looks at the recent Republican sex scandals and their links to the C Street house run by the fundamentalist group called The Family, it’s like looking into a can of worms and trying to explain what is going on in there. Most of the worms, though certainly not all, have to do with Republicans. If we were to give those worms names, surely some would be named “secrecy,” cover-up,”deceit,” and “hypocrisy.”
SORTING IT OUT
Sen. Ensign: sex and C Street House
Sex scandals are certainly not new among D.C. politicos, but of late the first to make a big media splash was that of Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev) and his affair between December 2007 and August 2008 with one of his campaign staff members, Cynthia Hampton, wife of Ensign’s aide in his senatorial office, Douglas Hampton.
Although the secrecy and deceit worms were at work for some time, Ensign publicly admitted his affair in June. It has been reported that Ensign’s wealthy parents gave the Hamptons $96,000. His father, Mike Ensign, is known as a billionaire casino mogul in Nevada. A bribe to remain silent? Not according to Ensign, who said that his parents made the gifts "out of concern of the well-being of the longtime family friends during a difficult time." Sure!! See more from the Las Vegas Sun here.
Until the scandal broke, Ensign put himself forward as a family values advocate, calling on President Bill Clinton to resign after his fellatio affair with Monica Lewinsky, and severely criticizing then-Sen. Larry Craig after he was arrested in an airport homosexual sting operation. There’s that pesky hypocrite worm.
Ensign is not only a member of the rigid fundamentalist and misogynist Promise Keepers with their position against adultery, but he also lives at the now-infamous C Street House in D.C. affiliated with The Family. (See my review on this site of Jeff Sharlet’s book exposing The Family).
Sharlet wrote that The Family’s “religion isn’t an opiate of the masses; it’s the American Christ on methamphetamine.” Their Jesus is one of power by the elites. They focus not on the poor and those who are down and out but on those who are up and out, and they provide comfort and secrecy to politicians who are having difficulties like sexual dalliances. Recently that has included Ensign, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, and former Mississippi Rep. Chip Pickering.
Gov. Sanford: Sex Scandal with comfort from C Street
Governor Mark Sanford, you will remember, went for a “walk on the Appalachian Trail,” the excuse by his staff of why he went missing in mid-June. It turned out that he had been in Argentina with his mistress María Belén Chapur. When he returned to his office on June 24, he made a confession that went on for several days. He claims he never crossed “the ultimate line.” That’s very much like Bill Clinton’s “I never had sexual relations with that woman.”
However, Sanford calls his Buenos Aires mistress his “soul mate.”
There was a great deal of religious language in his confession. He apologized to the “people of faith” in South Carolina and across the nation. That’s not surprising, since the Christo-fascist section of the Republican Party comprise his strongest supporters.
Nor is it surprising because he told reporters how C Street had helped him with his problems and that he had met privately and secretly in a back room at the C Street house with a “Christian friend,” Cubby Culbertson, who counseled him. Sanford called Culbertson “a spiritual giant.” Culbertson is a businessman who is linked to other religious right groups.
Sanford is also infected by the hypocrisy worm. As a Congressman he supported the impeachment of Bill Clinton after the Lewinsky scandal, and he has put himself forward as one with superior morality. In his campaign ad in 2002, he said: "Jenny and I try our best to teach our four little boys Christian values, character and honesty. You’d like to think that those values apply to government, too…”
What are you telling your kids now, Mr. Governor? I know, “Do as I say, not as I do.”
As Rachel Maddow said on the June 24 show, “Moral superiority isn’t a prerequisite for public service, but it is a prerequisite for those public servants who publicly claim that they are morally superior.”
Former C Street resident Chip Pickering get slammed by his wife
Former Rep. Chip Pickering of Mississippi is the quintessential scrubbed-clean white politician. He resigned from Congress in 2007 and became estranged from his wife Leisha when she separated from him in June of 2008. Pickering then filed for divorce, which is not yet final.
What has become public now is that Pickering had rekindled a romantic relationship from college days with Elizabeth Creekmore Byrd and, according to his wife, they have had a sexual affair for a number or years. Leisha Pickering has now filed suit against Creekmore Byrd for alienation of affection. In the lawsuit, Mrs. Pickering claims that the affair caused the destruction of both the Pickering and Creekmore Byrd marriages. She is seeking unspecified damages.
She claims that the affair was going on while he was "a United States congressman prior to and while living in the well-known C Street Complex in Washington, D.C.” Apparently he arranged to meet secretly with his lover at C Street, which is normally visited by men only.
The former Congressman kept a detailed diary which includes times and places of all his trysts with his mistress. A local court, along with attempts to control the fallout by Pickering and other conservative republicans, the diary has been locked up by the court. If Leisha Pickering can get it admitted as evidence in he lawsuit, C Street will be the focus of a lot more bad press and can now be said to be deep in a pile of manure.
Chip Pickering is now a lobbyist for Cellular South, a telecom company owned by Creekmore Byrd’s family.
C Steet House owned by a group planning world control
Doug Coe, the leader of The Family has said that he admires Hitler for the way he organized the Nazis in order to gain control, but unknown to most who have heard or read some things about The Family and the C Street haven, the house is owned by The Family’s friends, Youth With a Mission.
According to Bruce Wilson at Talk2Action, “Youth With a Mission is one of the most extensive Christian fundamentalist para-church organizations on Earth, and YWAM founding leader Loren Cunningham has publicly outlined a vision for fundamentalist world-control.”
Cunningham’s vision involves what he calls “Reclaiming 7 Mountains of Culture,” whereby fundamentalists can control the world if they gain control over
· The Mountain of Government, "where evil is either restrained or endorsed",
· The Mountain of Education, "where truths, or lies, about God and his creation are taught.",
· The Mountain of Media, "where information is interpreted through the lens of good or evil",
· The Mountain of Arts and Entertainment, "where values and virtue are celebrated or distorted",
· The Mountain of Religion, "where people worship God in spirit and truth, or settle for a religious ritual",
· The Mountain of Family, "where either a blessing or a curse is passed onto successive generations and,
· The Mountain of Business, "where people build for the glory of God or the glory of man."
And, according to Cunningham, “those who lead this mountain, influence what controls our culture.” And they are going not only for U.S. culture, but the cultures of every nation on earth. Scary stuff.
And the Democrats?
Above I stated that in that can of worms are some Democrats linked to C Street. This is not a complete list of dems associated in one way or another with The Family, but here are two who live there.
U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich) has lived in a room at C Street at the unusually low (for D.C.) rent
of $600/mo. He claims he doesn’t know anything about what goes on there. “I don’t belong to any such group,” Stupak said. “I rent a room at a house in ‘C Street.’ I do not belong to any such group. I don’t know what you’re talking about, [The] Family and all this other stuff.”
Jeff Sharlet says Stupak is being less than honest, to put it mildly. Says Sharlet: “When I lived with The Family at Ivanwald, a house for younger men being groomed for leadership, I was told that Stupak was a regular visitor to the Cedars.” The Cedars is a compound owned by The Family, where Reagan AG Ed Meese leads prayer sessions
Sharlet told the Michigan Messenger that Stupak had much greater involvement with the group than he is admitting, noting that the congressman was “a Family-assigned mentor to one of my brothers at Ivanwald.”
Rep Mike Doyle (D-Pa) was asked about whether he belonged to The family and/or followed the teachings of Doug Coe. He said: “The only religious organization I’m a member of is the Roman Catholic Church, of which I’ve been a member all my life. The only religious teachings I follow are those of the Roman Catholic Church.
Make of that what you will. Could that be a lie? Yes, according to Sharlet, because, as he put it, “In the core of The Family, they actually reject the idea of morality for their members. They believe that morality is a secular construct, that morality is something made by man for little people like us. … The Family believes that they are the sort of New Chosen by God – morality, ethics, these things don’t apply to you.”
That’s why political adulterers are so comfortable at C Street.
We need morality, but not that kind. The morality we need is that which acts against the two wars which are now Barack Obama’s, opposes in the streets the enlargement of the military, and calls for justice for those responsible for the Bush regime torture policy.