Republican Gomorrah Page 19
But no candidate gained more from Dobson’s blessing than David Vitter, a conservative Louisiana congressman running to become the first Republican U.S. senator from his state since Reconstruction. In 2002, he had withdrawn from the governor’s race amid a storm of lurid rumors. Although he claimed that mere marital troubles forced him to drop his bid, a week after his withdrawal New Orleans papers reported allegations that he had repeatedly patronized a notorious Canal Street whorehouse. When Vitter announced his candidacy for the Senate, he was alleged to have arranged a meeting with several leading evangelical activists, including Perkins, Dobson, and Gene Mills, executive director of the Louisiana Family Forum, a group founded by Perkins that functioned as a local Focus on the Family policy council. Appearing before this synod of virtue, Vitter proclaimed, “There are no skeletons in my closet.” Heartened by Vitter’s pledge of purity, the Christian right’s college of cardinals directed their forces to get behind his campaign, lifting him to decisive victory.
The anti-gay fervor that catapulted candidates such as Vitter into national office during the fall of 2004 underscored a deep-seated anxiety about the crises that riveted evangelical families. If marriage was “under fire,” as Dobson had claimed, the casualties could be quantified. A 1999 study by conservative evangelical pollster George Barna found the born-again Christian divorce rate to be significantly higher than that of the general public. Barna reported his findings with surprising stoicism. “While it may be alarming to discover that born-again Christians are more likely than others to experience a divorce, that pattern has been in place for quite some time,” he remarked. “Even more disturbing, perhaps, is that when those individuals experience a divorce many of them feel their community of faith provides rejection rather than support and healing.” According to Barna, Baptists had the highest rate of the major denominations: 29 percent. Born-again Christians’ rate was 27 percent. But perhaps the worst news for born-again Christians was Barna’s revelation that atheists and nonbelievers had the lowest divorce rate: 21 percent.
Tony Perkins, when he was a Louisiana state representative, was one of the first evangelical politicians to offer a remedy for the divorce explosion in his community; in 1997, he introduced a bill in the legislature to ratify the concept of “covenant marriage.” Perkins’s bill, which was eventually signed into law, offered couples the option of entering a biblically inspired marital contract that could not be broken unless one spouse could show proof of adultery, abandonment, physical abuse, or “habitual drunkenness for one year.” When Perkins assumed the helm of the Family Research Council, his crusade went national, as he began lobbying unsuccessfully for the repeal of no-fault divorce laws in every state.
Mike Huckabee, an evangelical minister elected Arkansas governor in 1996, pushed Perkins’s covenant marriage law as a panacea to his state’s skyrocketing divorce rate, the nation’s third highest by the time he left the governor’s mansion in 2006, almost the same as when he entered. In selling covenant marriage to the masses, Huckabee and his wife Janet, who had married at age 18, converted their own marriage to covenant status along with 1,000 other couples on Valentine’s Day in 2004, in a North Little Rock arena. The ceremony culminated with Janet Huckabee’s vow to “gracefully submit” to her husband. With that, the thousand other wives stood en masse, lifted the wedding veils they had worn for the occasion and made their own pledges of submission to the will of their husbands.
Despite ceremonies of obedience and faithfulness, the families of Christian-right leaders often presented a stark contrast to the image of spiritual harmony projected to their flocks. James Dobson’s thirty-something son, Ryan, exemplified this trend even as he became a rising star on the evangelical youth scene promoting the wonders of covenant marriage. A self-styled bad boy for Jesus, Ryan sports a handlebar moustache and hipster garb. When he is not cruising the mean streets of Colorado Springs on his Harley, according to the biography he has posted on his website, he likes to skate dangerous half pipes and surf the “top breaks” in Orange County, California, his former stomping ground. While preaching before packed youth revivals, at crisis pregnancy center benefit concerts, and in his ghostwritten book, Be Intolerant: Because Some Things Are Just Stupid, Ryan hits on many of the same political themes—gays, abortion—as his father. But he gears his message to the struggles of young evangelicals approaching marriage age. Indeed, one of his favorite topics is the moral rot perpetuated by divorce-on-demand.
Ryan sermonized dramatically against this spreading social evil during an April 18, 2005, Web radio broadcast (one of the weekly shows he hosts through his website, KorMinistries.com) in the wake of the Terri Schiavo affair. “We have an over 50 percent divorce rate,” he declared in a voice brimming with outrage. “That’s not healthy either. We’ve stopped believing in till death do us part. People say ‘Terri Schiavo’s husband . . . all this stuff . . . blah, blah, blah . . . what do you think?’ I say until death do us part! For sickness or for health [sic]. For better or for worse.”
Ryan’s father sat beside him in the studio throughout the broadcast, offering encouragement. “For rich or for poor,” James Dobson seconded.
“For rich or for poor!” the son echoed.
With rising intensity, Ryan trundled on: “It’s a commitment. It says something to a person. I’m committed to you no matter what happens . . . We have things that happen to us and I want to tell you I’m gonna be committed to you because . . . why am I passionate about this? Because I’m getting married in a couple months. And I’m thinking about it. I think about it a lot.”
Often when members of the movement seem preoccupied with one particular form of sinful behavior—when they “think about it a lot,” as Ryan Dobson said—they may be compensating for having committed the same sin, or knowing its temptation.
Adopted when he was six months old by America’s foremost child-rearing authority, who prescribed harsh forms of corporal punishment, Ryan, whose real name is James Ryan Dobson III, suffered a difficult childhood. His father routinely warned him and his older sister, Danae, that if they did not follow his strict mandates they would not join him in heaven. According to Dobson’s official biographer, Dale Buss, the children called their father’s instructions on how to get to heaven the “Be There” talk.
Ryan struggled in school, failing at Illinois-based Olivet Nazarene University. Separated from his parents’ financial support, Ryan worked odd jobs in Colorado until he convinced his parents to send him to Biola University, an evangelical school in suburban Los Angeles that creates “servant leaders” for Jesus, such as Senator John Thune. But Ryan’s problems worsened at Biola. His father’s unrelenting pressure produced a constant state of anxiety. As stress mounted, Ryan sought therapy from one of his father’s protégés, Christian psychologist Clyde Narramore. Narramore promptly diagnosed him with attention deficit disorder, prescribed a heavy dose of Ritalin, and warned the father against applying more pressure on his son. Ryan’s stress suddenly but only momentarily lifted. He graduated from Biola in 1995 and moved back to Orange County with his new wife, Cezanne Williams, whom he had met at Biola. He had no income of his own. They lived in an expensive condominium purchased by his father.
Like many young couples who rush into marriage, Ryan and Cezanne’s relationship rapidly deteriorated after their honeymoon. Ryan’s marital troubles were compounded by his struggle to find a career. Even though he had just married, he was aimless, jobless, and depressed. He had failed to capitalize on his immediate opportunity—an internship at the Family Research Council and a job in the youth ministry of Rick Warren’s Saddleback Community Church. “I had quit my job and at the time I just didn’t care if I got another one,” Ryan told Dale Buss. “My weight dropped down to 130. I lost my pride, some friends, and was quickly losing every cent I’d ever hoped to earn.”
In September 2001, Ryan divorced Cezanne, citing “irreconcilable differences.” Because Ryan initiated the proceedings, he was ordered to pay Cezanne $80,000
and transfer the deed of his condominium to her. Given the fact that Ryan was unemployed and penniless at the time, it is difficult to imagine how he was able to cover his costs without the assistance of his father—a man who has called no-fault divorce “a disaster for the family.” James Dobson’s financial compensation of the costs of Ryan’s separation has not been confirmed. But during the year of the divorce, Dobson diverted $34,000 from Focus on the Family’s coffers to his son’s bank account for unspecified reasons that have never been explained.
Several months after Ryan’s messy divorce, James Dobson demanded the resignation of his radio sidekick, Mike Trout, for having an extramarital affair. Besides introducing Dobson to his audience of millions each day, Trout oversaw Focus’s National Bike Ride for the Family, an annual fundraising event. Now, to lead the twenty-fifth anniversary bike ride in Trout’s place, James Dobson anointed his son. The job gave Ryan a newfound sense of direction, connecting him to the culture of personal crisis that undergirded his father’s ministry. “It got me meeting people whose lives had been changed by Focus on the Family, who were on the brink of suicide, whose marriages had failed, who were out of control—but they turned on the radio and my dad’s voice gave them hope and help and ideas,” Ryan said. “All the anger got washed away doing those bike rides, meeting people who said, ‘I just couldn’t have done it without your dad.’”
Ryan Dobson became one of the minions who felt they owed salvation to his father’s inspiration. But his redemption included additional benefits. The job also put Ryan on the trajectory for a lucrative public speaking career. In 2007 Ryan published his second book, 2Die4: The Dangerous Truth About Following Christ, the ghostwritten sequel to Be Intolerant: Because Some Things Are Just Stupid. 2Die4 urged a violent crusade against “Satan”—“murderous war because our enemy is deadly.” At the 2005 National Religious Broadcaster’s convention, his father hosted an event to promote his forthcoming polemic. I joined those packing the small conference room to see the Dobsons speak. We were first required to take part in a ping-pong tournament. Focus staffers dressed in referee uniforms and rushed around the room keeping score of the matches going on all around, chalking up winners and losers, and finally choosing a couple of short, balding, middle-aged men to play against Ryan and James Dobson in an apocalyptic battle for ping-pong domination.
Before the championship match began, however, Ryan and his father sat on stools beside one of the referees for an informal discussion of some favorite topics: family, culture, and the homosexual agenda. James Dobson was uncharacteristically reticent, hunched over and speaking only when spoken to. He did not appear anything like the stern taskmaster who had answered a postelection thank you call from the White House by demanding that Bush get “more aggressive” or “pay a price in four years.”
One of few times James Dobson spoke was to clarify a statement he had apparently wanted to issue for some time. “I did not say Sponge-Bob was gay,” he told the crowd, responding to media ridicule of his attack a month before on the popular children’s TV cartoon character. “All I said was he was part of a video produced by a group with strong linkages to the homosexual community that’s teaching things like tolerance and diversity. And you can see where they’re going with that. They’re teaching kids to think different about homosexuality.”
But the event belonged to Ryan, who took the floor to explain the thesis of 2Die4. “Kids today are looking for something to die for, they’re looking for a cause,” Ryan said. “If you give them something to die for, they’ll go to the edge of the earth for you. Kids like that give me hope for revolution in America.”
During a brief Q&A session, I asked Ryan whether he would identify specific causes kids should die for. Without hesitation he replied, “People keep saying we need to change the discussion on abortion before we can ban it. We don’t need to change the discussion. Like 80 percent of the country is against abortion,” he stated, citing highly disputable polling data. “What kind of country fines people $25,000 for killing a bald eagle but doesn’t do anything when unborn babies get thrown in the trash?” But before he could complete his apparent endorsement of a violent struggle to stop abortion, Ryan quickly shifted the discussion to his fiancée, who was seated in the front row. He pointed to his prospective second wife and proudly declared that he had kept himself “pure” for their wedding night.
Then the balding ping-pong challengers were summoned to a table in the center of the room to face off against the Dobsons. The father and son team spanked them like a disobedient child, dispatching the competition in short order. Ryan slammed the ball so hard across the table that it ricocheted into an unsuspecting female audience member’s face. While the startled woman tried to collect herself, Ryan pumped his fist in celebration.
The Dobsons have never publicly acknowledged Ryan’s divorce, and with good reason. Not only would any acknowledgement of this episode erode his credibility in the eyes of the impressionable evangelical youths who soak up his jeremiads, it would also damage his father’s reputation. As Buss wrote in his hagiography of James Dobson, Family Man, “As the preeminent family-relationship guru of our time, Dobson is judged by how good a husband and father he is . . . Is he as advertised as a husband and father?”
Dobson may be at least as flawed as any other father whose children encounter troubles. But in order to remain elevated on a pedestal where he can denounce social deviants while shepherding his serried ranks from crisis to conservatism, he advertises himself as spiritually perfected—“St. Jim Dobson,” in the words of one of his followers. The title of the biography Dobson commissioned about himself, Family Man, further illustrates his obsession with an image of purity. Concealing Ryan Dobson’s true marital history, and by extension, James Dobson’s claim as Holy Father, is essential to the marketability of the family brand.
With his past effectively hidden, Ryan leapt into the campaign against gay marriage with unbridled passion. “The studies show that countries that legalize same-sex unions and legalize gay marriage don’t have a giant influx in gay marriage,” he declared in a 2004 interview, mistakenly substituting the word influx for increase. “They have a huge decline in heterosexual marriage. Why get married if it doesn’t mean anything?”
According to Ryan Dobson, then, gays are to be blamed for divorce. But the gay-bashing divorcé never explained what the existence or influence of gays might have to do with his own experience. Certainly, according to this rationale, he could not be held responsible for his own divorce. His logic, twisted as it is, has proved effective not only for Ryan Dobson but also for other right-wing figures struggling to divert attention from their own failed marriages and to advance their careers as crusading conservatives.
David Vitter, who admitted marital troubles but denied charges that he solicited prostitution, borrowed the Dobsons’ feverish antigay invective to electrify his senatorial campaign. As the Christian right bristled with indignation at a 2004 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision that sanctioned same-sex marriage, Vitter released a statement breathlessly proclaiming, “The Hollywood left is redefining the most basic institution in human history, and our two U.S. Senators won’t do anything about it. We need a U.S. Senator who will stand up for Louisiana values, not Massachusetts’s values. I am the only Senate Candidate to coauthor the Federal Marriage Amendment; the only one fighting for its passage.”
Although Vitter’s culture war cant propelled him to victory, the lurid rumors about his prostitution problem continued to haunt him. In 2002, New Orleans newspapers reported allegations that Vitter had paid $300 an hour for services at a bordello on the city’s notorious Canal Street. Operated by Jeannette Maier, the brothel specialized in satisfying the fetishes of the Big Easy’s power elite.
Maier made certain that chains, whips, cuffs, and leather accoutrements were always available, particularly when a prominent Republican client had booked time with one of her girls. After all, she explained, Republicans were her kinkiest clients. “The
y wanted to be spanked and tortured and wear stockings—Republicans have impeccable taste in silk stockings—and these are the people who run our country,” Maier said.
Vitter was repeatedly confronted with these allegations during his 2004 campaign, once while appearing on popular Louisiana radio personality Jeff Crouere’s local talk show. As the broadcast drew to a close, Crouere answered a call from David Bellinger, a legally blind political gadfly known as the “Flaming Liberal.” Bellinger, who boasted of connections in City Hall and friends on Canal Street, had heard through the grapevine that Vitter regularly visited a high-priced prostitute named Wendy Cortez who occasionally worked with Maier. His confrontation with Vitter raised the still-unresolved rumors.
“Congressman, since spokesperson for the Republican Party William Bennett has said character counts,” Bellinger said to Vitter, “I would like to put the same challenge to you that I put to [former] Representative [Tony] Perkins and he accepted. Would you be willing to sign under the penalty of perjury an affidavit saying you have never had an extramarital affair and you have never known, met or been in the company of one Wendy Cortez?”
Vitter unleashed an angry rant against his accuser. “‘Flaming Liberal, ’” he growled, “thank you for repeating all these vicious rumors that my political enemies are trying to bandy about and those rumors are absolutely [not] true and they really don’t belong in any political campaign and I’ve stated very clearly that they’re lies, but I’m not going to start jumping through hoops and taking orders from my political enemies who have absolutely no credibility.”
As soon as he was elected to the Senate, Vitter devoted himself to repairing his tattered reputation. One of his first stops was the Family Research Council, where, just weeks after being sworn in, he came to a radio studio for an interview with Perkins, his old friend and ally in the Louisiana state legislature. Perkins, who had lost in his own bid for the Senate but now occupied the nexus of power between the party and the movement, told Vitter in no uncertain terms that he expected his total support for the Family Research Council’s legislative initiatives. Vitter, the new standard bearer of the Louisiana Republican Party, in large part because of the support of Perkins and his cadre, pledged total loyalty to his host.