On December 13th (just rebroadcast on 97.3 The Sky), radio host Allen Hunt, in a conversation about a recent adult incest case, stated that “incest is easier to defend than gay marriage because…at least incest is opposite sex and has the capacity to create new life.” Earlier the implication was made that gay marriage is “re-engineering society” inviting a slippery slope to incest marriage.
I’m all for freedom of speech and have no desire to legislate disgusting views like this off the radio, but more rational people need to pay attention to what hosts like Hunt/Savage/Levin are broadcasting in their community, and be willing to let local stations and their advertisers know when these hosts step over the line.
Update: BTW, Hunt’s brilliant argument—sexual behaviors that might create life are better than ones that don’t—would imply that incest, sex with young girls, and rape would all be preferable to gay sex, hetero sex using contraceptives, and masturbation. If you’ve ever enjoyed sex without intent to conceive, here’s to the Constitution for stopping big thinkers like Hunt from using the government against you.
Last summer I read David Herbert Donald’s fine biography of Lincoln. Much of Lincoln’s life is familiar, but what was surprising to me was the anger, vehemence, and extremism of the nineteenth century American press, and how that affected all social and political discourse. Seldom was political moderation or pragmatism appreciated. Rather, writers would inflate every word and deed to absurd proportions to paint their rivals as fools, cowards, crooks, or worse. The various papers were almost all highly partisan, and an account of a Lincoln speech in a friendly paper might read, “Lincoln spoke eloquently to a large, enthusiastic crowd who cheered heartily”, while an opposition paper might write that “Lincoln was booed spitefully by the small audience who hated his idiotic jibber-jabber”.
All of this is to say that America once suffered from an excess of hate in its media. When and why that extremism subsided are good questions. Suffice it to say, I feel we are living in a sort of new nineteenth century, and since the 1990s that extremism is back. Look no further than the bizarre revisionism surrounding the Civil War as we approach the 150th anniversary of that event. Astonishingly, people are willingly misrepresenting the causes and that war. The “birther” movement, the Tea Party movement, and reactionary talk radio that is so far right of anything America has seen since the beginning of the twentieth century.
Allen Hunt sounds ridiculous. I mean that literally; he deserves ridicule.