Another one bites the dust.

Go on down to Tennessee for some old fashioned, country-style, family value of God, the GOP, Mom and apple pie. Here is a picture of those family values. The guy in the rather scary sweater is Paul Stanley, a Republican legislator who sticks up for families by sticking it to gay people—and I don't mean in the "hide the sausage" way either. For instance, Stanley decided that gay people should be forbidden to adopt children. Stanley is very wholesome. You can see it here, with his family. His daughter has a very long dress on. Mother has just enough lipstick to be seen but not in a painted-woman fashion popular among those liberals. And junior has a decent haircut, the way Jesus wanted.

Mr. Stanley taught Sunday School. He was God's man in a trouble world saving the family from evil perverts and sinners. Gays shouldn't adopt, he said, because "When you're married, there's a commitment there." And gays can't marry, just the way Jesus wants even if he forgot to mention it during his time on earth. Stanley was so sure of his family values that he told people he would fight to prevent gays from adopting even if the children in question had to stay in state care as a result. It's all about marriage, commitment, family, and God. And it sure as hell helps with the votes from the revival crowd.

Senator Stanley will be stepping down from one of his positions, though he is still clinging to office, for the time being.

Apparently this leading light of God's Own Party (GOP) was shtupping a female intern. Hey, that counts in Republican circles—at least the intern was female. Like a good moralist Stanley was able to hide the truth from the public, which again counts in Republican circles. There is one thing Republicans can't stomach and that's the truth.

But the female college student had a boy friend named Joel Watts. Apparently Watts found photos of the young woman, in the nude, which had been taken at Stanley's apartment. Now this doesn't win points with the Republicans who prefer to ban porn entirely, except for their own secret stash of it.

Watts figured this was a money maker for him. He offered to sell the memory card, with the photos, to Stanley for $10,000. Stanley, smelling a perpetual blackmail racket, had no choice but to call in the authorities. Watts are arrested for extortion. That was some time ago. Stanley was able to keep it all a secret until now.

Stanley describes himself as an Evangelical Christian. He is proud of his anti-gay viewpoints. He is a very vocal champion of so-called family values. But he was shtupping a college girl, young enough to be his daughter, and taking pornographic photos of her. He was doing this behind the back of his wife and covering it up intentionally. We have lying, adultery, pornography, all wrapped into one family value package.

I have long suspected that those who preach the strongest about family values and abstinence and porgrnography are themselves fighting terrifying demons. I once debated a Christian family values type on television. The guy was quite scary actually. (He literally had a meltdown in front of my very eyes and continued to preach to an empty chair after the show was over.) As I was leaving the studio with the show's moderator, he turned to me and said: "I really get the impression that ..... is terrified of a monster inside himself that just might get out." After the show aired about a dozen people managed to locate my home phone number and called in support. More than half of them said the same thing about the guy.

By the way, the guy did actually have a mental breakdown on stage. He disappeared from the public arena after that for two years. I did see him about six months later being led around by his wife, and I mean literally being led around. I was having breakfast a few yards away and watched as he placed him on a bench where he sat, head drooped down, motionless, until she came for him 20 minutes later.

Jimmy Swaggart used to preach about pornography and prostitution all the time. Yet he was a fan of both. Ted Haggard was vehemently antigay and led campaigns against the equal rights of gay people. Yet he was secretly hiring male prostitutes for sex, while bragging in public that Evangelicals have the best sex lives of anyone. True, perhaps, just not with their wives.

In the name of fairness, I should note that I apply this theory to the Left as well. I have long suspected that socialists often wish to use government as a means of charity because they are not charitable themselves. I suspect that the Left and the Right both have the same problem. They see the flaws in their own characters and assume that everyone else is flawed in the same manner. Their solution is the gun of government.