Run Luau Run

If you’ve been here for more than a few moments, you probably know that politically I lean left – left center on some issues, far left on others.  I have to admit that not so deep down inside, a part of me has taken some glee in watching several social conservative celebrities and politicians squirm and perform figurative gymnastics in the wake of this whole Ashley Madison data dump.  That glee, of course, stems from the fact that many of these social conservative types preach and preach and preach and preach about family values, claiming that same sex marriages and working moms eat away and destroy the moral fabric of our society.

Right.

Karma…she’s a funny lady.

My gut reactions when the names of these social conservatives started popping up was, “good!  they deserve it.”  My initial reaction when some wrote asking why “conservatives were getting slammed and not the gajillion other (liberal) people on Ashley Madison?” was “well, those gajillion other people aren’t preaching conservative family values.  They aren’t condemning gay marriage because it will break up traditional families…blah, blah, blah.”

I really felt like they were getting what they deserved.

Lately though I am having a harder time with this.  My overall feelings toward those social conservatives hasn’t changed.  I think they’re dopes, especially those who are getting pregnant while swearing by abstinence, but my gut feelings toward those caught up in the Ashley Madison data dump are now tempered with a sense of uneasiness.

The Ashley Madison hack was theft, plain and simple.  Many of us, including myself, have been laughing at these social conservatives for what we say is their own stupidity or cluelessness.  They were asking for trouble, we say.

They were asking for trouble.

Here’s the thing though…they didn’t do anything illegal.  Did they do something dumb?  You betcha!  Maybe even reckless?  Sure.  Immoral?  I suppose it depends upon who you ask.  But they did nothing illegal.

But a crime was committed.  Information was stolen.  People who had no right to that information released it to the public.  I haven’t seen one post from my fellow liberal friends shaming the hackers.  How would you react if a thief broke into your house and shared every secret you may have hidden in your closet to the world?  Can you honestly say that there is nothing in your home that might be a cause of at least a little embarrassment?

Instead, we on the left have gleefully shamed the social conservatives caught in this mess because they deserved it…because they were asking for trouble.

That sounds a lot like language some of our conservative friends use to downplay the way women are treated in this country.

If you are in a monogamous relationship and you want to check on whether your spouse was on Ashley Madison or not?  Well, I suppose that is between you and your spouse, but unless that is the case, who is or isn’t on Ashley Madison is none of our business.  We don’t know the inner workings of each marriage.  Your  neighbors’ approach to marriage may well be very different from your approach to marriage, despite outward appearances and that is none of our business.

We on the left talk about keeping government out of bedrooms.  How about we keep everyone who hasn’t been invited or doesn’t live there out of them as well.