It seems as though the political world has been consumed with sex over the past week, which was one in which an Anglican cleric likened sex before marriage to trying a pair of shoes before buying them.
The resulting chorus of condemnation would have been surprising if I were not familiar with the abundance of hypocrisy that prevails in this island of ours.
Away from our shores, there was also talk of sex, some of which reflects a level of hypocrisy that rivals ours. In the United States, it was revealed that former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger sired what the Americans now refer to as a “love child” from his housekeeper at the same time that his wife was pregnant for him.
Like our own “sex scandal”, this preoccupied the Americans until the French president of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, handed us something sexual to discuss that was worthy of our collective reflection.
If we are honest with ourselves, the vast majority of sex scandals that involve our leaders interest us because of the “scandal value” since these have little impact on the way any leader does his job. The Strauss-Kahn issue is, however, different since it places a wealthy, white and well educated French diplomat into direct conflict with a simple (apparently black) immigrant.
The degree of political intrigue is only enhanced by the fact that the French and Americans have an entirely different opinion of sexual transgressions and the ways in which these should be handled.
The French have coined a phrase which states that “public interest stops at the bedroom door”. This is an entirely reasonable perspective since nothing that any person in public life does in their bedroom should be the concern of any of us, in much the same way that the state should not be concerned with what we do behind closed doors.
It is for this reason that former French president François Mitterrand could sire a child out of wedlock and the matter be kept out of the public domain until the child wept openly at his funeral.
I also learned recently that this type of thing happened in France as early as the time of Louis XV who procured the Élysée Palace to house his mistress, the Marquise de Pompadour. The French quite rightly believe that these matters are not the public’s business.
However, it is also clear that this permissive attitude has infiltrated the French psyche in a more general way and might inadvertently protect public officials who pursue their sexual adventures in a way that is both illegal and immoral.
The question that emerges, therefore, is whether an immigrant maid scrubbing toilets in an exclusive Paris hotel could successfully bring a charge of rape against a member of the French political elite and, moreover, if such a charge were successfully brought, would the public be aware of perpetrator’s identity?
The response of the French thus far suggests that several people there are sceptical about the public way in which this case is proceeding and even more believe that he did “nothing” wrong.
One poll indicated that a majority of people in France (57 per cent) believe Strauss-Kahn is the victim of a plot.
This is unfortunate since a United States grand jury has already been satisfied that there is enough evidence to take this matter to trial and the grand jury is one of the most egalitarian features of the United States legal system, which is certainly not present in the French system that employs a preliminary investigation and gives the power to commit to trial to a court officer.
This event, therefore, appears to have highlighted the extent to which the French egalitarian republic still defers to privilege and power, if not in the “letter” then most certainly in the “spirit”, of criminal prosecution.
Certainly, the allegation of rape should be the acid test of any decent legal system which should be able to hold the pauper, the priest and the king to the same standard. One is therefore left to conclude there is a layer of French society that considers itself egalitarian, but nonetheless believes that people of privilege should be viewed and treated differently regarding allegations of sexual impropriety.
This speaks volumes about the depth of French egalitarianism and highlights some positive virtues of the American justice system.
On the other side of this issue is the matter of hypocrisy, and sadly, the Americans present themselves less well here since they appear to subject their politicians and celebrities to a standard to which they will not hold themselves.
Hence, the Americans have coined the phrase “baby daddy” in much the same way that we in Barbados have referred to a “child father” for generations, which each one of us appreciates is very different from the “child’s father”. This reference has emerged in response to a reality of life that both Barbadians and Americans need not only to accept but moreover to embrace.
Yes, a child from the maid sounds extreme to Americans, but most of our parents can think back to a time when people had “servants” living in the home and recall similar incidents that everyone in the village knew about but didn’t speak of . . . just like Mitterrand’s “love child”.
Peter W. Wickham ([email protected]) is a political consultant and a director of Caribbean Development Research Services (CADRES).
