The social media cosmos has been ablaze in the past few days with both criticism and defenses of left-leaning journalist Glenn Greenwald following the leak of a kink video in which Greenwald is the central character.
The video of Greenwald’s troubling erotic predilections and its release raise a number of issues worthy of the public debate they have generated. But first, for those who have not seen the video, this author included, some information about it is warranted.
According to the homosexual Edge Media Network, the video shows Greenwald engaged in kinky acts including crossdressing, “submission,” and humiliation, all apparently involving the services of a male prostitute:
Greenwald, 58, is seen wearing a maid’s outfit and is fondling and kissing a person’s hands and feet. About halfway through he climbs onto the bed where a glass pipe and a small plastic bag can be seen. He then visits PayPal on his laptop and appears to send a transaction. Throughout the video, the man humiliates him with homophobic slurs.
Another online podcaster says that at one point the humiliator spits on the ground and Greenwald sucks up the saliva.
Greenwald has acknowledged the video is authentic, though he says he didn’t record it and doesn’t “recall being aware of being filmed.”
Greenwald has not shared if his now-deceased “husband” knew about the sexcapade and was involved or not. But to the relativists among us, sexual fidelity only matters if the partners say it matters. Consent seems to be the only objective moral parameter with regard to sex, a belief Greenwald espoused after the video surfaced:
The videos depict consenting adults engaged in intimate actions in their private lives. They all display fully consensual behavior, harming nobody.
Others would disagree. Such activities harm the purportedly consenting adults involved, and the belief that such activities harm no one harms children, including the boys Greenwald is raising.
Greenwald is known for being an old school journalist who follows stories he chooses to cover wherever they lead. In covering government corruption and abuse of power, he is an intrepid reporter with journalistic integrity and a spine of steel. He won’t back down no matter the personal cost. For those qualities and his yeoman work in exposing the fetid swamp in which powerful and often shadowy figures rule the lives of ordinary Americans, he deserves credit.
But decent people who pursue wisdom and seek a culture fit for human flourishing should be prudent and narrow in their admiration for Greenwald, and that’s where the waters are getting muddy.
In his vigorous response to the release of the video, Greenwald provides disturbing insight into the moral framework that he has socially constructed for his life and, presumably, for the lives of the boys he and his now-deceased “husband” adopted. Some of his moral claims offer a warning to those who seek to lionize him:
My personal and private life is something I’m proud of but don’t consider anyone else’s business and is certainly not something that should be publicized without my consent. … I am perfectly content if others disapprove of those choices, even strongly, because they are full aligned with my own moral code.
Is he perfectly content if others disapprove of his choices? Doesn’t sound like it as he directs some of his frenzied ire at Matt Walsh and by extension at those conservatives who find the fetishistic private life of a father of adopted boys to be wicked:
When this video was first released last week, most people strongly opined that they believed these private consensual sex acts are nobody’s business. But for the Matt-Walishfied [sic] faction of the American Right — which spends most of their time and obtains most of their profits endlessly moralizing about adults’ private sexual and private lives — that “stay-out-of-people’s-private-lives” reaction, especially from many leading conservatives, infuriated them.
I’m not sure how Greenwald knows what “most people strongly opined.” Maybe he fancies himself omniscient. He does embrace a god-like power to decide what is right and wrong.
Jenin Younes, attorney with the conservative New Civil Liberties Alliance commented on X,
As long as [Greenwald] doesn’t do it in front of his kids, I don’t care and neither should anyone else.
So, that’s the objective moral imperative? Just don’t perform perverse sex acts in front of the kids? From where does Younes derive the moral imperative that no one “should” care if Greenwald is into homosexual kink as long as his kids don’t see him in the act? Why shouldn’t his kids see him dressed in a maid outfit, kissing the feet of a male prostitute who hurls epithets at him? From whence cometh Younes’ shoulds and shouldn’ts?
Many people believe that what goes on in the private lives of adults matters, especially if those adults adopt children. Many people believe moral codes shaped by each individual and their subjective desires to be wholly inadequate to the creation and maintenance of a healthy family and society.
Hours later, Greenwald reaffirmed his subjectivist, relativistic worldview:
The point I’ve made from the start is that the moral and ethical code I believe in for my own life is one I am satisfied I am fulfilling. The fruits of my personal and professional life and the values they represent speak for themselves – I’m quite proud of them – and I feel no obligation to confine myself to the various moral codes others profess to believe in when it comes to private behavior.
Do the fruits of his personal life include teaching his sons that erotic fetishes are good? Does he teach them that indulging in disordered and degrading erotic acts affirms the dignity of humans created in the image and likeness of God? Does he teach them that such acts are a healthy way to address psychological damage?
Greenwald and his sycophantic fans assert without qualification the tiresome “what anyone does in the privacy of their bedrooms or dungeons is no one’s business.” While Greenwald’s fetishes were unknown before the tape was released, his homoeroticism was public. And people all across the world are free to judge homoerotic acts as profoundly immoral and same sex “marriage” destructive to the social fabric and harmful to children raised in its midst.
In case Greenwald hasn’t noticed, the homosexual community began their dark journey to deracinate sexual mores by asserting that all they sought was the right to do what they wanted in the privacy of their bedrooms. Then in the nudge, nudge, wink, wink of their lying eyes, they demanded that marriage be redefined in law and that kindergartners be introduced to leftist views of homosexuality.
Remember what early second-wave feminists said, “The personal is political.”
All that fetishists/paraphiliacs need do now is form a political lobby to have their erotic peccadilloes designated “sexual orientations” and voilà, they will be protected by anti-discrimination law and teaching in elementary schools in maid skirts and leather chaps.
If one holds a superficial, thin view of parenthood, then homosexuals can make “good” parents. If one believes love is love—that is, that there are no distinctions among different types of love—homosexuals can make “good” parents. If “good” parenting involves nothing other than providing affection, food, clothing, a home, and an education, then homosexual fetishists can be “good” parents. If one believes there are no objective moral truths, then homosexuals can be “good” parents.
But for those who hold a deep, thick view of parenting, who know that there are different types of love some of which must not include sex, and who believe that moral instruction in accordance with objective moral truths is critical, homosexuals with a moral code untethered from anything objective can never be “good” parents.
Greenwald and his legion of fans on the left and right are hyper-focusing on the unscrupulous release of his depraved sex tape, justifiably arguing that the fetish tape has nothing to do with his work as a journalist.
Greenwald and his defenders believe with good reason that the release of the video is intended to undermine his good journalistic work. Nefarious actors who may find nothing objectionable about Greenwald’s unsavory erotic life seek to use it to discredit his work. We should heed that concern. We ought not throw the baby out with the dirty waters Greenwald bathes in at home.
I admire and appreciate his work, just as I admire and appreciate the good work of Dave Rubin and Guy Benson. But just as we ought not discredit the good work they do because they choose to live deeply immoral private lives, we ought not give them more honor or respect than they deserve just because we appreciate their work. And that’s the direction in which the GOP is moving.
Many in the GOP have the moral calculus of elementary school children who when they like or admire an adult believe that the object of their admiration can do no wrong.
As we think about the meaning of morality in the private and public lives of leaders and cultural critics, we should remember the important distinction between sinning, which we all do, and calling sin righteousness.