The value of silence

U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor, doing his best Rand Paul impersonation as he seeks to survive as the last Democrat from Arkansas in Washington, is now saying gay people choose to be gay.

Michael Teague, his spokesman who actually made that pronouncement in the second-term senator’s behalf-using the word “behalf” generously-is whining to left-leaning media that the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette made him say it.

Left-leaning media in Arkansas? That would be a tiny Hillcrest-based niche consisting of the Arkansas Times and me.

As a strategy, that’s not bad: Run to the crazed right and tell the liberals it’s all the fault of the newspaper with the conservative editorial page.

There is debate about whether being gay is genetic or a choice. The emerging view seems to be that it’s a natural orientation, perhaps not fully identifiable by genetic marker, but not something about which people have any option.

The best thing for a politician to say is (1) that he respects homosexuality as a natural orientation or (2) nothing or (3) that he is not qualified to make any declaration.

And in Arkansas politics, alas, the brave and just first option is assumed to be out of the question.

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What happened last week was that this newspaper did a fine article featuring gay couples living in Arkansas where their marriages, executed and licensed in other states, are not recognized.

Deep into this article, about the 40th column inch, a survey of the relevant attitudes of members of the Arkansas delegation in Washington was reported.

In the news business, sometimes you decide you have an obligation to go around and collect the politicians’ blah, blah, blah to befoul an otherwise perfectly fine article.

U.S. Sen. John Boozman, who was interviewed, said something utterly predictable against gay marriage. Of course. U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford, also interviewed, said essentially the same. Of course.

U.S. Reps. Steve Womack and Tim Griffin declined to be interviewed but issued statements opposing gay marriage. Of course.

U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton, winning the blue ribbon in this affair, had his press secretary say he simply didn’t want to talk about the subject.

I hate to say it because it smacks of professional betrayal. But politicians need not be prisoners of whatever newspapers insist on asking.

Reporters have a right to ask questions every chance they get. A politician has the right to reply that he has nothing to say on a question.

That’s absent an active vote before Congress, of course. Then the member of Congress has an obligation to speak to explain a vote.

But Pryor and Teague felt a political obligation to address the matter because it was a defining issue and they figured everyone else in the delegation-including two potential Pryor opponents in 2014, Womack and Cotton-were being asked it.

So Teague wrote down the questions asked by the reporter and got the traveling Pryor on the phone for a brief discussion of what he should say to the reporter in Pryor’s behalf.

One of the questions was whether gayness was a choice.

Teague tells me he found out later that none of the others had been asked that specific question-Cotton, Womack and Griffin because they declined to be interviewed at all, and Boozman and Crawford for reasons people on the news side of the paper can explain if they choose.

Regardless, the fair or unfair application of a question is no excuse for a U.S. senator’s answer.

The result was this paragraph:

“Michael Teague, a spokesman for Sen. Mark Pryor, the delegation’s only Democratic member, said Pryor had a ‘moral belief that marriage is between a man and a woman.’ He said that he didn’t know the ‘ultimate’ answer, but that he believed that homosexuality is a choice, not a characteristic people are born with.” Teague now is outraged that he wound up answering for Pryor a question no one else got asked.

And he is peeved that the paragraph makes it appear that he decided on his own to throw in a little aside on the senator’s view of the choice-versus-science debate.

But nobody made Pryor and Teague talk at all. And I’m not buying that the devil or the big, bad newspaper made them do it.

So to score political performance in this affair: 1. Tom Cotton and the golden sound of silence. 2. Steve Womack and Tim Griffin. 3. John Boozman and Rick Crawford. 4. That would be Pryor.

If you accept the sad reality that gay bigotry is essential in current Arkansas politics and that a U.S. senator dare not rise above it, then we may assume that the right answer-“let those folks marry if they want; it’s no skin off anybody else’s nose”-is out of the question.

Otherwise, I’d recommend:

“I am opposed to gay marriage. But, as a lawyer by trade engaged in public policy, I haven’t any qualification to propound on the sciences of biology, genetics and sexuality. Thank you. That is all. Please go away.”

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John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.