It's Amazing What Trash Makes it Into the International Press

I'm talking about the Christine O'Donnell almost-one-night-stand story. Now, I have little sympathy with O'Donnell as a candidate, as she has a Palinesque combination of religious rigidity and complete ignorance and incompetence, but this is horrible. Putting aside that this was, at least from the original Gawker story, a he-said, she-said (the pictures prove nothing other than she was likely drunk and wearing a ladybug costume), she didn't even actually do anything. I'm as partial to holier-than-thou polls being revealed to be fooling around secretly as much as the next guy, but this isn't even really one of those. In the story, she outright refused to have intercourse, and while it seems from the man's account she wanted to do... other things, they didn't even do that because apparently the man had watched too many adult movies and was turned off by women who didn't ape adult movie stars personal grooming habits.

Even if all that is true, it's still a very weak case for hypocrisy. True, what she apparently and allegedly wanted to do was against her ultra-strict anti-masturbation corner of Catholicism, and some of it was no-doubt against the rules even for married couples according to that viewpoint (I know because I used to be of that mindset, years ago; under that system, if the semen ends up somewhere where it can't even theoretically meet an egg, then its a sin--even if the woman is already pregnant or otherwise infertile). But still, even if it's true: she didn't actually do anything, she outright refused intercourse, and it was apparently an isolated incident. This doesn't even come close to being worthy of publication. Heck, even they had done it, I'd say it still doesn't; if she had a pattern of secretly screwing around or having a lengthy affair, then that would be a different matter entirely given the substantive hypocrisy that would reveal. An isolated incident while drunk doesn't qualify (nor does being drunk; I think drunkeness is listed as a sin in the Catechism, but it's not one ever, ever emphasized even in very strict, ultra-orthodox Catholic circles; Catholics are not baptists).