Brad interviews Dr. Leslie Dorrough Smith about her new book, Compromising Positions: Scandals, Politics, and American Christianity. She breaks down an important concept: Sex scandals are not about sex. They are about the stories the nation tells about itself, gender dynamics, masculinity, and above all power. This means certain white, straight, heterosexual politicians survive such scandals unscathed, while others have their political careers ended by even minor mishaps. It also means that in a strange way certain facets of American Christianity actually encourage sexual misbehavior as part and parcel of the political and religious status quo.
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AXIS MUNDY AXIS MUNDY Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, Associate Professor, Religious Studies at Skidmore College, and I am absolutely thrilled today to be joined by Dr. Leslie Doral-Smith, To talk about her new book, Compromising Positions, which is all about sex scandals in the United States and Christianity.
So it's an amazing book.
Some of you have probably seen me on Twitter talking about it.
I get to read a lot of books because of this show.
And honestly, sometimes you find one that just you know you're gonna Think about for a long time, probably use in a class, probably assigned to students because it's just that insightful.
So this is one of those books.
Dr. Doral Smith has written a bunch.
First book, Righteous Rhetoric, Sex, Speech, and the Politics of Concerned Women for America.
That's from Oxford University Press, 2014.
edited volumes that really address sort of theory and method in the study of religion and how we talk about religion.
So, one on data and one on public rhetoric surrounding good and bad religion.
She's also written for Religion Dispatches, The Conversation, among other outlets.
And so, final thing is a fellow UCSB alum.
So, it is always a joy to have my fellow UCSB folks on here.
So, Dr. Smith, Dr. Doro-Smith, thanks for being here.
I really appreciate it.
Oh, it's such a pleasure.
Thanks for having me.
So, I wanna just jump right in and talk about Compromising Positions, your new book.
And it really hits on things that are swirling in the news as we speak, and so we'll get to those.
A lot of sex, a lot of scandal in our news recently.
So, we'll talk about that.
The book is a study of American sex scandals.
One of the things that you do is study the phenomenon of the sex scandal from various perspectives.
Religious studies, gender studies, sociology, critical race theory.
But early on, you say something very clear.
Sex scandals are not about sex.
So if they're not about sex, what are they about?
Right, what the heck are they about, right?
And that seems like such a counterintuitive thing to say.
But I think that you can come to this realization, though.
If sex scandals were really about sex, and if even they were really about kind of this clear ethical plan, right, then every time that there was a politician who committed illicit sex, there would be a very decisive outcome, right?
He would resign, or he would be fired, or something like this.
It would be clear.
But when you look at the actual pattern of politicians who engage in illicit sex, and when a scandal actually happens, because, you know, engaging in illicit sex and being found out are two different things.
But when a scandal actually happens, what the landscape looks like is really quite unknown.
And a lot of that depends on his reputation prior to the actual scandal itself.
And a lot of it also depends on the rhetoric that he's going to be able to use from that point on.
And as I began to really become engaged more in asking some questions about, you know, why sex scandals?
You know, of all things to look at.
I was interested in them.
I mean, there's probably kind of this allured part of me like anybody else who just thought, hmm, that's interesting.
But I think also I was really caught up with just some of the really obvious contradictions that exist on this topic.
How is it that we can have these people who, you know, and I'm thinking of a number of, you know, of anti-gay rights politicians.
How can we have these anti-LGBTQ politicians who are secretly having, you know, you know, homosexual affairs?
How can we have, you know, these politicians who spout a lot of religious rhetoric, you know, and talk about kind of the importance of ethics constantly, and yet they're engaging in these, you know, in these acts behind the scenes.
And, you know, I mean hypocrisy is an easy answer.
But from a sociological perspective, everyone's hypocritical.
It's not a critically fulfilling answer to simply call someone a hypocrite.
And obviously that's an ethical judgment too, so it doesn't really help us analyze what's going on, it simply makes us feel good to say that.
So I wanted to know a little bit more about what was going on in this particular moment of contradiction, particularly because it really riles people up, and that was one of the reasons why sex scandals seemed like a really A good thing to focus on because the data, as you were mentioning, it comes in by the truckloads, as we're seeing right now, right?
And yeah, I think the themes of this book, even though, you know, it is written, obviously, I wrote it in a particular time and about politicians who are, you know, who are products of a particular cultural moment.
This book, I imagine, will have some resonance beyond just the moment that we're in right now.
Yeah.
One of the things that just stuck with me right from the jump was the idea that sex scandals are about the story a nation tells about itself.
And so if your sex scandal fits into the story that the country wants to tell about itself, the country will find a way to forgive you and bring you back and probably put you back in office and leadership.
If not, you'll be in trouble.
And so this theme of nationalism and this theme of patriotism, It seems really important.
You know, when you were speaking there about sex scandals, you were, I think, probably intentionally using the pronoun him and he.
Yeah.
Because it's, you know, it's almost always men.
And then if you're a woman with a sex scandal, so I'm thinking of Katie Hill, who was a freshman representative in Congress, who recently resigned.
But there's also men who don't survive there politically.
There are sex scandals.
John Edwards and some others.
So how does this work in terms of national identity and symbolism?
What kind of sex scandal means we actually will bring you back and put you back in leadership?
And what kind of sex scandal means you need to go away forever and you're cancelled?
Right, right.
Well, when I said earlier that sex scandals aren't about sex, or when I say that in the book, what I'm really trying to get at is exactly what you said, which is that sex scandals are about a story that Americans want to tell about themselves and the nation in which they live.
And that story has very much to do with how they want to be represented.
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