Alan Keyes, Human Disaster
One success followed by decades of failure, and also the one success doesn't count
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If you can remember all the way back to the first half of 2020, you'll remember a press conference where our brilliant president floated the idea of drinking bleach as a potential cure for the rapidly spreading COVID-19 disease. Please: don't drink bleach. Amazingly, 2020 is not the first time people have had to say that, because grifters have been selling drinking bleach as a quack cure-all for years, usually under the name "Miracle Mineral Solution" or "Miracle Mineral Supplement", usually advertised as a miracle cure for everything from the flu to autism to AIDS. The FDA generally considers drinking bleach "inadvisable", and put out a formal advisory as early as 2010 telling people not to buy or drink the stuff, using handy graphics like the one below:
After the Trump "endorsement", MMS grifters jumped at the opportunity to get their product back out there, and kept getting smacked down by the FDA. One MMS hawker called the “Genesis II Church of Health and Healing” in - you guessed it - central Florida had all of their product seized and websites shut down in April 2020 as part of a court order.
One of the more enthusiastic promoters of this particular MMS product, as it turns out, is also one of the most important political figures in the history of America’s abortion policies. Former United Nations Ambassador, three time presidential candidate, three time senatorial candidate, and ultra-rare black birther Dr. Alan Keyes - no, not the kind of doctor that can write prescriptions for things like bleach - is actually critical to the history of American reproductive health policy, since he’s the author of the infamous and sweeping “Mexico City Policy” that blocks federal funding to NGOs overseas that so much as mention that abortion exists. Of course, according to a still-growing number of peer-reviewed studies, the Mexico City Policy has only served to increase the number of abortions - and especially unsafe abortions - across the globe, so Keyes’ main contribution in the political sphere has been to increase the prevalence of the very thing he’s so morally opposed to. No politician in the modern era has forcefully and consistently condemned abortion more than Alan Keyes, but no politician in the modern era is responsible, through his policy work, for more abortions than Alan Keyes. It's an incredible and unmatched irony in American politics.
As you might expect, Keyes is one of the most hilariously inept politicians of all time, has personally set multiple records for the worst electoral losses in the modern era of American elections, and just self-produced a “documentary” film explaining how MMS cures COVID. He is a disaster of a politician, a disaster of a human being, and is connected to some very funny stories and soundbites. Looking at his career in chronological order is baffling, as it includes one policy victory followed by decades of embarrassing failure. So let's start from today and work our way backwards.
CHAPTER ONE - RAE SREMMURD'S "BLACK BIRTHERS"
In addition to selling drinking bleach, Keyes blogs for and is honorary chairman of the website Renew America, described as:
“A grassroots organization that supports the self-evident truths found in the Declaration of Independence, and their faithful application through upholding the U.S. Constitution, as written. Its purpose is to thoughtfully and courageously advance the cause of our nation's Founders. The organization is for ALL people who consider themselves loyal Americans. It has no philosophy, image, or agenda beyond this one unifying premise: America must return to its founding principles if it is to survive. RenewAmerica is thus nonpartisan and nondenominational. [all emphasis sic]”
For a nonpartisan, nondenominational website, Renew America sure includes a lot of links to Tucker Carlson, the National Review, and stories about how COVID and Black Lives Matter are all hoaxes. It’s hard not to dismiss the website as the same sort of far-right bullshit blogroll you can find pretty much anywhere, but the folks over there happened to transcribe and archive a significant chunk of Keyes’ television appearances, and they provide a place for Keyes to share his other insane thoughts besides “drinking bleach is good”.
The way to evaluate a Republican today is to start by examining their feelings on Donald Trump; Alan Keyes' can be best described as "mixed but generally positive". He openly praised Trump on border security and his relationship with Israel, both issues where Trump’s approach to problem-solving has essentially been either to support ethnic cleansing or commit it himself. He criticized Trump’s opponents as “a clique of regressive elitists (typified by visible tip-of-the-iceberg George Soros) seek[ing] to scuttle America's titanic achievement. They aim to restore the pattern of self-serving oligarchic government, which degraded most of humanity to little more than slavery and serfdom in most times and places through the history of the world.” Again, he appears indistinguishable from Trump’s most fervent supporters at this point, and in fact kept expressing worry that Trump’s more horrifying staffers weren’t doing enough to help him: “Events such as the departure of Steve Bannon and his cohorts from the White House have to be of concern to principled conservatives. So, does Secretary Rex Tillerson's continued tenure at the State Department, despite policy pronouncements that contradict President Trump.” For Keyes, the true tragedy of Trump’s presidency was when his former campaign director, who ran a fasicst website and refused to send his kids to a school with Jewish students, wasn’t there to be the president’s conscience in day-to-day governing.
But this is not really a statement on Alan Keyes sacrificing his principles to support Trump (or Bannon) as much as it is a statement on how consistent Trump's actual governing has been with the Republican project since 1980. Keyes' main government experience was under Reagan, another sundowning racist president from film and television whose team gutted government services to the point where they were no longer helpful, slashed tax rates for rich people and corporations, and responded to the spread of a new deadly disease by pretending it didn't exist. Keyes is a devout Catholic for whom the top political issue in every election cycle is banning abortion, and those Catholics were key to the religious right coalition that put both Trump and Reagan in office. It comes as no surprise that someone with Keyes’ beliefs would consider supporting Trump to be critical to conservatism, which is also something that he’s basically written outright: “Ronald Reagan was the last president elected to office in defiance of the elitist faction's political, media, and bureaucratic powers-that-be. I know from my own experience in his administration how much hard work and foresight are required to implement the president's agenda when those powers adamantly oppose it.” The issue, for Keyes, isn’t anything that Trump has actually done, it’s everyone getting in the way of him doing it.
There is another issue on which Keyes and Donald Trump agree completely: Barack Obama is from Kenya. But while Donald Trump peddled birtherism just to get himself on TV, and abandoned it the minute it became politically inconvenient (pussy), Keyes actually filed a lawsuit in 2008 demanding that electors withhold their votes for Obama until he provided proof of citizenship; at this point Obama had already released his birth certificate and the state of Hawaii had confirmed its authenticity. Keyes is an honest-to-God Black birther, a configuration I honestly thought didn't occur in nature, because of, you know, how wildly racist birtherism is.
Given what I know about Keyes, I don't think he was just doing this for the attention, he's not that kind of guy and also he's not good at drawing attention to himself at the right time - for example, when anyone needs to vote for him. When Keyes filed his birther lawsuit - which, as you may have guessed, didn't go anywhere and didn't prevent the Electoral College from naming Obama president - he was a third-party presidential candidate, having bombed out of his third presidential primary. He was a very consistent failure in all three of his presidential runs, but he was also an interesting failure.
CHAPTER TWO - A SEMI-IMPORTANT CAMPAIGN
The Alan Keyes who ran in the 2008 Republican primary can most charitably be described as a protest candidate, one trying to call attention to America's moral decay on issues like abortion and gay marriage. Anti-abortion shitheel Randall Terry had a similar strategy in 2012, when he ran for president "to bring America face to face with aborted babies". It's not a surprise that Keyes and Terry would have an overlap in their playbook, as they are colleagues in anti-abortion activism: they've worked together to protest things like Terry Schiavo's death and Obama's commencement address at Notre Dame, and Keyes helped Terry with a big fundraising push for Operation Rescue, which Terry of course used to buy himself a ranch. Also, they each have gay children that they’ve publicly disowned because they’re both, as it turns out, huge pieces of shit. You gotta love the moral protest candidates.
Anyways, "moral protest" was not a winning strategy at the beginning stages of the Great Recession, and Keyes had a lot of trouble not getting laughed at in the debate when he tried to steer every question back to his definition of morality. Here is his response at a primary debate in Iowa, in full, to a question on whether climate change was real and man-made, which prompted the other candidates to literally laugh in his face:
“Well, what I think is that a lot of folks out there ought to understand that what you're watching represents the situation in our country. Ask yourself who represents the people they don't let you hear from, and you'll know who you should vote for in the Iowa caucuses. Who represents the voice that they're absolutely determined to overlook in the discussion of our sovereignty and the betrayal of this people's sovereignty -- on the border, on our moral principles, on the major export overseas, which is our jobs. These folks represent the very elite, who year after year after year have destroyed our Constitution, betrayed our rights and undermined our strength, created by our people in the world. And yet the one person willing to talk about that is overlooked time and time again. That person represents you. I'm in favor of reducing global warming because I think the most important emission we need to control is the hot air -- (off mic) -- politicians, who pretend one thing and don't deliver.”
And then here he is in the same debate responding to a question on government transparency and communication, which actually got the audience to laugh in his face:
KEYES: I think the most important thing is to be absolutely authentic about who you are, not to say things today that contradict what you were two years ago, like, sadly, Governor Romney. Not to take a stand on the most important principle that faces our nation today, the question of whether we are all created equal and endowed by our creator -- not the Constitution, but our God -- with our unalienable rights from the womb to the tomb, and not to abandon the heritage of the Republican Party as Rudy Giuliani would do and as I could not follow him in doing, so I would not support him if he were nominated. And finally, I think it would be important to do what I'm doing in my campaign. We have three phone calls every week. People from all over the country gather online to talk to me, to interact -
WASHBURN [moderator]: Thank you.
KEYES: -- state their views. We have technologies now that allow people directly to communicate to their leadership --
WASHBURN: Thank you.
KEYES: -- and I would make creative use of those technologies.
WASHBURN: Governor Romney, would you like to respond?
ROMNEY: I'm not sure. (Laughs, laughter.)
WASHBURN: It's entirely up to you. (Laughter, applause.)
In a New York Times write-up of this debate the next day, Keyes is not mentioned once. He ended up dropping out to run in the Constitution Party primary, which he also lost, and then continued his campaign as a member of the American Independent party; in a two-candidate presidential race, he literally came in seventh, behind the nominees from the Green, Libertarian, and Constitution parties, as well as Ralph Nader's independent campaign. Every political candidate he endorsed in the 2008 cycle also lost, so he can't even say he "changed the conversation" or "moved the party".
His first presidential campaign in 1996 wasn't much different - he used his time on the debate stage to ask the other candidates their views on abortion, and some reporting suggests that he was thrown into the race to draw votes away from fellow religious right asshole Pat Buchanan. 2000 was more interesting, though, as Keyes was somewhat competitive against George W. Bush and John McCain and didn't immediately get laughed out of the primaries. He ended up with five percent of the total popular vote in the primaries, which is not good (it's worse than John Kaisch did in 2016 against a higher number of opponents, and Kasich did not do well), but did actually put him in third place in the primary, buoyed by Republican values voters who thought Bush would be too dumb and McCain would be too liberal. The only real strike against Keyes' conservative cred in 2000 was when he appeared on Michael Moore's show and was filmed moshing at a Rage Against the Machine concert in Iowa, presumably because he was unfamiliar with the band's entire lyrical output.
Keyes is a bad electoral candidate in general. He can only speak at length about issues of sexual morality, and has no interest in impressing, persuading, or even charming anyone. This speaks to a certain level of integrity, but it's not a great way to get a job where people have to vote for you. Keyes has also run unsuccessfully for the Senate three times, and while I won't examine all of those races, I will examine the one that happened in my home state while I was in high school.
CHAPTER THREE - LOOK HOMEWARD, ASSHOLE
It’s difficult to overstate how utterly insane the 2004 U.S. Senate election in Illinois was, as well as all of its ramifications for all of the people that were in any way associated with it. The election set all sorts of records for its time: it had the highest number of millionaires participating in any Senate primary to date, and was the first U.S. Senate election, ever, in which the candidates of both major parties were African-American. Keyes describes himself on his Renew America bio as “the only person ever to run against Barack Obama in a truly contested election - featuring authentic moral conservatism versus progressive liberalism”; if he wants to describe himself as more conservative than McCain or Romney, fine, but Keyes’ election wasn’t “contested” in the sense that there were two candidates realistically "contesting" for votes. Because, of course, this election also holds the record for the largest margin of loss in any Senate election in history. Alan Keyes broke the previous record from an earlier election in Maryland, which was also set by Alan Keyes.
Keyes did not run in the primary, but was named the Republican candidate, for a November general election, in August, less than ninety days before votes were cast. At the time he was named a candidate, he did not live in Illinois (true), and had never lived in Illinois (true), and had to hastily move to Illinois to be eligible to run (true). He was jammed on the ballot last-minute after the actual guy who won the GOP primary, Jack Ryan, had to drop out. In the primary, Ryan defeated an Illinois ice cream magnate (true) most famous for running an ad where he flew a helicopter over Soldier Field and claimed that the number of immigrants entering the country illegally every day could fill the stadium (true), but Ryan dropped out after his divorce records got unsealed (true) and revealed that he had taken his then-wife to sex clubs in France and tried to pressure her to fuck him in public (true), which itself is not notable, except that his wife was actress Jeri Ryan, best know for being the hot woman on Star Trek: Voyager (true). The GOP tried to get legendary Bears coach Mike Ditka to run in Ryan's place (true), but had to settle for Keyes instead.
Keyes was never going to be a strong candidate, and the GOP was just looking for a warm body to participate in the election, since the Democratic candidate was a state senator named Barack Obama who had just given a pretty popular speech at the DNC convention in Denver, and who had no realistic chance of losing the election. Of course, the election also had lasting ramifications for Illinois politics, as Obama eventually vacated his Senate seat to serve as president, and Governor Rod Blagojevich was picked up on an FBI wiretap (true) trying to sell the Senate seat (true), eventually appointing a man named Roland Burris, an Illinois politico so weird that he’s named his children Roland and Rolanda (true) and has already built a giant mausoleum for himself with the words “TRAIL BLAZER” carved on the side (true). The Illinois Secretary of State refused to certify the appointment because it was covered in corruption-stink (true), but Burris went to Washington anyways believing that there was no way he would be, like, physically barred from entering the Senate building, and then he was physically barred from entering the Senate building (true). For his part, Blagojevich was sent to federal prison (true), his wife tried to drum up public support by being a contestant on I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! (true), and eventually Blagojevich got his sentence commuted by President Donald Trump (true) and returned to Chicago, where he now hosts a podcast on corruption in Illinois politics (true).
Now that I’ve gotten all of that out of my system, let’s look at how Keyes actually campaigned for this Senate seat. In particular, let’s check NBC News and see if, early on, he tried to make the election about abortion and used some unhinged metaphor to attack Obama’s position on the issue:
“The day after jumping into the Illinois Senate race, two-time presidential hopeful Alan Keyes ripped into Democratic rival Barack Obama, saying his views on abortion are “the slaveholder’s position.” The conservative former diplomat said Obama’s vote against a bill that would have outlawed a form of late-term abortion denied unborn children of their equal rights. Both candidates — one an outspoken conservative and the other a favorite of party liberals — are black. “I would still be picking cotton if the country’s moral principles had not been shaped by the Declaration of Independence,” Keyes said. He said Obama “has broken and rejected those principles — he has taken the slaveholder’s position.””
Hell yeah baby we’re off! Obama deadpanned in response that Keyes “should look to members of his own party to see if that’s appropriate if he’s going to use that kind of language,” which strikes me as a very bitterly ironic statement about the Republican party when I read it in 2020. But a good summary of the race would be that Keyes constantly harped on abortion and gay marriage throughout his abbreviated campaign, while most Illinois voters were more concerned with health insurance, or whether to expand O’Hare airport to cut down on flight delays (true). This became extremely clear in the three debates leading up to the general election, in which Keyes tried to steer every question on race and foreign policy back to abortion, gay marriage, and Catholic morality, and tied himself into dumber rhetorical knots as the debates went on. In Debate Two - again, in a state where everyone was talking about how our airport was too busy - Keyes started with this opening statement:
“I think one of the things that shocked me most when I first got involved in this race, was a line I read in a letter that Senator Obama had sent to Jack Ryan about the issue of debates, in which he said that there was, at stake in the race, no great issue of principle, such as that which had divided Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in their famous debates here in Illinois. That showed a decided and total lack of understanding of what is at stake for the people of this state and, indeed, of our nation in issues like abortion, in issues like the defense of traditional marriage. In point of fact, the most important principle of our nation's life--that we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator, not by human choice, with our unalienable rights--is at stake in this election, as it was in the great election that was the dividing line between Lincoln and Douglas in 1858. I stand for the defense of innocent life. I stand for the defense of traditional marriage. I stand on the platform of those great principles that Martin Luther King fought for, and that Frederick Douglass espoused, as they fought against great injustices.”
This was a battle for the very soul of America, which is precisely why the Republican party went with their eighth choice of candidate to run against a guy they knew was going to win anyways. For the final debate, he knew he had to pull out everything he had to illustrate the stakes of this moral crisis and convince people of the urgent need to send him to the Senate. And instead of that he did whatever this is:
PONCE [moderator]: Mr. Keyes, on the Channel 7 debate last Thursday night, you said, and I'm quoting you, "Where procreation is, in principle, impossible, marriage is irrelevant." You went on to say it was irrelevant, and not needed. What about marriage between people that are well beyond their child-bearing age? "Irrelevant"? "Not needed"?
KEYES: No, it's simply a misunderstanding. The word "in principle" means, "relating to the definition of." Not, "relating to particular circumstances." So, if an apple has a worm in it, the worm is not part of the definition of the apple. It doesn't change what the apple is, in principle. So, the fact--
PONCE: (talking over) It retains its "appleness."
KEYES: Can I--can I--
(audience laughs)
KEYES: It pertains, it retains--no. To act as if concepts are laughable means that you want to be irrational. Human beings are--
PONCE: (talking over) No, I'm asking you, sir. You said--
KEYES: (talking over) Excuse me. Let me finish.
PONCE: (talking over) You said, you said it was "not needed."
KEYES: (talking over) Human beings reason by means of concepts and definitions. We also make laws by means of definitions. And if you don't know how to operate with respect for those definitions, you can't make the law. An individual who is impotent, or another who is infertile, does not change the definition of marriage in principle, because between a man and a woman in principle, procreation is always possible, and it is that possibility which gave rise to the institution of marriage in the first place as a matter of law-
I know it's long, but you have to admit that including that whole thing definitely cleared up any questions you had. When asked to clarify an earlier statement he made claiming that there was a connection between gay sexual orientation and incest, rest assured that Keyes addressesd the question deftly. No, he didn’t say “you misunderstood me” or “that’s not what I said”, he said “yeah no problem let me explain, in detail, my thoughts on homosexuality and incest”:
KEYES: Because it's actually very simple. I have, over here, two females--you know, I didn't talk about adoption--those two females are intent on having, quote, "having" a child, which they cannot have, obviously, unless you involve a male. The procedures that are used now, by many lesbian couples, are procedures that mask the identity of the father, so it will not be known. OK? So it will not, and cannot, be known, who is the father of that child.
PONCE: (talking over) Isn't that true, in many adoptions?
KEYES: No, no--excuse me. I just said that a conscious, willful effort was made so that you could not know who was the biological father. Once you have made that effort, you produce a child who cannot know who its father is. Cannot know that. Now, if you don't know, and have no way of ascertaining, who your father is, then you can't know who your sisters and brothers are, obviously. And if you can't know who your sisters and brothers are, there is no way you could avoid having sexual relations with them. So, logically speaking--
PONCE: And--
OBAMA: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Imagine how overjoyed Obama was watching Keyes ramble on about gay incest at these things. While Obama was pretty successful at staying on message throughout the debate, he also did have to bring up that no Illinois voter had ever brought gay marriage or abortion up with him. Towards the end of the final debate, each candidate was asked to say something about their opponent that they respected. Obama conceded that “I have enormous respect, I think, for Mr. Keyes in the consistency with which he presents his views and what is obviously the heartfelt passion of those views. I disagree with some of them, but there aren't many people who are better, who can better articulate those particular positions.” And then he was so far ahead in the polls that he stopped campaigning in Illinois and went out of state to speak at rallies for other Senate candidates.
CHAPTER FOUR - OUTRAGE OF THE DAY
Before crashing and burning in half of these elections, Keyes also tried a career in hosting a cable news talk show, only to reveal that he was also bad at that. Alan Keyes is Making Sense, bearing perhaps the single most misleading program title in the history of television, aired on MSNBC for almost twenty-three full weeks in 2002 before being abruptly pulled off the air; all of the episodes were transcribed and posted on Renew America, presumably by an insane person, possibly by Keyes himself. The final segment of each episode was literally called “Outrage of the Day”, Pat Buchanan would fill in as host when Keyes wasn’t around, and if you’re wondering “how many episodes did it take before he blamed 9/11 on prayer being banned in public schools?”, the answer is “one and a half”:
CALLER: Mr. Keyes, I just wanted to say how glad I am you're on the air. I've heard your opening program and am thrilled to have the opportunity to take advantage of your knowledge on the Constitution and other topics. Regarding the topic of evil, it's clear that you know that our founding fathers were Christian to a man. And personally, I believe that evil thrives in a void created by our people and our leaders not seeking the will of God, whether it be in our country or others. In our country, I'm so glad to see our President Bush encouraging us to go back to prayer and would ask if you don't think the removal of prayer and the ten commandments from our schools and the public arena has had a negative impact contributing to our being impacted by the evils such as which occurred on September 11th. And I have one other question if you have time.
KEYES: Well, actually, I personally do believe that. I believe it strongly.
While the show gave us a steady stream of Keyes’ goofy views, it was not especially innovative in terms of format: a lot of guys sitting around a table or talking via satellite, a lot of yelling “can I finish?” at each other, Alan Dershowitz was on at one point. The show is notable, however, as a time capsule for a very specific period in history. Keyes’ show ran from January 21 to June 27 of 2002, which meant that a lot of the issues being discussed dealt with post-9/11 foreign entanglements and the expansion of the security state; Keyes has a civil libertarian streak, so he was very wary of the government’s expanded surveillance capabilities, but he’s also a neocon, so he dedicated a lot of episodes to explaining why he wanted to exterminate Palestinians.
But Keyes’ church - and my church, and every American Catholic’s church - was also recovering from an unprecedented disaster, specifically the Boston Globe’s “Spotlight” reporting that unearthed the widespread sexual abuse and coverups on the part of Catholic clergy in the dioceses, which led to similar investigations and revelations across the country and the world. It’s fascinating to track a devout Catholic like Keyes, in real time, covering the fallout from the scandal and the USCCB drafting the Dallas Charter as their first step towards preventing future abuse and coverups (I didn’t have time to research it for this piece, so I’ll just assume the Dallas Charter fixed everything, that probably happened, right?). Bucking some of his contemporaries, Keyes did not shrug off the Globe’s reporting as anti-Catholic sensationalism. In my opinion, he started the year by doing a lot of things right: he interviewed victims of abuse, he grilled an archbishop when he didn’t think he was getting straight answers on what accountability would look like, and one of his guests from catholicvote.org - Not liberals! Actually a horrifying right-wing organization! - advocated for having the laity more involved in church governance to prevent future scandals. And then, of course, he pissed all of that away and just chalked it up to the secret gay cult that had taken over the Catholic church.
Oh, you’ve heard this one before, from other folks I’ve covered? Well, Keyes did it two decades earlier, and he did it on actual TV, not YouTube. He started to poke at it in May while talking with Richard Sype, a former priest and the author of Priests and Power: The Anatomy of a Crisis:
KEYES: I have one last question, though, Richard, because [one of many coverup guys] Archbishop Weakland is known as someone who has been a liberal intellectual within the Church and so forth. One element of that liberalism has been a greater openness, perhaps, to certain kinds of secular approaches on sexuality and so forth. Now, I happen to believe that part of the problem here is that the sexual world is far more relaxed now about sexual sin than the church can afford to be given its doctrine. Doesn't the openness to the secular understanding of human sexuality actually make clerics and people in the hierarchy more vulnerable to this kind of dangerous sort of misjudgment?
SYPE: You know, I don't believe that. I don't think this has to do with conservatism or liberalism. Sexuality is sexuality and everybody has it, and sometimes the most rigid people are the ones who have the deepest hidden life. No, the secret system has been opened, and that means these are the questions: what kind of sexuality, what kind of celibacy is this bishop, whether he's liberal or conservative, whether he has a small diocese or a big diocese, how is he practicing his celibacy?
You might have guessed that this wasn’t the answer that Keyes was looking for from Sype. So he took another swing at it in June, in a discussion with former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Raymond Flynn:
KEYES: Now in terms of the accountability of the prelates, one question I've always — and I've thought a lot about, Ray, in looking at this whole crisis — why do you think so many bishops were in fact willing to look the other way, to move people around, and take these kinds of steps? What was the source of this error?
FLYNN: Well, there were a number of people. I do a radio show, Alan, as you know, and Michael Rose was on the program today, and he said there's a homosexual culture in the Catholic church and there's a protection in the church for that particular culture. The extent of it, 30 percent, 50 percent, I don't know. I was on NBC with “Meet the Press” with Tim Russert and Father Cousins said it's between 30 and 50 percent of the priests in the priesthood, are homosexual. I don't know that, but that might be a factor as well.
“I don’t know that, but that might be a factor as well,” is a hell of a thing to say right after “I think I heard that, like, half of all priests are gay.” But this got closer to what Keyes was looking for, and so the next day, when talking with Michael Rose - the man Flynn was referencing above - who happened to write a book titled Goodbye, Good Men: How Liberals Brought Corruption into the Catholic Church. In less than a month, Keyes had moved from the “priests and power” guy to the “liberals bringing corruption” guy, and the latter was more his speed:
KEYES: Now, obviously you have thought about this very question, in terms of the contribution made by homosexuality to this crisis and the role that it played. What would you say is, in fact, the role of homosexuality? Is it a root cause here? Is it a symptom, in terms of the kind of problems that have emerged over the course of the last months and years?
ROSE: Well, I think the problem really is the gay subculture that has flourished in the seminaries over the last 35 years. And in my research, one of the obstacles to young men becoming priests in the Catholic Church has been the presence of that active gay subculture. Often a young man will enter a Catholic seminary expecting to find wise, strong men, like Bing Crosby or Spencer Tracy [sorry, what? What the fuck is this?]. And what he finds instead sometimes are the Village People. At St. Mary's in Baltimore, for example, there were many students who recounted to me seeing fellow students and also faculty members actually gathering together to go cruise the gay bars on the weekend...in my research, interviewing over 150 men who were in the seminaries, is that there's been sort of a reverse discrimination. There's been a systematic rooting out of the man who accepts the teachings of the Catholic Church, and especially the teachings on sexual morality. And I'm talking over the last three decades, or so...what's happened over the last 30 years, especially in the late '60s, amid the moral confusion of the times, is that a liberal subculture, so to speak, has hijacked the Catholic priesthood in order to change the Catholic Church from within.
To my knowledge, Ambassador Keyes has not yet been interviewed by Taylor Marshall, but there’s still plenty of time for that, neither of them are going anywhere. And when a guy like Marshall chalks up the sexual abuse crises of 2018 to a secret gay subculture infiltrating the church, know that this theory isn’t novel and isn’t smart, and it was running on MSNBC in 2002, broadcast by a man who two years later would say, in a debate for a U.S. Senate seat, “no no no you gotta let me explain the full incest thing.”
We never got to see how all of this developed on the Keyes’ show, because it was abruptly pulled from MSNBC after less than six months; his biggest fans allege that the show was pulled because of Keyes’ vociferous support of Israel, which doesn’t really distinguish him from other anchors that have worked on cable news, or the general hegemony of U.S. foreign policy. The more likely reason for his cancellation is that nobody was watching his show, and MSNBC wanted to try not getting their asses kicked by CNN and Fox News at 10pm every night.
I've collected all of these examples for the past four chapters to illustrate that Keyes has been an abject failure in almost all of his political ventures; more specifically, he has very strong beliefs that he brings up at every opportunity, usually in the most cumbersome way possible, and nobody else appears to be interested in them. His platform, mainly focused on translating Catholic dogma into policy ideas, is too narrow to build the voter coalition he would need to win, or be competitive, or not set records for margin of loss. He possesses no discernable charisma or interest in appealing to anyone but his Lord, so he couldn't even stick the soft landing on cable news. But you know what? He's a policy guy, so if he gets around the whole "unelectable" thing, maybe he could do some real good. You put him in an appointed executive branch role, as Reagan did in his administration, and he can write policy, like his main claim to fame, the Mexico City Policy, beloved by both conservative Republicans and the Catholic hierarchy.
Is the Mexico City Policy actually effective as an anti-abortion measure? Well, this may come as a shock to readers of G.O.T.H.S., but it turns out this is another instance of a right-wing Catholic trying to do something right by his understanding of the faith and instead just sawing his own legs off.
CHAPTER FIVE - AIN'T NO GOD IN MEXICO CITY
The Mexico City Policy (MCP), first and foremost, is a rule about abortion designed by a devout Catholic Republican man whose medical knowledge is so shaky that he recently had the government seize his supply of drinkable bleach. The gist of the policy is that if you're a healthcare NGO, you can only receive foreign aid dollars from the US government if you promise not to direct clients to abortion providers, or advocate for the decriminalization of abortion, or advocate for the expansion of abortion services, or so much as think about abortion. And if you think any abortion-related thoughts, you lose your aid dollars - not just the aid dollars you'd use for family planning programs, but the dollars for HIV prevention, and the dollars for all maternal and child health programs. Billions of dollars every year are subject to this "global gag rule".
As you would expect with any sweeping policy that says "abortion bad", the bishops are big fans of the MCP and have repeatedly spoken in support of it. Speaking for the USCCB Pro-Life committee, Cardinal Timothy Dolan - who sucks - applauded the 2017 reinstatement of the policy as a "welcome step toward restoring and enforcing important federal policies that respect the most fundamental human right—the right to life—as well as the long-standing, bi-partisan consensus against forcing Americans to participate in the violent act of abortion." In 2007, the USCCB, in a document titled “The Mexico City Policy: Protecting the Most Fundamental Right,” refused to concede that the policy was too sweeping, and instead affirmed that “far from being "mindless," the MCP guards against the faulty logic that promoting abortion on demand will decrease maternal death. This reasoning presents a false choice" In 2001, a lay employee of that Pro-Life committee testified before the Senate, stating:
“Some opponents of the Mexico City Policy are fond of using the slogan "Global Gag Rule" to refer to the policy, and that is a smart public relations move. But it doesn't reflect reality. The truth of the matter is: Poor women in developing nations are not calling for help to abort their children. They are calling for food, housing, and medicine for themselves and their children so that they can lead lives of full human dignity. With the Mexico City Policy in place the United States can best respond to their pleas.”
Again, all aid gets cut to maternal and child care programs through the MCP, not just the family planning funds, so I don't think "lives of full human dignity" are going to be on the agenda for countries and NGOs who are on the hook for aid funds through this policy. But, the church hierarchy loves this policy, and considers it effective. The reason why they have spoken on it repeatedly, in odd-numbered years, is because the policy keeps getting switched on and off. Because the MCP is an executive order and not an act of Congress, the occupant of the White House determines whether it's in effect or not. Reagan introduced the policy in 1984, and it remained our policy until Clinton took office in 1993; he rescinded the MCP in the first week of his presidency, and after eight years of living with the MCP, we suddenly went without, for another eight years. Then George W. Bush became president, reinstated the MCP in the first week of his presidency in 2001, and we had another eight years on.
So you see where this is going - we get another eight years off once Obama takes office, and then Donald Trump puts the MCP back in place in January 2017, and it remains in place today. What perhaps none of these men considered was that turning the policy on and off like a faucet in eight-year intervals created perfect conditions to study whether the policy had actually worked, since you have benchmarks and control groups built right in. The USCCB has claimed that the MCP is a data-driven, proven way to reduce abortions worldwide; in a 2007 document titled "The Mexico City Policy: False Criticisms and the Facts", they asserted that "five years after the Mexico City Policy was implemented...even the most fervent opponents of the policy were unable to find clear evidence of increased illegal abortions or abortion complications”. And if that seems like too short a timeframe to observe results, the document also cites a study in peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet claiming that “rates of ‘unsafe’ abortion decreased worldwide between 1995 (when the MCP was not in effect) and 2003 (two years after it was reinstated)”.
Take a look at that last sentence again, because it seems a little weird that the bishops cited this specific point. The timeframe cited was 1995 to 2003, which means that for the majority of the time in which “rates of unsafe abortion decreased worldwide”, the MCP wasn’t in effect at all. It was for the last two years, but it’s not clear from that sentence alone whether abortion rates were climbing from 1995-2001, and then the MCP reversed that trend. Further, there’s not enough detail in just that one sentence to know where abortion rates were up or down - specifically, in the countries most dependent on funding contingent on the MCP. It’s really not clear at all, from this bullet point used to argue for the effectiveness of the MCP, whether the study cited is being interpreted or represented correctly; the only way to check something like that would be to read the actual study from The Lancet, and then read any more recent followup studies on the MCP also published in The Lancet, and then see if any other peer-reviewed journals did more detailed and recent research on the MCP and also read those studies.
So let's do that. Here's the original 2007 Lancet study cited by the USCCB, specifically a passage focusing on Africa, the continent most dependent on MCP funding:
"The estimated number of unsafe abortions in 2003 was higher than that for 1995, partly because studies in the intervening period revealed high levels of unsafe abortion, and partly because the population had grown. High abortion rates in sub-Saharan Africa coexist with high levels of unmet need for contraception, and the higher rates in eastern Africa than in western Africa are consistent with higher overall demand for family planning in eastern Africa...The findings presented here indicate that unrestrictive abortion laws do not predict a high incidence of abortion, and by the same token, highly restrictive abortion laws are not associated with low abortion incidence. Indeed, both the highest and lowest abortion rates were seen in regions where abortion is almost uniformly legal under a wide range of circumstances."
While abortions had fallen globally from 1995 to 2003, you certainly couldn't attribute it to the MCP based on the findings of this study. For one thing, the timing doesn't work. For another, the abortion rates didn't actually drop in the part of the world most affected by the MCP. And then for a third and very important thing, the study explicitly says that restrictive abortion policies don't reduce abortions, and that's the best study the USCCB could find to advocate for restrictive abortion policies in 2007. Were they trying to mislead people? Or did some bishop just not read all the way to the end of the study? My money is on the latter, but I'll never know for sure.
In the years since, more research has been done, more explicitly on the impact of the policy itself, as opposed to global abortion trends in general. The WHO’s Bulletin published another study in 2011 that specifically singled out countries with “high exposure” to the MCP, and that stated, among other things:
“A comparison of 1994–2000 with 2001–2008 revealed an adjusted odds ratio for induced abortion of 2.55 for high-exposure countries versus low-exposure countries under the policy. There was a relative decline in the use of modern contraceptives in the high-exposure countries over the same time period. The induced abortion rate in sub-Saharan Africa rose in high-exposure countries relative to low-exposure countries when the Mexico City Policy was reintroduced. Reduced financial support for family planning may have led women to substitute abortion for contraception. Regardless of one’s views about abortion, the findings may have important implications for public policies governing abortion."
In other words, when the funding got cut, abortions went up, and that was measured against a control group of countries that didn’t rely on the MCP to fund their family planning programs. When you gut family planning and reproductive health NGOs, people can’t get access to contraception or education, and abortion, whether safe or not, whether legal or not, is one of the severely reduced number of family planning options still available. The Lancet even returned to the MCP in 2019, with another decade of data to add to the study, and found:
“When the Mexico City Policy was in effect (2001–08), abortion rates rose among women in countries highly exposed to the policy...relative to women in low-exposure countries and relative to periods when the policy was rescinded in 1995–2000 and 2009–14, a rise of approximately 40%. We found a symmetric reduction in use of modern contraception by...and increase in pregnancies...while the policy was enacted....Our findings suggest that curbing US assistance to family planning organisations, especially those that consider abortion as a method of family planning, increases abortion prevalence in sub-Saharan African countries most affected by the policy."
Strong words, but not the most strongly-worded critique of the MCP published in a medical journal. That honor goes to the New England Journal of Medicine, who pulled no punches in 2017. Under the Trump administration, the MCP is significantly more punitive; if you don’t sign on to the abortion gag rule, you don’t just lose your family planning aid funds, you lose all of your aid funds. What did the peer-reviewed doctors and scientists at the Journal think about the policy?
“The policy...significantly increases abortion rates. The policy defunds — and in so doing, incapacitates — organizations that would otherwise provide education and contraceptive services to reduce the frequency of unintended pregnancies and the need for abortions. The reinstatement of the Mexico City Policy is a stark example of “evidence-free” policymaking that ignores the best scientific data, resulting in a policy that harms global health and, ultimately, the American people. In policymaking, the devil is in the details, and ignoring scientific data on the effectiveness of particular policies results in faulty decision making. In addition to increasing abortion rates, the reinstatement of the Mexico City Policy is likely to result in increases in maternal deaths and will endanger children’s health around the world.”
Okay, but how did they really feel about the policy?
“The decision to ignore data when crafting foreign-aid strategies can jeopardize the mission of U.S. foreign policy to help ensure economic and geopolitical security. The Mexico City Policy is but one of many foreign-aid decisions that the Trump administration will have to make to guide our country and the world. Ineffective foreign-aid policies that ignore basic scientific analysis will undermine our ability to support global development, waste valuable resources, and ultimately hurt the American people."
I'm not a doctor, I've never done research in medical journals, and finding all of these papers took me about thirty minutes total. It is not hard to answer the question “does the Mexico City Policy work at reducing abortion?” objectively, with a loud “shit no”. Maybe the bishops in 2007 get graded on a curve because there wasn’t as much published research back then, but they don’t get a pass for praising the policy in 2017, as piece after piece came out - they’re still coming out! - on this policy and how it has failed at all of its stated objectives. There is no reason, outside of partisan shittiness, for the Catholic hierarchy to support this policy, to ignore peer-reviewed medical journals, articles written by real-life doctors and scientists, in favor of some shit that a bleach salesman with a cathedral-length train of political failures behind him happened to crap out in the Reagan years.
And remember: this is the only lasting political accomplishment Alan Keyes has ever had. He can’t win an election, or even be competitive. He can’t run in the presidential primary to successfully shift the overton window. He can’t host an MSNBC show. The only thing he achieved was creating this policy at a UN summit in his capacity as an Ambassador, it was his one success, followed by decades of failure. And, as it turns out, that one success wasn’t even a success. As long as Keyes’ brainchild is in place, abortions are up, maternal mortality is up, malnutrition is up. The loudest pro-life voice in the room is directly responsible for mass suffering and death halfway around the world. You gotta love the pro-life movement.
EPILOGUE
It's hard to overstate the irony, so I'm going to say it again: no politician has forcefully and consistently condemned abortion more than Alan Keyes, but no politician is responsible for more abortions than Alan Keyes, a wild statement that, incredibly, I am able to back up with peer-reviewed studies in at least three different medical journals.
But let's look at that forceful and consistent condemnation. Keyes, for all of his faults - you can see him get interviewed by Borat in Sacha Baron Cohen's 2006 film (above) because he is, among other things, not especially bright - has never misrepresented himself or what he believes. In debates, on campaign stops, and in interviews - including, I guess, the interview with Borat - he has always been very upfront about what he thinks about abortion, about gay marriage, about prayer in school, about all of his pet issues. What he thinks happens to be appalling and idiotic, but he's not interested in covering it up. It's possible, maybe even likely, that he's selling Drinking Bleach today because he sincerely believes that it actually works.
The thing is, when you believe what Alan Keyes believes, you don't just lose elections, you lose elections by historic, record-setting margins, multiple times. Keyes shows us what happens in the political arena when you refuse to compromise on a single issue: you don't ever win, or come close to winning. Abortion will get some people to the polls, but not enough, in the absence of a broader coalition, to win an election. And if you want to actually end abortion, you need a coalition, not just to get you into power, but to address the other tangled nest of issues required to end abortion: you’d need to massively expand access to contraception on demand, build out comprehensive sex education that isn’t based on the Old Testament, dismantle mass incarceration and the police state so we can keep more families together and stable, give everyone universal health insurance, build a fully-funded child care system for working mothers, and raise taxes on corporations and rich people to pay for everything. Right now, the anti-abortion movement is in coalition with a political party actively trying to do the opposite of all of these things. Keyes couldn’t find other people to work with, and when he tried to do it without a coalition, he just ended up with more abortions on his hands. It almost makes you wonder why the Catholic church has all but formally adopted his strategy.
Grift of the Holy Spirit is a series by Tony Ginocchio detailing stories of the weirdest, dumbest, and saddest members of the Catholic church. You can subscribe via Substack to get notified of future installments. The current series covers anti-abortion activists in the Catholic church.
Sources used for this piece include:
Daily Beast - “Alan Keyes is Helping Sell a Toxic Bleach ‘Cure’ to the Desperate and Vulnerable” (2019)
WWSB Sarasota - “Federal Agencies, Hazmat Crews Repond to Florida Church Selling COVID-19 ‘Miracle Solution’” (2020)
Vice - “Bleach Ingestion Advocates Are Thrilled by Trump’s ‘Disinfectant’ Comments” (2020)
U.S. Food and Drug Administration - “Danger: Don’t Drink Miracle Mineral Solution or Similar Products” (2019)
Renew America - “Trump’s Jerusalem Decision: More Than Praiseworthy” (2017)
Renew America - “President Trump is Right: Border Control First!” (2018)
Renew America - “President Trump Proves True, At Home and Abroad” (2019)
Renew America - “How Trump Has Failed to Uphold Our Creed” (2018)
Renew America - “How Fares Conservatism Under President Trump?” (2017)
Renew America - “A Year After Victory: Jury’s Still Out On Trump” (2017)
Los Angeles Times - “Alan Keyes Stokes Obama Birth Certificate Controversy” (2009)
NBC Augusta - “Former Obama Opponent Now Suing to Prove President-Elect’s Citizenship” (2008)
Renew America - “Alan Keyes on C-SPAN’s Road to the White House” (1999)
Washington Post - “The Republicans” (2000)
New York Times - “Republican Presidential Debate Transcript: December 12 2007” (2007)
New York Times - “Final Debate Before Iowa Caucuses Shows Uncertainty at Top of Republican Field” (2007)
NBC News - “Keyes Assails Obama’s Abortion Views” (2004)
Keyes Archives - “2004 Illinois Debates” (2004)
US News and World Report - “Keyes vs. MSNBC Over Israel (2002)
Renew America - Complete Transcripts of “Alan Keyes is Making Sense” (2002)
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops - Senate Testimony of Cathleen A. Cleaver, “The Importance of the Mexico City Policy” (2001)
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops - “The Mexico City Policy: Protecting the Most Fundamental Right” (2007)
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops - “The Mexico City Policy: False Criticisms and the Facts” (2007)
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops - “USCCB Pro-Life Chairman Applauds Reestablishment of Mexico City Policy” (2017)
The Lancet - "Induced Abortion: Estimated Rates and Trends Worldwide" (2007)
The Lancet - “US Aid Policy and Induced Abortion in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Analysis of the Mexico City Policy” (2019)
Bulletin of the World Health Organization - “United States Aid Policy and Induced Abortion in Sub-Saharan Africa” (2011)
New England Journal of Medicine - “The Perils of Trumping Science in Global Health - The Mexico City Policy and Beyond” (2017)