OPINION: Race, Sexuality, and Gordon Fox

Today the Providence Journal featured a story on the front page about the sentencing phase of the Gordon Fox trial and how a barrage of letters are inundating Judge Mary M. Lisi, who will sentence the former Speaker of the House later this week.  Fox plead guilty in March to wire fraud, bribery and filing a false tax return and, as part of his plea agreement, could face three years in prison.  As part of this putsch, Joh DePetro, the despicable right wing political talk radio host on WPRO with his own bizarre trail of malfeasances, has launched a campaign to have Fox sentenced to the maximum in the name of sending a message to corrupt politicians everywhere while simultaneously plagiarizing Spider-Man with his 'great power comes great responsibility' line.  I always had a sneaking suspicion that DePetro was a comic book villain, but this is just too much.

Now there is no doubt that Fox is guilty, he admitted it.  But let's be clear on exactly what he did.  He took a few kickbacks to grease the rails for a bar on Thayer Street, paid some personal expenses, and helped rescue an abused dog with high-cost veterinary bills.  Buddy Cianci beat a man with a fireplace log and got probation.  Fox's malfeasances were crimes, yes, but let's be clear, they were essentially victimless.
The reality is that we never saw such a campaign for the maximum sentence when Buddy was being brought down for turning Providence City Hall into a criminal enterprise.  Why is this now happening with Gordon Fox?  What could perchance be the difference between Cianci and Fox?
There are two big issues, race and sexuality.  Fox, despite the fact he looks Armenian, is in reality African American, his father was Irish and his mother Cape Verdean.  He is also the first openly gay man to reach the level of Speaker of the House in not just Rhode Island but American history.  In short, Fox had the audacity to be a double minority, whereas Cianci was a Silver Lake-derived Italian with not a minuscule number of connections to Federal Hill.
What can really be said for this?  Let's begin with race.  I oftentimes try to emphasize the findings of the March 2007 paper THE EFFECTS OF SKIN TONE ON RACE-RELATED AMYGDALA ACTIVITY: AN FMRI INVESTIGATION, published by the medical journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, when in discussions about race and racism.  In that study, participants were placed in an fMRI machine and shown a series of images.  The first several were relaxing images of babies, puppies, all sorts of visual comfort food.  However, when they were shown the image of a black man, every subject, both white and black, showed the amygdala response, colloquially known as the 'fight-or-flight' response.  There is something culturally hard-wired into people to fear black men, which no doubt has some connection to the DePetro deluge.  And let's not make any mistakes, this is not an isolated incident, in February Rep. Joseph Almeida, also black, was brought to court for a campaign fund misappropriation charge.  It is open season for black politicians on Smith Street.
And then there is the other naughty behavior, Fox is gay.  Not only that, he's out of the closet and married to a hairdresser, which is about as homosexual as you can be unless you are Provincetown incarnate.  When he oversaw the passage of the gay marriage bill into law at the General Assembly, he had the audacity to exchange kisses with his now-husband on the rostrum, sending the uber-Catholic religious fanatics into a fit of hysterics and screaming 'First sodomy in the State House, next the Governor will be performing abortions in her office under the Soviet flag!'  (Oh, wait.)  Don Carcieri, the Governor who oversaw the 38 Studios debacle and was militantly anti-choice, has yet to even be indicted for the Schilling boondoggle.  Can you say 'double standard'?
Ultimately this instance is a very important teachable moment about racism and homophobia in the Ocean State.  I cannot endorse what Fox did, but at the same time, it is not exactly rocket science to see how ridiculously bigoted John DePetro looks.  Then again, you'd have to be a deaf, dumb, and blind kid to miss that one.