Moral Turpitude and the Curious American Obsession with Morality

"I love America,"..."Everybody gets a chance in America. In England, success only inspires envy, but in America it inspires hope." ~Sebastian Horsley

The next time you have the luck to find yourself bound abroad, do take a moment to stop in Customs and cozy up to your friendly neighborhood Homeland Security Agent to ask for a copy of the brochure that explains "Section 212 (a) (2) (A) (i) (I) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended."  Oh, alright. I'll do it for you.  Click here. Scary stuff, eh?

I sincerely hope the likes of Eliot Spitzer and any other politician who has had a party in his pants with a prostitute doesn't try to leave the U.S. to visit Europe.  Because in Section 212 (a) (2) (A) (i)(l) (who the ***&&^%%^&* ever thought all of these parentheses made any sense???) of the "Classes of Aliens Ineligible for a Visa", prostitution ranks higher than terrorism.  I mean that quite literally--prostitution is item 2 (D) and Terrorism is 3 (B).  Guess philandering with whores is a bigger deal than threats to American security.  Perhaps someone ought to teach legislators the fine art of rhetorical organization.  The farther down on the list, the less important, no?

Anyway, how did I miss this story?  Self-identified London dandy & all around gleefully self-absorbed bad boy author & artist Sebastian Horsely was denied entry to the United States at Newark Liberty International Airport (get the irony?  Huh?  Huh?  Get it?  "Liberty"??? Get it???) on the basis of moral turpitude.  Translation?  He engages in activities considered offensive to the prurient & morally superior interests of the U.S. public.  Yeah.  Like Horsely is going to be a worse role model for us than our own elected politicians?  Than our own movie stars?  Than our own writers?  Than our own journalists?  Dare I continue...

Horsely says,  "I had got to the airport in full dandy regalia - top hat, long velvet coat, velvet scarf. One concession to their Ivy League sensibilities was that I had taken off my nail polish. When I put my finger in the scanner, they took me aside and interrogated me for eight hours."

Here's wikipedia's take on moral turpitude and it's a doozy.   Now, I know I may be in the minority of the U.S. public, but I just don't buy that "higher and mightier" moral attitude.   I don't think of the United States as a particularly moral country.  I think it's a deeply troubled country made up of all kinds of people, both those who walk the line and those who can't really figure out what the line is.  I think there are deeply moral people who live in the United States and who believe in a better, more just world. 

The larger problem is with the self-identified "moralists."  These are the hypocrites who want to legislate each and every action of the U.S. citizen into some form of extreme Puritanism whilst they are free to break any and all rules that they please.  You know, the old adage "Do as I say...not as I do."  The U.S. today is divided into the "Dos" and the "not dos."  That is:  "you will not do this or that" and "I, the authority figure will do whatever I want, even if it involves breaking the law." 

I would humbly suggest that a nation with a devastating history of racism, sexism, homophobism, with failing schools, a terrible legacy of poverty and class discrimination, on the leading edge of one of the most devastating & immoral wars of the 21st century (I'm sure there will be more), really doesn't have the moral authority to interpret someone else's "moral turpitude."  I think it's a fairly ridiculous & capricious category of our foreign immigration policy.

Sure, I get the idea that we don't want criminals entering into the United States, adding to our current criminal burden.  And in certain cases--like terrorism--I don't think its an altogether terrible idea. A nation should have the right to determine its own immigration policies.  Arguable, but not terrible (arguable, again, because of the rather arbitrary and controversial nature of definitions.  Just what constitutes terroristic ideas?  Associations?  Intent and Action are easy.  It's the other, more cerebral issues that are dicier to work through).  However, at the same time, I think the idea of refusing Horsley entry to the U.S. is just about the worst example of prudish & arbitrary policy.

Here's an example.  Author Anne Perry is just completing a world tour for her new murder mystery Buckingham Palace Gardens.  Anne Perry is actually Juliet Hulme, convicted murderess from New Zealand  (You may have heard of Hulme if you watched the film Heavenly Creatures).  So, why was Perry allowed in and Horsley not?  Arbitrary invocation of the law.  You might argue that Perry has been reformed, served her sentence, and has, throughout the rest of her life lived in accordance with the law.  Absolutely.  And, I think Perry should not have to live the rest of her life damned because of a crime she committed when she was a young teen.  I believe fervently in the possibility of reeducation.  I think Anne Perry is great!  But, to return to Horsley, he has been sober for 3 years.   He writes his memoir, confessing to all manner of illegal activity.  And then?  It's time for the big world tour to promote the book.  Not altogether unlike Perry (although she dabbles only in fiction).

You can imagine the scene--Horsely playing up his big arrival in the States for his new book, lavishly dressed and perhaps, looking just a little silly.  Transatlantic flights for me? Sweats and sandals, baby.  My definition of style=comfort.  But I digress.  So what?  So what if he looked a little ostentatious?  So what if he's used drugs in the past?  So what if he's had sex with prostitutes?  He wasn't arriving at the U.S. for a permanent stay to set up some dandified whorehouse in Newark.  The best quote of the whole ridiculous incident comes from his U.S. publisher: 

 

"It wasn't like he came in with a syringe sticking out of his arm and a drink in his hand," said Carrie Kania, of Harper Perennial, the U.S. publisher of Horsley's book.

 

"He hasn't even had a drink in the last three years," she said. "And if we start looking at everything everyone did when they were 20 years old, who would we let in this country?"

 

Kania said Horsley's case involves larger issues of free speech and artistic expression. "Art is meant to be provocative," she said. "Sebastian's lifestyle is his art."

Exactly.  In the nation that likes to ban books from Harry Potter to The Bluest Eye to Catcher in the Rye, we have a hard time with that little clause in the Constitution on "freedom of speech."  Now, Horsely was not technically being censored--his book has been published in the U.S., without restriction.  You can buy it.  You can read it. However, I would argue that his banishment from the U.S. on the grounds of moral turpitude is the physical equivalent of the intellectual act of censorship.  We don't like the idea that art can be controversial, that ideas are best served in wide-ranging and wide diversities, that art should provoke us, that perhaps the edginess, or stupidity, of an artist gives us something more to think about. 

The fact of the matter is, I'm not going to read Mr. Horsley's book.  I'm not particularly impressed or attracted by the blurbs or his own interviews.  I'm not particularly convinced that it would meet my standards for "good" or "great" literature.  I just don't have enough time to indulge in that kind of vapid and self-indulged memoir.  I fall much more on the side of cutting edge political commentary in the art & literature I prefer.  If I want depravity & literary excellence, there's always Hunter S. Thompson and if I'm craving a little dandy, well, Oscar Wilde has always filled that need.  And if I want to read "candy," (my definition for books that are plot driven and can be easily digested in an hour or two--think "flip books" because the pages go by so quickly), well, there's always a new murder mystery.  May I recommend Perry's Buckingham Palace Gardens?  But I will loudly defend Mr. Horsley's right to write and to speak and to promote his book.  I will loudly defend Mr. Horsley's right to challenge me with his "dandy" lifestyle and his "dandy" ideas.

But the larger point is, Mr. Horsley should not have been denied entry to the U.S.  His moral dilemmas are innocuous and self-directed.  Moreover, he is self-avowedly "clean," which is more than I can say for any number of movie stars and musicians that we regularly let into the country.  Heck, some of these foreign actors & actresses are even U.S. property owners, driving up the price of real estate in Manhattan.  They are taking up valuable real estate space in New York, but don't live there half of the time because they are in rehab.  Don't talk to me about moral turpitude and a quick promotion trip to the U.S.!  He meant no harm and should have had the right to attend his readings & publicize his book.  In an age where we have real battles to fight, real problems to face and our country is seemingly crashing down under the weight of economic distress & poverty & all of the other stuff that makes the business of the nightly news so grim, perhaps a little dandified distraction would have been fun.  Have you ever read the Puritan authors who began the American literary tradition?  With all due respect to my colleagues in early American literature, those authors are borish and boring.

Now, I don't think Horsley is a "great" writer and I'm not trying to make that case.  (I can think of any number of writers to whom I would apply that label.  However, Horsley himself in not without some interest.  I am interested in his experiments in self-crucifixion, his film & paintings of his crucifixion, are quite interesting & provocative.) No matter what you think about Horsley, shouldn't we have the opportunity engage with him & with his ideas?  And, moreover, if we are a country that seeks to ban good writers, mediocre writers or even bad writers, then what will we do with the truly provocative thinkers of our time?

I think writers should aspire to being on a banned book list.  I think they should aspire to being so outrageous and controversial that countries don't want to let them in.  Because then they deliver the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that will allow us to be a better society, perhaps one that even begins to wrestle with its own fickle and mercurial interpretations of the law.   

More:

• Hat tip to Lady Jayne's Blog for the story
• Mr. Horsley's bio (via wikipedia)
• Horsley's blog
• The Guardian
• And a shockingly good discussion via WaPo (hey!  it doesn't always suck!)

Comments

[Lingual X]

Hi Mike,
Thanks for swinging by the Tremor! I think you make some very interesting points here. The whole visa thing is so complicated; I agree that Harper should have applied for a visa. I didn't actually know (how plebian of me!) about the privileged traveler's program. I assume you're talking about the B-1 visa for business?

I just visited the Visa Waiver Program site, http://travel.state.gov/visa/temp/without/without_1990.html#travelertype
and it looks like he should have been able to enter according to it. However, it's so complicated, I'm sure I'm missing something.

That aside, I see your point about creating a media storm (it hasn't really), and perhaps that was the point....

[Mike Doncaster]

Here's the thing about Horsley being turned away:

He tried to enter the U.S. on a privileged travelers program (The Visa Waiver Program), which he's ineligible for due to his self-confessed drug abuse history, conviction of methamphetamine sulphates, and for frequenting prostitutes. He was rightly, according to this law, turned away.

What's usually missed here is that had he, and/or, HarperCollins Perennial, bothered to apply for a visa, he'd most likely been granted one. That's how the majority of the world's journalists, authors, actresses, etc enter the U.S. for promotional or work-related visits.

But, they couldn't be bothered...

Or, it's simply that they hoped he'd be turned away, and so creating a 'perfect storm' of press about it. The HarperCollins sales director, Nina Ormerod, managed to slip something to that effect at the launch party in New York.

Call me a cynic, but that's something I might have done if faced with a costly book project that's mostly failed in the U.K. already.