Jeremiah Was a Hero

As a one-term United States Senator from his home state of Alabama in the 1980s, Jeremiah Denton was a champion of "traditional family values," the very sort of agenda supported by Christian fundamentalists. He campaigned vigorously for a federal program to discourage teenagers from engaging in sex outside marriage, which became law, and he became known, much to his own chagrin, as a crusader for sexual propriety.  "I don't want to be known as the sex czar of the Senate," he once said.  However, he became known as just that, and it was his own definition of what constitutes a proper sex act, ironically enough, that made him too conservative even for Alabama and cost him his bid for a second term in the Senate.  Objecting to allowing a woman to charge her husband with rape under federal criminal law, he explained his reasoning as follows: "Dammit, when you get married, you kind of expect you’re going to get a little sex."  Though he later said that a wife abused by her husband could file a charge of assault or battery, the damage to his reputation was done.

Denton's misogynistic attitude and political shortcomings regrettably threatened to overshadow his distinguished career in the service.  Denton, who died today at 89, was a genuine hero of the war in Vietnam, and he has been appropriately eulogized for his service in the military rather than in the Senate.  A naval officer and aviator and a cunning military strategist, Denton was shot down over North Vietnam early in the war.  His survival as a POW inspired a nation and brought honor to the service at a time when the country was prosecuting an unjust war and men like Denton ended up being subjected to equally unjust treatment.  It was in May 1966 that the North Vietnamese had Denton participate in an interview to advance their Communist propaganda, and he revealed to the world the brutality of his captors by blinking the word "torture" in Morse code.  He had surreptitiously gotten out the truth of his imprisonment under the noses of the North Vietnamese.  

Nevertheless, Denton remained a prisoner at the Hanoi Hilton and other prison camps for nearly eight years, enduing all sorts of torture, including the use of a cement-filled iron bar. Here's how Denton explained it in his memoir:

"[One guard] stood on it, and he and the other guard took turns jumping up and down and rolling it across my legs.  Then they lifted my arms behind my back by the cuffs, raising the top part of my body off the floor and dragging me around and around. This went on for hours.  They were in a frenzy, alternating the treatment to increase the pain until I was unable to control myself. I began crying hysterically, blood and tears mingling and running down my cheeks. . . . My only thought was a desire to be free of pain."

When he was released in February 1973, Denton emerged unbroken and unbent.  Indeed, he was grateful to have survived his ordeal in the service of his country.  "We are profoundly grateful to our commander in chief and to our nation for this day," he declared while speaking for himself and his fellow POWs. "God bless America."

So yes, we would have been much better off if Denton had not taken his dubious perspectives on sexual relations to the halls of Capitol Hill, and no one will ever rank him as one of the great U.S. Senators in history, but I think it would serve us and his memory well to pay tribute to Denton for his service in the Navy and his iron-willed resolve to survive the horror, senselessness, and brutality in a war that saw far too much of it.  RIP.