(AgapePress) - - A pro-family group is calling on Democratic candidate Jim Webb, who is also a novelist and a former U.S. Navy Secretary, to withdraw from the U.S. Senate race in Virginia over sexually explicit passages appearing in some of his fiction writings.
Late last week, incumbent Senator George Allen's campaign brought attention to the passages, which occur in Vietnam War novels written by Webb. According to a CNN report, in a news release and a list of quotes posted last Friday on the Drudge Report website, Allen accused Webb, who is challenging the Republican incumbent for his Senate seat, of "dehumanizing women, men, and even children," through his fiction writings.
Among the controversial excerpts that have been highlighted are two that involve children in sexual situations. One of these is from a novel by Webb called Lost Soldiers and contains a graphic description of a sexual act performed by a father on his young son.
James Lafferty, a spokesman for the Washington, DC-based Traditional Values Coalition, says that passage and others in the Senate hopeful's books are "so bad" that most reporters are unable to read them on the air. "In fact," he asserts, "when one of the radio hosts tried to read them to Senator [Christopher] Dodd of Connecticut, a liberal Democrat, Senator Dodd objected.
"So these are really objectionable stories that Mr. Webb has written," Lafferty says, "and we don't need another person with questionable morals in the U.S. Congress." But
Webb, who has authored six best-selling novels over the past three decades, defends his inclusion of the sexually explicit episode in Lost Soldiers as realism in fiction.
Recently the Democrat candidate stated on Washington Post radio that the incestuous sexual molestation incident in that novel was based on something he actually witnessed in a Bangkok slum while working in Thailand as a journalist. In fact, Webb, who fought in Vietnam and later served as Navy Secretary during the Reagan administration, claims many of his novels have been influenced by things he experienced personally; as a fiction author, he stands by his efforts to "illuminate" the surroundings or circumstances of those experiences.
CNN quotes Webb as saying he has included nothing in any of his novels "that, in my view, hasn't been either illuminating surroundings or defining a character or moving a plot." In defense of his sexually graphic writings, he contends he has "lived in the real world" and has represented that real world in his novels.
Lafferty, however, sees Webb's authorship of numerous sexually explicit passages as an issue of character that should encourage evangelical Christians, pro-life Catholics, and other pro-family values voters to head to the polls next week.
"Congress has enough problems right now," the Traditional Values Coalition spokesman insists. "We're trying to get rid of someone with these sorts of strange moral views on the House side, and over on the Senate side, this guy's trying to get in," he says.
"We don't think either Foley or Webb should be anywhere near our children or the Congress," Lafferty adds. Perverts, no matter what their political affiliation, should be given the boot, he says.
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