THE fundamental difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. Stupidity, on the other hand, is boundless. There are no limitations. Just look at Bermuda's Government, a case study in immeasurable imbecility.The squalid exercise in Bermuda's House of Assembly last week where cowardice and — in, more than a few cases, outright denial — handily trumped principle is already being called "Black Friday" by those thousands of Bermudians who accept the self-evident fact that to deny human rights to any one section of the community is to effectively dehumanise them.

Nelson Bascome is on the record as saying morality cannot be legislated. But seemingly this free-pass for sinning only applies to certain of his own peccadilloes that are viewed askance by some sections of the community (and which are condemned in far more forthright Biblical terms than homosexuality).

For he giddily schemed to legislate morality last week, admitting he would be happy to see Bermuda's human rights legislation straitjacketed to the narrow, hateful precepts of religious zealots. While loudly protesting their Christian bona fides, this puritanical bloc never seems to have encountered Jesus Christ's injunction in Luke: "And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise".

Look as you might, you will not find any addenda from Christ saying this principle applies to all men and women except gay ones. In Bermuda, though, it seems even the Golden Rule is made to be broken when ignorant fanaticism is aided and abetted by the likes of Mr. Bascome. In the aftermath of Mr. Bascome's role in suborning secular governance to religious dogma, more open-minded (and even lapsed) Christians might well have found themselves involuntarily uttering Job's words: "For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me . . ."

Say what you will about Mr. Basome, at least he had the courage of his dubious convictions. And it was hardly necessary for him to admit his position was likely based on the simple political calculation that since there are more churchgoing voters than homosexual ones in Bermuda's electorate, political expedience rather than principle needed to carry the day as far as he was concerned.

He demonstrated more chutzpah than 34 of his Parliamentary colleagues in a clumsily stage-managed Parliamentary farce expressly designed to cut off debate on Renée Webb's Human Rights Act amendment before debate had even properly commenced.

Although Bermuda's legislature has known more low points than the Marianas Trench throughout its long history, Friday's exercise was as morally gangrenous an episode as has occurred there in living memory. It diminished the Parliamentary process; it diminished the very concept of enshrining equal protection before the law for all Bermudians; by extension it diminished all of us.

The Minister who is nominally responsible for the protection and preservation of human rights in Bermuda conveniently found sanctuary in the bathroom when it was time for him to address the matter, as cowardly a dereliction of political and ethical duty as any imaginable.

Dale Butler, whose IQ seems to have been cut in half since he joined Cabinet and whose integrity went missing in transit when he secretly jetted off to Cuba to sign a memorandum of understanding with a regime that does not even remotely understand human rights (and which regularly launches witch hunts against dissidents, writers and, yes, homosexuals), recently lamented the fact there are still Bermudians who question the general seaworthiness of his Government. If he stepped back ten paces and looked at the situation from the public's vantage point, he would be in doubt whatsoever about why this is so.

Even before Friday's strategic withdrawal to the toilet, the Minister has provided a prime example of why so many Bermudians now view the political process with such open disdain.

Now more commonly regarded as a facile opportunist rather than a morally grounded leader, the Minister recently described himself as the bellwether of liberal values on the Government benches — a description that carries about as much credibility as the "compassionate conservative" label George W. Bush applies to himself.

Liberalism, by definition, holds that liberty is the prime political value — liberty for everyone. Liberal values since the time of the Enlightenment have included a clear demarcation line between the powers of church and state. Liberalism allows churches full protection for their beliefs but not the means to impose sectarian views on a secular society. Liberalism safeguards minority rights and is committed to protecting individual liberties — even the liberties of individuals who happen to be gay.

But since liberalism also, of course, espouses transparency in governmental affairs, limitations on the power of the state and ensuring the rule of law applies as equally to elected representatives as the people who elect them, it's perhaps understandable why a Minister in this Cabinet thinks it is entirely possible to reconcile his perverse understanding of the concept with the authoritarianism and bemused contempt for accountability that are his Government's twin hallmarks.

Trumpeting his selective — and extremely limited — grasp of human rights has been something of a recurring theme with Mr. Butler recently. He summarily rejected a proposed electoral code of conduct that would have barred race-baiting in political campaigns, suggesting the next General Election — like the last one — will be contested by the Progressive Labour Party using the stock language of racial divisiveness rather than ideas or, God forbid, ideals.

And seemingly more interested in confrontation than Government-stewarded reconciliation, the Minister went on to give a lukewarm rebuttal to the hate speech employed by his colleague, the perpetually choleric David Burch, but then actually outperformed his Cabinet colleague in terms of general offensiveness by coming out with what amounted to a blanket denunciation of cultural and political pluralism. A subsequent attempt to retreat from this ugly position with a reporter-ate-my-homework excuse (one that he wouldn't have accepted from students during his teaching days) convinced no one.

Ever since he so spectacularly abandoned his own political principles and signed the Cuba memorandum, Mr. Butler has been viewed as having all the moral fibre of a Corn Flakes box, all the substance of a soap bubble. If he wants to salvage anything of a reputation he has so spectacularly squandered in recent years, he should resign from Cabinet immediately.

If he doesn't, he shouldn't be surprised to find himself henceforth assessed by the craven standard he set for himself in Parliament on Friday. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. Bermudians now know where Mr. Butler stands in such testing times. In the bathroom.

Mr. Butler provided the most egregious example of the galloping cowardice that swept through Parliament last week. But every other MP aside from Ms Webb and Mr. Bascome demonstrated the type of spinelessness more commonly associated with jelly fish than political leaders. And voters are unlikely to forget this grotesque exercise in collective self-abasement.

Mark Schmitt, an extremely intelligent (and genuine) liberal at the New America Foundation, coined a saying that sums up a dynamic at work in American politics. It's one Bermudian politicians might want to familiarise themselves with. Mr. Schmitt said: "It's not what you say about the issues, it's what the issues say about you."

In other words, the relative popularity or unpopularity of issues often matters far less to voters than the way those issue fit into the overall profile of a politician's character. Renée Webb, for instance, by championing the Human Rights amendment helped to craft an image of herself as a brave truth-teller unafraid of the churches and other reactionary blocs.

Even her political enemies cannot gainsay her courage. But the 34 MPs who either sat on their hands or used them to cover their mouths during last week's debate crafted images of themselves as lickspittle toadies to religious extremism. What they said (or more accurately didn't say) about the issue tabled on Friday may have resonated with a small band of zealots — but what the issue said about them to the majority of Bermudians is that their elected officials are a bunch of shameless, morally compromised twerps. BERMUDIANS looking for leadership, Bermudians who are aligned with neither the fundamentalist churches nor the homosexual lobby, will have decided there is nothing to choose from between the two parties — confirming Julian Hall's self-evident observation that opinion polls consistently show fully 40 per cent of Bermudians do not want either the Progressive Labour Party or the United Bermuda Party to form the next Government.There was a foreshadowing of Friday's shameful exercise in moral cowardice earlier in the week when the Premier earnestly declared that Cabinet had an obligation to listen — and respond to — the hundred or so e-mails it had received from the congregation of a single church protesting a drag queen's participation in the Bermuda Day Parade.

Never mind the hypocrisy at work. This, after all, is the same Premier who not only dismissed the 20,000 Bermudian voters who signed a petition favouring a referendum to decide the Independence issue but then insulted them by claiming they did not know what they were supporting.

Such inconsistency never interferes with the anarchic improvisations this Premier so often uses as a substitute for both logic and leadership. The fact Cabinet supinely capitulated to members of the congregation of a single church telegraphed the clear message that consciences would be conspicuous by their almost complete absence when Parliament met to discuss Ms Webb's Private Member's Bill.

An election is even now being discussed for the summer months. So Bermudians should brace themselves for further, depth-plumbing demonstrations of the type of political behaviour that led no less an authority than Albert Einstein to conclude only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity — and, he added, he wasn't entirely sure about the universe.