A Frothy Mixture of Progress and Outrage

Wait a minute, Rick Santorum? I happen to know Rick Santorum intimately, because I once was Rick Santorum. I played him on stage in Moral Value Meal. In order to assume that role, I flirted dangerously with the dark side, an experience chronicled in my heartrending essay "Becoming Santorum."

Having in a single evening won more states than Mitt Romney has won all together, Santorum is enjoying a sudden squirt of momentum. It still seems like Romney is going to be the nominee, but I wonder if we'll ever have to admit that Romney would look like the nominee even if someone else won the nomination. On social issues, Santorum is to the right of everyone. Newt Gingrich has also been presenting himself as the socially conservative alternative, and Romney, finger to the wind, is turning up his volume on family values. Republicans are lurching toward social issues, and they have a lot to talk about. There has been some genuine progress, and they can't stand that.

The State of Washington appears to be on the verge of legalizing same-sex marriage, and a federal appeals court has ruled that California's Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. Now let's check in with Mitt Romney and see what he thinks: "Unelected judges cast aside the will of the people of California, who voted to protect traditional marriage...I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and, as president, I will...appoint judges who interpret the Constitution as it is written and not according to their own politics and prejudices." (I think the Constitutional ban on gay marriage is somewhere in the Third Amendment or so, after the parting of the Red Sea.)

Proposition 8, the bitter ache on a joyous night, passed due to money and manpower from the Mormon Church. To an official statement much like Mormon elder Mitt Romney's, the Church added, "[We] urge people on all sides of this issue to act in a spirit of mutual respect and civility toward those with a different opinion."

It's so nice that Mormonism sincerely emphasizes the virtue of civility. But respect? Proposition 8, just by existing, empowered the majority to grant or deny basic civil rights to a minority group. This is the opposite of respect. It's playground bullyism. If civil rights were decided by ballot initiatives, only the majority would have civil rights. It would be kind of disrespectful. I'm sure the Mormon Church is perfectly civil when it teaches of the "white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome" people who, after god "had caused the cursing to come upon them," acquired "a skin of blackness." (Have fun.) But it somehow doesn't sound like respect.

You can't just say you respect people. Well, you can, but you're lying. It's like starting a hate group and calling it the American Family Association, where six or seven lobbyists call themselves One Million Moms.

This very crowd has declared war on J.C. Penney, for making Ellen DeGeneres its spokeswoman. The mythic million huffs, "Funny that J.C. Penney thinks hiring an open homosexual spokesperson will help their business when most of their customers are traditional families." They demand that J.C. Penney "remain neutral in the culture war." Oh, boy. We should have known it when we saw the whites of Santorum's eyes -- we're at war again.

On Fox News, Sandy Rios showed moderate civility, but very little respect, when she explained, "The problem is that Ellen DeGeneres has chosen to act out her lesbian lifestyle and marry her partner. It's what that represents. And the fact that J.C. Penney is supposed to be middle America, the place where families shop...and people who believe that marriage is between a man and woman and children should not be exposed and propagandized in homosexuality."

I am shocked to learn 1) that middle America believes marriage is between a man and a woman and children; 2) that everyone in middle America is heterosexual, homophobic, and strongly opposed to Ellen DeGeneres; 3) that the mere presence of Ellen DeGeneres is propaganda; 4) that Ellen DeGeneres would make a fine J.C. Penney spokeswoman if only she would live in denial and shame; and 5) that Americans have an unalienable right to visit major retail establishments without encountering even a picture of a gay person.

This kind of thinking suggests a basic misunderstanding of civil rights. The people who are outraged about Ellen DeGeneres consider this a violation of their rights. What rights are they talking about? You can't just make up a right. You don't have the right to go to a Chinese restaurant without being exposed to egg rolls. In the Cranston school prayer situation, the people who think a public school should have a prayer to god posted in its auditorium have argued that because the majority of the students believe in god, they have a right to have the prayer on the wall if they want it. They think they have this right because they live in a democracy, when of course, they don't have this right, because they live in a constitutional republic.

They also think Catholic hospitals and universities have the right not to comply with the Affordable Care Act, because of the Catholic Church's belief that birth control is immoral. And guess what -- the ACA does include an exemption for the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church does not have to include family planning in the insurance policies it offers its employees, which is astounding. ("THIS IS THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY," mused Barbara Boxer, on Wednesday. "WAKE UP! LOOK AT YOUR CALENDAR! THIS IS THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY!") If you have a religious objection to envelopes, you have the right not to work in a stationery store, but if you work in a stationery store, you're going to have to sell envelopes. Your argument will not be strengthened if you accuse the management of attacking your religious freedom.

In fairness to Catholic hospitals and universities, though, the outrage seems to be coming mostly from Republican legislators and presidential candidates, ravenous for election-year wedge issues. The nation's largest Catholic university, DePaul, announced that it has been providing contraception benefits all along. (But DePaul does support "conscience protections," meaning that if your religion forbids the use of envelopes, and you work in a stationery store, you cannot stop the store from selling envelopes, but you may personally refuse envelopes to a customer who asks for them. Civil, but not respectful.)

Republicans want to yell about "religious bigotry" and "Obama's war on faith." They rub their hands together and cackle at the thought that lurking somewhere in the aisles of J.C. Penney, Ellen DeGeneres is plotting the molestation of your children. If 2012 is about the culture war, it will be because the Republicans have so chosen. But will that necessarily be to their advantage this time? A lot of Americans have progressed on these issues, and many more are concerned about other things at the moment. None of these guys look electable, but someone is starting to look re-electable.

Knowing where the votes will be in November, Mitt Romney and the fabled Establishment Republicans would love it if social issues never came up. But Romney just finished ten points behind Ron Paul in Minnesota, and it was Rick Santorum who had a clean sweep. Santorum makes the extremists look like moderates. He's opposed to all of it -- not just abortion, but contraception; not just gay marriage, but gay civil unions; not just religious bigotry, but separation of church and state -- while Romney merely says he's opposed to them.

But maybe the old wedge issues aren't what they used to be. Maybe we should ask Karen Handel. Certainly, the Republican Party's outrage is looking desperate. Its presidential candidates are also looking desperate. When Matt Lauer showed Obama last week's New Yorker cover (depicting the president, beer in hand, watching Romney and Gingrich pummel each other in the Super Bowl), Obama smiled, looking exactly as he does in Barry Blitt's illustration. Democrats are also rubbing their hands together. I don't know what the right-wing lurch toward social issues means for the Republican primaries, but it does look like a sure sign that the economy is getting better.

Noah

1:41 AM

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Thursday, February 09, 2012

A Frothy Mixture of Progress and Outrage