Culture Warriors category archive

Reg Henry calls out the meanness behind those who whine about “political correctness:

What we basically have here is the grievance that people just can’t call anybody anything anymore without a big fuss being made. Oh, for the halcyon days when men were men and women were chicks, sluts or hormonally challenged, and so on (insert here your own slandered group). In fits of debased nostalgia, some people want to go back to those sorry times, and they think only political correctness is stopping them.

What bunk. As most of us learned in kindergarten as our first practical experience of free speech, when you say something mean, some kid is likely to whack you with a wooden block. In the real world, then as now, reacting to negative language is not necessarily political. Oftentimes, it is just insensitivity and bad manners inviting a reaction.

At the San Jose Mercury-News, William Endicott contemplates the culture warriors and is not impressed.

. . . people who want to continue the culture war remind me of the handful of Japanese soldiers who emerged from jungles years after the end of World War II, unaware that the war was long since over.

Jessica Valenti reflects on the Republican debate and points out that, when it comes to Republicans, watch what they do, not what they say.

Most of the Republican presidential hopefuls are probably giddy right now, as Donald Trump continues to take heat for being a sexist pig while the rest of them can pretend that they care about women.

For one glorious moment in time, this group of men – who between them have enacted legislation curbing women’s rights, voted against equal pay, and shamed women for having sex – can puff up their chests and play make-believe that they are women’s caped crusaders and true equality warriors.

But at least Donald Trump is upfront about his sexism. The other candidates are just blowing smoke up our … skirts.

Apparently Deuteronomy 22:17 is all the rage at Virginia Wesleyan College (which is, by the way, about two miles down the road thataway).

A private liberal arts college in Virginia being sued by a woman who claims she was raped on campus is demanding she provide them with her entire sexual history — including partner’s names — in a motion filed in Norfolk Circuit Court.

Virginia Wesleyan College wants the woman, identified as “Jane Doe,” to name any individual she has had sexual intercourse with “at any time” and provide them with names of all her boyfriends since August 2012, when she was allegedly raped by a male classmate.

Via Job’s Anger.

What does one wear to a shotgun wedding: A morning suit or hunter’s orange?

It was right there, but I didn’t twig to it at all. Adam Lee saw it, though:

Even before landmark rulings like Obergefell, religious groups were engaging in this massive-resistance strategy. Catholic charities have shut down in both the US and the UK, ending services like adoption assistance and foster care, so as not to have to give benefits to same-sex partners of employees or consider same-sex couples as prospective parents. Catholic schools are also notorious for firing popular gay teachers and principals in the face of protests by students – and some are responding by making their morality clauses even more draconian.

These tactics echo the civil rights era, when some municipalities shut down their public schools entirely, as well as other public accommodations like pools, rather than desegregate them. In the same way, today’s religious conservatives are so determined to continue discriminating against women and LGBT people that they’re willing to deprive everyone of rights and privileges rather than grant equal treatment to people who, in their eyes, don’t deserve it.

Follow the link to see why he thinks this might be a good thing.

Republicans’ pervy fascination with the sex lives of others fuels an active fantasy life.

Shorter Bill Cosby (and many many others): “But she really wanted it.”

Yeah, Bill (and many many others). Keep telling yourself that.

I’m not big fan of Amanda Marcotte. I think that she often sacrifices truth to polemic. My scrupulous efforts to remain neutral in these electrons should indicate the degree to which she tickles my skeptic bone.

Nevertheless, I think she is on to something in her attempt to make sense of the embrace by Rand Paul, self-styled sort of glibertarian, of the right-wing religious politics of pervy preoccupation with the sex lives of others. Here’s a bit from her piece at TPM:

In their pure, ideological forms, libertarianism and Christian conservatism do seem at odds. In theory, libertarians should have a hands-off approach when it comes to social issues, not wanting to tread on the individual’s right to get gay-married or have an abortion if he or she wants. In practice, however, many so-called libertarians like Paul are just as rabidly anti-choice and anti-gay rights as their conservative Christian brethren. But politics is often more about optics than policy, and Paul is struggling to gain the trust of evangelicals whose enthusiasm for bringing the government boot down on the neck of gays and women understandably makes them wary of the word “libertarian.”

This problem is made all the more difficult by the fact that Paul is still running a campaign trying to convince younger voters that he’s out to protect their civil liberties, a message that’s hard to convey when you’re simultaneously pandering to religious right voters who want said liberties stripped from gays and women. Paul’s attempts to thread that needle have been largely incoherent, telling religious-right audiences that he’s totally on their side and then turning around and telling others that he doesn’t see attacking abortion or gay rights as a priority.

Then there’s the other, simpler explanation, the one I favor:

A “Libertarian” is a Republican who’s ashamed to admit it.

Some persons wrap their prejudices in the flag; others wrap theirs in the cross. Some use both as packaging. When you see such packaging, though, it’s a fairly safe bet that truth-in-labeling has naught to do with it.

Look closely and you can peer through the camouflage. Neil Elliott, responding to an article in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, does just that. A snippet:

Pence (the writer of the column to which Elliott responds–ed.) would, I presume, be shocked — shocked! — to find himself compared to racist groups. After all, he counts himself among the benevolent white Christians who “sent clergymen to march­— and then . . . federal troops to protect” after the racist bombing of a church that killed four black girls in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963. But perhaps he forgets that the Birmingham bombers were themselves Christian extremists, disaffected from the Ku Klux Klan, who felt empowered by a righteous cause, one of them invoking “the Lord” and “Judgment Day” at his sentencing.

The unreflective racism is just beneath the surface. Pence writes of our nation’s “Christian heritage,” but is especially concerned to excoriate President Obama for not galvanizing Americans to holy war. He wants us to unite with “black Christian nations”: Are we, then, a white Christian nation? He writes of “us” finding common cause even with “the brown-skinned neighbors who have been growing our food and roofing our houses for the last half-century.” In his mind, do all of us who are neither Christian nor white just cease to be American?

Via Kos.