Culture Warriors category archive

Laurie Essig reflects on the passing of Jean Stapleton and nostalgia for Archie Bunker’s fanstasy of the Good Old Days. A nugget:

But what no one watching the show (“All in the Family”–ed.) in the 1970s could have foreseen was that Archie’s side would not go the way of the dinosaurs. Instead, they would breathe new life into new generations. This “new nostalgia” is evident in many contemporary political movements, but it also a very clear part of contemporary love in the US.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., has some thoughts.

I missed this column, in which Leonard Pitts, Jr., discussed the Boy Scouts of America’s recent half-anatomied decision on allowing gay scouts. Pitts points out the essence of Republican Family Values: perpetuating privilege.

It is, of course, a mistake to seek logic here. This isn’t about logic, but about a conservative group doing what conservative groups always do when social change comes. Meaning, they bring up the rear, the caboose on the freedom train lurching belatedly to where the rest of us have already been.

It happened with racism, happened with sexism, happened with anti-Semitism, all of which conservatism loudly and proudly embraced long after the rest of us came to see them as evil and wrong.

This seems to be a typical sentence from the coverage of the Boy Scouts of America’s recent policy change:

Finkel, from Mount Airy, who is straight, no longer has to worry about gay scouts being kicked out. The Boy Scouts of America voted Thursday to allow gay scouts within its ranks starting Jan. 1, a policy shift that, while engendering controversy nationally, was generally welcomed with open arms by many scouting-affiliated area residents.

Most of the coverage has been framed in terms of “allowing gay boys.”

It’s a matter of emphasis, but an important one: It’s not about “allowing”; it’s about not persecuting.

Boys typically joined the Cub Scouts at eight or nine and the Boy Scouts at 11 or 12. At those ages, they are still pretty much asexual.

“Openly gay” boys did not join the scouts.

Boys matured into their sexuality after they are already scouts.

Then the Scouts persecuted them for who they became.

I find this story disturbing, then I start to wonder, suppose it had been an 18-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl . . . .

Traditional Marriage, Life on the Streets:

An-as-yet unidentified 32-year-old man was shot to death in Greenwich Village on Friday night by a suspect who “made anti-gay remarks” before pulling the trigger.

Follow the link for more traditional values in NYC.

Let Joel Connelly explain at SeattlePI. A snippet:

Last week, after Minnesota became the 12th state to say that people of the same gender can wed, Minnesota’s Council of Catholic Bishops described the new law as “a serious threat to the religious liberty and conscience of Minnesotans.”

While doubtless poll-tested, the language is Aesopian. The “liberty” and “freedom” being defended is the right to deny freedoms to other Americans, and to refuse goods and services to a defined class of citizens.

As well, the language heard now, directed at gay and lesbian Americans, has been heard in the not-too-distant past — and even the present — to justify discrimination against African-Americans, women, Jews, Muslims . . . heck, even the Irish.

As I listen to this, it occurs to me that the folks who are against Plan B emergency contraception are de facto in favor of more pregnant teen-aged girls.

Doghouse Riley skillfully dissects Kathleen Parker’s squeamishness over admitting that teen-aged girls might actually, like, you know, do it.

Just read it.

The Booman wonders what’s up with Plan B.

Atrios nailed it earlier yesterday.

What’s up with Plan B is that grown-ups get stupid at the prospect that their children, particularly their daughters, might actually have matured into growing-up sexual human beings.

(They deal with it better with their sons. “Wild oats” and all that. Funny how the sower gets a free pass, while the field gets ostracized.)

They want to pretend it didn’t/doesn’t/can’t/won’t happen.

They don’t want to admit that their horny teenagers will act as they did when they were horny teenagers.

I know that I didn’t like it when that realization came to me.

Fortunately, my now-ex kept me from being stupid.

At SFgate, Amy Graff is alarmed at the sexed up images she sees in children’s board games. She says that the Candyland she remembers was nothing like this (Nor is the one I remember).

I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’m torn between “Grow up, already,” and “This is one more signpost on the road to perdition.”

I do believe that when persons scream, “What about the children!” they often aren’t really talking about the children, but about themselves and their own hangups.

Children are lot more matter-of-fact than the adults who desire to shield think they are. I’m not arguing for “kindergarten, life in the streets,” but I am convinced we have slid from protectiveness to paranoia about our kids (though sometimes they do give us reason).

I wonder what has pulled the games in this direction: Kardashians or Disney princesses?

Because Republican Jesus is all about hatin’ on folks.

Businesses in Washington would get the right to refuse services to gay and lesbian customers if “providing those goods or services” conflicts with the religious or philosophical beliefs of the business owner, under a bill introduced Thursday in the state Senate.

The bill, sponsored by 12 of the Senate’s 23 Republicans, is in response to an anti-discrimination suit filed by Attorney General Bob Ferguson against a floral shop in Richland whose owner refused to provide flowers for the wedding of a longtime customer who is gay. She cited belief in Jesus Christ as grounds for refusal.

The legislation, Senate Bill 5927, is worded broadly, going beyond a religious objection in allowing discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Katherine Stewart takes a peep at the man behind the curtain, and sees that he’s a plutocrat who’s only in it for the money.

That’s where the culture wars come in. Pushing complicated tax schemes to sustain oil companies in their riches won’t get a lot of state legislators and their supporters up in the morning. On the other hand, opposing abortion, stopping sodomy, and taking back the country for God will.

The culture war also allows this militant minority to sustain the delusion that it speaks for the majority. By wrapping guns and crosses in American flags, they derive power from falsely believing that they represent the “real America”. And as they become bolder in their claims, those of us who, in fact, represent the majority – supporting equitable policies on taxation, gun safety, access to reproductive care and the like – tend to limit ourselves. We begin to believe that we represent a minority in our country. We don’t.

Read the rest.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., attacks the stupid premise of Brad Paisley’s (and L. L. CoolJ’s) “Accidental Racist,” the idea that symbols of bigotry are, somehow, not symbols of bigotry, but just sweet little mementos, harmless fashion statements, like high-heel shoes or a little black dress.

Every day, we imagine the lives of people who aren’t like us. Those who care to try seem to have no trouble empathizing with, say, Cuban exiles separated from family, or Muslims shunned by Islamophobes. For a songwriter, inhabiting other people’s lives is practically the job description. Bruce Springsteen was not a Vietnam vet when he sang “Born in the USA.”

But where African-American life is concerned, one frequently hears Paisley’s lament: how a white man is locked into his own perspective. That’s baloney. Both history and the present day are replete with white people — Clifford Durr, Thaddeus Stevens, Eleanor Roosevelt, Leon Litwack, Tim Wise — who seemed to have no great difficulty accessing black life.

One suspects one difference is that they refused to be hobbled by white guilt, the reflexive need to deny the undeniable, defend the indefensible, explain the inexplicable. They declined to be paralyzed by the baggage of history. One suspects they felt not guilt, but simple human obligation.

Do please read the rest.

Mirror images. (Don’t stop with the headline–read the whole thing–it takes only a minute.)

Nothing more to say.

Have you noticed that Republicans and Bible-thumpers are preoccupied with sex?

Excerpt:

The sponsors of this legislation are not just some random bowl of mixed nuts. . . .

Nuts, yes. Just not random.

Via Raw Story.