A L S O+T O D A Y The "young lady" who got under Kenneth Starr's skin By Joan Walsh U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren is pressing the independent counsel to think harder about when he learned of Linda Tripp's tapes (11/25/98)   T A B L E+T A L K What would be the Republican dream ticket for the 2000 election? What about the Democrats? Play pundit in Table Talk's Politics discussion area   R E C E N T L Y Letter from San Francisco By Lisa Margonelli Twenty years after Dan White murdered George Moscone and Harvey Milk, his old neighborhood is still spawning leaders who divide by race -- but these days they're Asian, not white (11/24/98) Why "Birthright Israel" can't work By Samuel G. Freedman Diaspora in America is better than physical danger and religious infighting in Zion (11/23/98) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Starr By Gary Kamiya When the real Kenneth Starr finally stood up before the House, he turned out to have a split personality (11/20/98) Starr Wars By Joan Walsh The Democrats strike back (11/20/98) Nothing has changed Compiled by Lori Leibovich and Fiona Morgan The consensus of political experts is that no minds were changed by Starr's day in court (11/20/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.
		ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY ____________The election was a referendum on morality, after all, but Americans voted for tolerance, not vengeance. BY ALAN WOLFE | Four years after a new class of self-proclaimed Republican "revolutionaries" was swept into Congress promising a new morality in America, exit polls showed that 40 percent of voters on Nov. 3 who called themselves religious conservatives actually supported Democrats. Of all the surprises contained in the 1998 election results, this may be the most significant. For it puts to rest the idea that lurking out there in America is a lumbering beast of political and religious reaction just waiting for the trumpets to summon it to battle against the forces of secular humanism and moral relativism. Fed up with what they understood to be widespread moral decline in America, organizations like Ralph Reed's Christian Coalition -- the politically astute successor to Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority -- raised funds, rallied voters, recruited candidates and provided the ideological zeal for a moral crusade. At its roots was a belief that America had lost its traditional moorings in Judeo-Christianity, and that loss had led to increased rates of divorce, abortion, crime, alienation, homosexuality and a lack of national purpose. Only through committed political action, the Christian right held -- opposition to abortion, a return of prayer to schools and the teaching of firm standards of right and wrong -- could America once again be made morally whole. Leaders of the religious right never doubted that the majority of good Christians throughout the land shared this outlook on the world. I did, because over the past four years I interviewed 200 middle-class Americans, including people in such heartland places as Tulsa, Okla., San Diego and Cobb County, Ga., as part of my book "One Nation, After All." Many of my respondents were deeply religious; Christianity was for them at the center of their lives and the source for their understanding of good and evil. But with a few exceptions -- roughly six of the 200 -- most of them viewed religion as a private, not a public, matter. God tells me what to do, they often said, but my God cannot tell another what to do; only his or her God can do that. America's distrust of highly politicized forms of religious expression takes many forms. One, almost unnoticed by the polls, is the fact that African-Americans are among those most attracted to the religious messages associated with conservative Christianity, but at the same time they vote Democratic because they distrust conservative political positions. A similar tension can be found among devoutly Catholic Latinos, many of whom would love to vote Republican but are turned off by the party's stance on immigration. Furthermore, Americans of all races tend, when faced with a conflict between commitment to a principle and the lessons of personal experience, to opt for the latter rather than the former. In theory, many Christians believe, you have to accept Jesus in order to be saved, but they also know (and like) enough people who might be Jewish, Muslim or agnostic not to take that dictum too literally. The truth is that most Americans simply want to be nice. The trouble with hell-and-damnation style preachers like Pat Robertson, one of them told me, is that they all too often are mean. I was at first taken aback by the widespread rejection of religious absolutism I discovered. After all, I reasoned, groups like the Christian Coalition can afford to pay for high-priced research, and no doubt they must have discovered that the old-time religion was still alive in America. But the more I listened, the more I gained confidence in my findings. After all, we know that Americans love God and hate politics. So why, I asked myself, would they want the one confused with the other? I knew that many leftist intellectuals had ignored public sentiment on such touchy issues as crime or welfare. Surely it was possible that right-wing intellectuals could make the same mistake in reverse, assuming, almost as a matter of course, that what they believe has to be what everyone believes -- or at least ought to believe. Many Americans consider themselves conservative and many more consider themselves Christian, but none of that translates into automatic support for organizations promoting a program they describe as conservative Christian. N E X T+P A G E+| The religious right's blown opportunity - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here. ILLUSTRATION BY CHARLIE POWELL