Salon.com > Sarah Posner

Are the culture wars really over?

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 15:13:00 +0000

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, in the latest Democracy:

In 1943, Allied forces achieved a hard-fought victory in the North African campaign, captured Sicily, and began to fight their way up the Italian peninsula. Victories in places such as El-Alamein, Salerno, and Anzio gave America some confidence that the Allies would ultimately prevail in Europe. That confidence allowed the American public to shift more of its attention to the Pacific Theater. Popular magazines such as National Geographic began to publish more maps and articles about the Pacific because Americans suddenly wanted to know a lot more about Saipan and Leyte Gulf.

The same sort of shift is happening now for the left in America’s long-running culture war. From the 1980s until the birth of the Tea Party, most of the action was in the Social Theater, in which the religious right and the secular left waged an existential struggle for the soul of American society. Issues related to sexuality, drugs, religion, family life, and patriotism were particularly vexing, and many people over 40 can recall the names of battlefields such as Mapplethorpe, needle exchange, 2 Live Crew, and the flag-burning amendment. But the left won a smashing victory in the 2012 elections, including the first victories at the ballot box for gay marriage. These triumphs, combined with polling data showing the tolerant attitudes of younger voters, give the left confidence that it will ultimately prevail on most issues in the Social Theater. The power base of the religious right is older, white, rural Protestants, a group that immigration, demography, and urban renewal have consigned to play an ever-shrinking role in American presidential elections.

“Empty suit” preacher sinks Indiana megachurch

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 16:47:00 +0000

A headline caught my eye this morning: "Indiana's Largest Megachurch Faces New Foreclosure Proceedings." It made me think of Steve Munsey, an Indiana prosperity preacher I watched in a Decatur, Georgia television studio in 2007, pleading for audience members and viewers to give their money to the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

Ted Cruz: Congress and Harvard Law School are crawling with commies

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 19:03:00 +0000

The wonderful Jane Mayer recounts an Americans for Prosperity rally she covered in Texas two and half years ago, at which now-Texas Senator Ted Cruz “accused the Harvard Law School of harboring a dozen Communists on its faculty when he studied there” in the early 1990s. The revelation of these baseless, McCarthy-esque accusations sheds light on the origins of Cruz’s baseless, McCarthy-esque questioning of Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel. (The best part of Mayer’s piece is the bewilderment of Charles Fried, a Republican who served in the Reagan administration and later taught Cruz at Harvard, who diplomatically told Mayer that Cruz’s statement “lacks nuance.”)

Mayer adds:

Baptists for marriage equality

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:15:00 +0000

This morning Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) announced that he would be reintroducing the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA), which would permit same-sex spouses of undocumented immigrants to sponsor them for immigration benefits just as straight spouses do:

We must also do better by gay and lesbian Americans who face discrimination in our immigration law. Today, Senator Susan Collins and I will introduce the Uniting American Families Act. This legislation will end the needless discrimination so many Americans face in our immigration system. Too many citizens, including Vermonters who I have come to know personally and who want nothing more than to be with their loved ones, are denied this basic human right. This policy serves no legitimate purpose and it is wrong.

Bush’s director of faith-based initiatives praises liberal successor

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 18:11:00 +0000

John J. DiIulio, the first director of George W. Bush's White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, has taken to the Washington Post to laud President Obama's White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. In it, he cutely claims to like Obama's director of the faith-based office, Joshua DuBois, better than "Bush's first 'faith czar.'"

Less than a year into his own tenure, DiIulio resigned in disgust, and complained about Bush staffers who sought to dole out favors to religious conservatives rather than serve "compassionate conservativism." He notoriously coined the term "Mayberry Machiavellis" to describe Bush insiders, who, in relation to faith-based legislation, "winked at the most far-right House Republicans" in attempting to pass legislation for the faith-based office. That bill, which went nowhere, was drafted because Bush staffers thought it "satisfied certain fundamentalist leaders and Beltway libertarians."

Dolan spoils the party

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 15:23:00 +0000

The Democrats still have a religion problem. No, not that religion problem. They just can’t seem to get past wanting the blessing of a larger-than-life religious figure — even when that figure has called their policies “un-American” and depicts their core beliefs as antithetical to our most cherished freedoms.

The circumstances leading up to Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s benediction last night were politically fraught, but they didn’t have to be. First, Mitt Romney announced Dolan would be giving the closing benediction at the Republican National Convention. (At the time, I wrote that the move signaled Dolan had chosen sides with the GOP. Nothing he said last night seemed to suggest otherwise.) Under fire from fellow Catholics and others, and in an effort to appear nonpartisan, Dolan offered to perform the same function in Charlotte. While some observers have argued that Dolan was backed into a corner and working from a position of weakness — he needed the Democrats to give him cover from the charges of partisanship — the Democrats looked like the ones in the position of weakness. They couldn’t, after all, say no.

Bishops: God votes Republican

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 17:35:00 +0000

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is scheduled to deliver the concluding benediction at the Republican National Convention next week, after Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech.

The Eternal Word Television Network leaked word of Dolan’s appearance last night in a press release about Romney’s exclusive appearance, to be aired tonight, on the program “The World Over.”

The news — both its substance and the venue in which it was conveyed — make clear three things: that Romney intends to make the Bishops’ bogus arguments about religious liberty infringements a centerpiece of his campaign’s faith outreach; that any efforts the Obama administration made to placate the Bishops’ unattainable demands on insurance coverage for contraception were a fool’s errand; and that the USCCB has unequivocally attached itself at the hip to the Republican Party.

Mitt Romney: Evangelical warrior

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 19:40:00 +0000

Mitt Romney’s explanation this week about his “culture” comments in Jerusalem — in an Op-Ed in National Review — only adds to the evidence that the presumptive Republican nominee is feeling the pressure, as has every GOP nominee since Reagan, of the mighty evangelical get-out-the-vote apparatus.

For all the worry that Romney’s Mormonism informs his politics and will shape his policymaking, Romney’s political career has been nothing if not a model of catering to whatever political constituency is required to get you elected. In Massachusetts, that meant support for healthcare reform, gay marriage and abortion rights. In 2012, Romney no doubt hears Ralph Reed buzzing in his ear that mobilizing evangelicals to the polls is the key to victory.

Rather than walk back his much-criticized claim that Israeli culture is superior to Palestinian culture, Romney dug in deeper, attributing American freedom to being “endowed by our Creator with the freedom to pursue happiness.” (Get it? God likes certain people more than others.) Like the U.S., he added, “the state of Israel has a culture that is based upon individual freedom and the rule of law.” The Palestinians, on the other hand, “deserve to enjoy the blessings of a culture of freedom and opportunity,” but notably Romney didn’t argue that God had endowed them with freedom to enjoy such blessings.

Religious right’s new rivals

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 20:30:00 +0000

At the Iowa Republican State Convention earlier this month, Ron Paul supporters walked away with 23 of the 28 delegates headed to the Republican National Convention in August. This effort, which Paul enthusiasts also have pulled off in Minnesota, Maine and Nevada, is less about altering the outcome of this year’s nominating process than it is reshaping the GOP from the ground up. Just as the religious right launched its future dominance of the national party by starting at the local level in the 1980s, Paul’s supporters are looking to gain control of the party apparatus in the states. They are undertaking this strategy with the help of what might be called the "other religious right," made up of religious conservatives who reject the decades-long alliance between the Christian right and the GOP.

Embracing the fringe

Sat, 09 Jun 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Waiting for the Stand Up for Religious Freedom rally on Capitol Hill to begin on Friday, David Bereit, founder of the anti-abortion group 40 Days for Life, explained to me, with the patience of a dedicated crusader accustomed to repeating talking points, why he is “proud to be standing” with the coalition of groups who are protesting, relentlessly, that the contraception coverage requirement under the Affordable Care Act infringes on their religious freedom. But while Bereit, who is not Catholic, said he is “opposed to the government mandating contraception coverage,” he would not give me a straight answer on whether he is opposed to contraception.

As the "religious freedom" wars have heated up over the United States Department of Health and Human Services's contraception mandate, and as non-Catholic groups have taken up the mantle of the Catholic Church's opposition to abortion, there has been a blurring of lines between activists whose primary objection is to end abortion and those who are also opposed to contraception. Under the "religious freedom" banner, and in particular the Stand Up for Religious Freedom rallies, are a wide array of organizations that include those once considered fringe, such as Bereit's former employer, the anti-contraception American Life League, and Operation Rescue.

Birth control’s worst enemy

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 18:00:00 +0000

What’s a conservative activist to do when Jon Stewart digs up a CNN clip that's more than a decade old in which she opines that Viagra fills a legitimate healthcare need but contraceptives do not?

In Helen Alvaré’s case, the answer is to own it. Alvaré, a law professor at George Mason University, an advisor to Pope Benedict XVI's Pontifical Council for the Laity, and a former spokesperson for and current advisor to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, used her Daily Show cameo as the starting point for a recent speech at the Franciscan University of Steubenville. The mockery of Jon Stewart was proof, Alvaré suggested, that sexual libertines don’t understand the nature and purpose of sex, and that they certainly don’t understand religious liberty. Because, she argued, Stewart and the government share the belief that sex “is not related to procreation directly, intrinsically, axiomatically,” they simply cannot comprehend the gravity of how contraception damages women.

Don’t ask, don’t tell 2.0

Thu, 17 May 2012 15:50:00 +0000

People who thought the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” was the final word on discrimination against gay and lesbian soldiers were mistaken. As the House of Representatives debates the National Defense Authorization Act this week, Republicans will push for two amendments to permit the military to discriminate against gay and lesbian service members, using “religious freedom” as a cover.

One amendment, offered by Mississippi Republican Steven Palazzo, would prohibit the use of military property to “officiate, solemnize, or perform a marriage or marriage-like ceremony, involving anything other than the union of one man with one woman,” even on bases in states in which same-sex marriage is legal. Rep. Todd Akin’s, R-Mo., amendment would require the military to “accommodate the conscience and sincerely held moral principles and religious beliefs of the members of the Armed Forces concerning the appropriate and inappropriate expression of human sexuality” and would prohibit “adverse personnel actions” against them.

Obama’s marriage epiphany

Thu, 10 May 2012 00:01:00 +0000

“God is the author of marriage,” came the declaration of National Organization for Marriage president Brian Brown moments after President Obama’s historic ABC News interview aired this afternoon. It cannot be redefined, Brown charged, “according to presidential whim.”

Indeed not, but while Obama’s expressed support for marriage equality changes nothing legally, his words — and particularly those about how his faith informed his views — signal a new direction away from kowtowing to a religiously narrow concept of marriage. In previous statements Obama had parroted the conservative line about “one man and one woman” and just two years ago paid homage to “traditional marriage.” Today Obama explicitly rejected the idea that religious conservatives have a monopoly, either legally or rhetorically, on defining marriage as a straights-only institution.

Obama’s faith-based failure

Fri, 04 May 2012 15:46:00 +0000

"Compassionate conservatism" may seem a relic of the Bush era, but one of its signatures -- the so-called faith-based initiatives -- quietly persist under President Obama.

The Obama administration’s Friday night news dump of recommendations for reforming faith-based initiatives was yet another frustrating disappointment in the sad history of the president’s faith-based effort. More than a year late, the recommendations were reportedly delayed because the administration wanted to avoid further inflaming the fevered imaginations of those who claim he’s waging a “war on religion.” Insurance coverage for contraception and guaranteeing constitutional rights for Americans who receive taxpayer-funded social services from faith-based organizations are apparently two great tastes that don’t taste great together.

The original culture warrior

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:44:00 +0000

In his last public speech before he died on Saturday at the age of 80, evangelical hero Chuck Colson lambasted the Department of Health and Human Services regulation requiring employers to provide co-pay-free insurance coverage for contraception to their employees. The HHS mandate, said Colson, according to a transcript of the speech posted by World magazine, “is but the tip of the iceberg. It’s the latest manifestation of a growing hostility to Christianity.”

Colson is best known as Nixon’s hatchet man and Watergate felon turned prison evangelist. For his admirers, though, he was even bigger than his larger-than-life tale of redemption by salvation alone. He was not merely living proof of the salvific power of Christ; not merely a rescuer of the heretics; not merely a coalition builder of Catholics and evangelicals once divided by theological differences. He was nothing short of a battle commander in the cosmic culture wars, the manufactured showdown between the “Christian worldview” — the only “true” way to see things — and other “worldviews” he insisted were antithetical to it.

Time to talk Mormonism

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:08:00 +0000

At first blush, Mitt Romney’s reluctance to talk about his faith might seem like a positive development to any supporter of secularism in presidential politics. But he’s only tight-lipped about his Mormonism, not about religious right causes, which he is more than happy to take up. Even when the teachings of his own faith intersect, quite neatly on matters of sex and gender in particular, with the theo-politics of the Republican Party, he’s more likely to defend the Catholic Church than his own. If the past is any guide, at his upcoming commencement address at Liberty University, he's more likely to invoke the religious right's "Christian nation" mythology than to talk about Mormon values.

Paul Ryan’s biblical bilge

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 19:00:00 +0000

Rep. Paul Ryan R-Wis., the mastermind of what New York Times columnist Paul Krugman calls an “inconceivably cruel” budget, has once again tried to claim that Jesus would approve of it. Speaking to David Brody of Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network this week, Ryan described how his Catholic faith, particularly the tradition of subsidiarity, is reflected in his scheme to cut the deficit by slashing programs like Medicaid, Pell Grants, food stamps and job training.

Subsidiarity, Ryan contends, is nothing more than the theological justification for shrinking the federal government down to a size that will fit in Grover Norquist’s bathtub. If I were a cartoonist, I’d draw Ryan dreamily doodling Jesus’ name on the Federalist Society masthead.

The Obamacare-abortion myth

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:50:00 +0000

As activists with Tea Party Patriots and Americans for Prosperity rallied on the steps of the Supreme Court in opposition to the Affordable Care Act on Tuesday, another slice of the conservative movement was staking its own claim to the historic day. Anti-choice activist Lila Rose, founder of Live Action and best known for her deceptive undercover videos intended to bring down Planned Parenthood, declared Obamacare “our generation’s Roe v. Wade case.”

Even as liberals worry that the justices will strike down healthcare reform, conservatives like Rose are preparing to keep up the fight in case the Court upholds it. If Obamacare stands, she says activists will take to the streets, the courts, the voting booth and the halls of Congress much in the way they have fought legal abortion.

Rose’s invocation of Roe as a parable for Obamacare is emblematic of conservative confusion and hypocrisy when it comes to the law. Roe enshrined a woman’s right to be free from interference from the government in choosing an abortion — a medical procedure. Yet the right to be free from government “tyranny,” as Tea Party activists call it, is the same principle that animates conservative opposition to imagined “government bureaucrats” writing the rules on access to care. You wouldn’t want the government telling you what to do with your body, would you?

Bishops seek liberty to impose birth control dogma

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 14:00:00 +0000

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops held an administrative meeting in Washington Tuesday and Wednesday, after which they vowed to "continue our vigorous efforts at education and public advocacy on the principles of religious liberty."

In the run-up to the meeting, the president of the Bishops’ Conference, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, penned an unambiguously bellicose letter to his fellow bishops on March 2, stating, “We have made it clear in no uncertain terms to the government that we are not at peace with its invasive attempt to curtail the religious freedom we cherish as Catholics and Americans. We did not ask for this fight, but we will not run from it.”

What we should ask Romney about Mormonism

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 12:45:00 +0000

As a reporter who writes about political figures’ religion, I get asked this question a lot: How much of Mitt Romney’s Mormonism is fair game?

I usually start with Article VI of the Constitution: “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” His Mormonism, or any candidate’s religion or non-religion, should not be a qualifier, or a disqualifier. But the reality is that voters make judgments, some based on long-standing prejudices, some based on gut reactions, and some based on thinking a religious belief (planets, underwear, tribes of Israel roaming America) is “weird.” Or they listen to a Baptist minister who says Mormonism is a “cult.” Or not Christian. (Even if it’s not, should that matter?) Or theologically “dangerous.”