Ann Friedman says that even as we make progress on specific issues, the broader culture war seems to get uglier and uglier:
In other words, it's an appropriate moment to re-evaluate Andrew Sullivan's election thesis. Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin argued in Politico recently that Obama actually ended one culture war -- the one over gay rights and abortion -- and stepped into another. Now, they write, the fight is over "the role of government and the very meaning of America." But really, this is nothing new. For women, people of color, LGBT people, poor people -- those of us whose very lives were on the line in what Smith and Martin define as the "old" culture war -- it has always been about who is a "real American."
