These days I settle for small and subtle signs of progress. Take the story inthe February 15 Washington Post on the demise of a proposal in the Virginia legislature that would have required public-school students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. State Senator Warren E. Barry--the outraged sponsor of the legislation, which was amended by his senate colleagues--blamed "libertarians and liberals" on the education committee of Virginia's house of representatives for softening his bill by exempting students who had a religious or philosophical objection to reciting the pledge. Withdrawing the defanged bill in protest, Barry called the 23 members of the committee "spineless pinkos," which, the Post felt compelled to explain, is "a Cold War reference to Communist sympathizers." Surely we've progressed a little if a phrase like "spineless pinkos" has passed out of the vernacular.
Still, the culture of the 1950s remains appealing to some. "It may be thetwenty-first century out there, but in this house it's 1954," Tony Sopranoreminded his daughter on the HBO series The Sopranos. It's not hard to imagine social conservatives nodding their heads in agreement (though many of them consider the popularity of The Sopranos another sign of civilization's decline). If newly empowered right-wing moralists prevail, it may soon be 1954 in everybody's house.
What's most alluring to conservatives about the culture of the 1950s are themarriage myths it helped perpetuate. My grade school readers were replete withpictures of contented suburban, two-parent families: They lived behind whitepicket fences and attended church on Sunday; the women wore dresses and highheels at home. You can measure the divide between feminists and traditionalistsby the way they react to this vision of bliss. Feminists tend to prefer a 50 percent divorce rate to the feminine mystique that accompanied prefeministnotions of marital stability. Traditionalists view divorce as a primary socialill, quite literally.
"Married people live longer and healthier lives," according to newspapercolumnist Maggie Gallagher, co-author with Linda J. Waite of The Case forMarriage. A spokeswoman for the right-wing marriage movement, Gallagher imagines that marriage "wards off death" because it promotes healthier habits: Married people are "less likely to hang out late at night in bars, get into fights, drink too much, or drive too fast. They save money and pay their bills, responsibly, reducing financial stresses that undercut health." She doesn't add that married people are a lot more likely to commit adultery. Hasn't she ever been accosted by a drunken married man who was hanging out late at night in a bar?
Or are philandering spouses mere anomalies? According to Gallagher, marriedpersons have less incentive to loiter late in bars because "to top it off, theyeven have better sex, more often, than couples who are not married." Maybeso--though the sexual satisfaction of married couples may owe something to thehigh divorce rate.
But let's agree that people do derive many personal as well as economicbenefits from amicable, stable marriages. If the drive to strengthen marriagewere pragmatic, as Gallagher makes it seem, there'd be much less opposition togay marriages. Surely gay people and their children would also benefit fromwedded bliss, or at least wedded stability, and society would benefit in turn.But while social-issue conservatives rally around calls for marriage education inpublic schools and for laws severely restricting divorce, they rally againstlegislation that would give gay couples equal rights to wed (or to work--theyalso oppose equal-employment laws). "Homosexuality is a permanent, definingissue" for the Christian right, Frederick Clarkson observes in The Public Eye,the informative magazine of Political Research Associates.
Moralism, not a pragmatic concern for health and welfare, drives the marriagemovement. The conservative crusade to promote marriage exemplifies theantilibertarianism of the right, exposing the hypocrisy of its demands forsmaller government and professed disdain for social engineering. The HeritageFoundation has proposed establishing a federal "marriage office," and variousstates are experimenting with their own forms of bureaucratic interference withprivate life. Arizona, Arkansas, and Louisiana recognize covenant marriages:prenuptial agreements that greatly restrict the right to divorce. (Arkansas is inthe midst of a "marital emergency," according to its governor, Mike Huckabee.)Divorce rates are particularly high in several Bible Belt states, includingArkansas and Oklahoma--which has budgeted $10 million for marriage counselingand has hired "marriage ambassadors" to visit talk shows and schools; May 5 was"Save Your Marriage before It Starts Day" for Oklahomans. Florida requires highschools to offer classes in marriage and relationships, and many statelegislatures are considering laws that would mandate counseling before marriage or divorce.
Conservative anxiety about marriage reflected by these measures has beenheightened by recently released census figures showing that fewer than 24 percentof American households consist of married couples with kids. Meanwhile, thepercentage of families headed by single mothers has risen 25 percent in the past10 years. "We're losing; there isn't any question about it," virtuecrat WilliamBennett warns.
It's not surprising that the crusade to reverse these trends by promotingtraditional heterosexual marriage and restricting divorce coincides with aretreat from feminist campaigns for freedom and economic equality. Whileconsidering proposals for a federal marriage office, the Bush administration hasclosed the White House Office for Women's Initiatives and Outreach, which servedas a liaison for women's advocacy groups. The president has appointed staunchantifeminist opponents of affirmative action to top economic and labor jobs(although he himself is a deft practitioner of affirmative action, as his cabinetand court appointments show). He moved quickly to curtail abortion rights--andeven speech about abortion--by reinstituting a ban on abortion counseling byinternational family-planning organizations that receive U.S. funding. Otheranti-choice initiatives will be more subtle: The proposed federal marriage officewould redirect some family-planning funding to teen-abstinence programs.
Liberals routinely condemn advocates of abstinence programs or covenantmarriages for trying to "legislate morality," but law and policy are naturallymoralistic. Equal-employment laws are not simply pragmatic economic measures;they reflect a consensus about the immorality of discrimination--a consensusthat liberals fought hard to create. Workplace regulations in general--minimumwage laws and health-and-safety regulations--are considered moral mandates bymany on the left. Hate-crime legislation and campus speech codes all reflect theleft's moralism; so do efforts to abolish the death penalty and to end the deeplyimmoral war on drugs. So attacking right-wing moralism can be a bit misleading,if not downright hypocritical.
I have no quarrel with efforts to use law to promote morality; that's partlywhat it's for. I do object fiercely to the particular moral code that the rightembraces. (I'm not always in agreement with left-wing moralists, either,especially when they seek to limit speech.) The current regime envisions anideal world in which heterosexual couples can't divorce and gay couples can'tmarry, women cannot get an abortion, and even contraception is scarce, especiallyfor teens. Seriously ill people risk being imprisoned for using marijuana torelieve pain and nausea and maybe even to prolong their lives. Poor people areimprisoned and killed by the state without ever receiving fair trials. Childrenwill recite the Pledge of Allegiance, or else. It's not my moral vision ofliberty, or justice, for all.
