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Andrew Sullivan UK Sunday Times.
Maybe we will one day look back on last week as the moment when the culture war in America finally eclipsed the other war President George Bush is still waging. Two apparently unconnected events converged to split the country in two. All it took to set the tinder ablaze was a presidential announcement and the opening of a film. Trivial in some respects. Anything but trivial in reality.
Last Tuesday, Bush announced he would support an amendment to the constitution of the United States that would forbid any state, city or locality from ever allowing two people of the same gender to marry. There is no more drastic action than amending the constitution. Banning civil marriage for gays therefore represents a huge and risky upping of the ante in the strife over marital rights.
The president had many other options. He could have said nothing. He could have said that the legal, legislative and court battles over gay marriage that are now going on in California and Massachusetts should be left alone to resolve themselves. He could have said that the Defence of Marriage Act, signed by Bill Clinton, his predecessor, in 1996, would prevent marriages in Massachusetts or California from being recognised in any other state, thereby minimising the scope of the rulings. Or he could have argued that if the act were struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional, he would support a constitutional amendment to ensure its principles remained the law of the land.
He could even have proposed some kind of compromise — backing federal civil unions for gay couples, speaking to gay citizens about his own views about religious marriage or explaining to the religious right that civil marriage is not a sectarian issue but a secular, civil one.
Instead, he dropped the equivalent of a political nuclear bomb. He repeated the word “sanctity” again and again when referring to marriage, which is a civil institution. The religious right was ecstatic. For evangelical Protestants, preventing gay couples from legally marrying is the most important issue in America right now. The bedrock base of Bush’s Republican party will not tolerate even the most minimal civil unions for gay couples — which is why Bush was forced to make an entire speech on the subject without saying the words “gay”, “lesbian”, “homosexual” or “civil union”.
When he had to utter some words to describe what protections he would deign to give gay relationships, he spluttered “legal arrangements”.
As he made the speech, Bush seemed to wince in discomfort. He wants the whole issue to go away, but he also knows politics requires that he use it, especially in a week when he sunk to new lows in the polls. So he dropped the bomb.
Bush’s calculation is that he can mobilise his political base while not alienating the moderate voters he needs if he is going to win the election. Using an inflammatory amendment is an old and trusty tool when you are behind in an election year.
His father backed a constitutional amendment to ban burning the American flag back in 1988. It never passed; but Bush Sr was able to portray his opponent, Michael Dukakis, as a wimpy liberal because he believed in free speech — even to the extent of letting protesters incinerate Old Glory.
This year, Bush’s political advisers realised that John Kerry could be skewered on the issue. Kerry is from Massachusetts, where the first civil marriage licences for gays will be issued in May. If Bush can make Kerry seem pro-gay, he calculates he can peel away some conservative Democrats.
It’s called a “wedge issue”. You use a disliked minority — black criminals, gay couples; you get your opponent to defend them; then you get to win over all those offended by the association. Nifty. And disgusting.
The trouble is, this isn’t 1988. Gays are by no means the reviled minority they once were. And by raising the issue to the level of a constitutional amendment, Bush shifts the grounds of the debate. Polls show that about 60% of Americans oppose civil marriage for gays. But other polls show that a narrow majority also opposes amending the constitution to prevent it.
Even those Americans who oppose letting gays marry tend to think an amendment is too extreme a step and that the matter should be left to individual states.
The constitution has never before been used to limit civil rights, only to expand them. Denying rights to one group of Americans — gays — might also conflict with other amendments guaranteeing equal protection of the laws or separation of church and state. And the last amendment designed to enact social policy sponsored by religious groups — that prohibited the sale of alcohol — was not exactly a good precedent.
Any amendment is also very hard to pass. It requires two-thirds of the House of Representatives and the Senate, then it needs to be ratified by three-quarters of the state legislatures. Even its most passionate religious supporters acknowledge they will need a miracle to get it through.
But in some ways Bush had no choice. His political base is the growing population of white evangelical Protestants whose pastors have been inveighing against the menace of gay marriage. All the inchoate anxieties of the modern world — sex and violence on television, abortion, feminism, divorce — have somehow coalesced on this issue. While the Bible-belt states have some of the highest divorce rates in the country (Texas has double the rate of Massachusetts), the main focus is on the threat of homosexuality. When the mayor of San Francisco started issuing civil licences to gay couples on Valentine’s Day this year, it sent the religious right into hysteria. They threatened to withhold their support if Bush didn’t stop it.
But at the same time, in the big cities, gays are part of the mainstream. One-third of Americans support gay marriage and more support civil unions; gays are everywhere in popular culture (the television series Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is just the tip of the iceberg). There are openly gay congressmen, mayors, talk-show hosts, comedians, film actors.
As one part of the country has intensified its religiosity and abhorrence of gay relationships, another part — particularly those under 30 years of age — is adamant about gay normality and equality and supports gay marriage. Among independent voters, the amendment is opposed by almost 60%. So one America looked at the images in San Francisco and sent bouquets of flowers. The other America went ballistic.
Into this came Mel Gibson with a film about the Passion of Jesus. In most circumstances this kind of movie would be primarily a cultural event. But this time it was deeply politicised. The film was shown in advance of its general release to select groups of religious-right intellectuals, theologians and activists — as well as to very conservative Catholics.
The word was out: this was a conservative movie and all conservatives were urged to endorse it. Evangelical groups booked cinemas for thousands in advance — despite the fact that the film (which I had the misfortune of sitting through on opening night) is medieval in its Catholicism and anti-semitism. But today’s social conservatives in America form what appears to be a popular front. Old Catholic-Protestant divisions are subsumed under the rubric of opposition to secular, liberal America.
National Review, a good bellwether of social conservatism, said the film was better than any ever made. Charges of anti-semitism were dismissed as “chutzpah” by the head of the conservative Catholic League. Other contributors focused on the film’s implicit rebuke to Hollywood: “For the first time the film industry will realise that profits have been forfeited over the years by creating films which were out of sync with the interests of the citizens.”
Even Jewish conservatives toed the party line. The classic and gratuitously anti-semitic imagery in the film was overlooked in the interests of solidarity with the social-conservative cause.
I have yet to read a single conservative pundit criticise the movie. My own view is that it is largely a piece of soul-deadening, pornographic sadism. If Quentin Tarantino became a member of Opus Dei, this is the kind of film he would make. And with 20 minutes of a man being flayed alive as the centrepiece, social conservatives will never be able to criticise film violence again.
But as soon as you venture outside the conservative or religious press, the reaction is equally strong. In the liberal New Republic, Leon Wieseltier wrote: “It is a repulsive masochistic fantasy, a sacred snuff film.”
Frank Rich, of The New York Times, said of the movie’s defenders: “They practise what can only be called spiritual McCarthyism, a witch-hunt in which ‘secularists’ are targeted as if they were subversives and those who wrap themselves in God are patriots.”
I agree with those who found the film repulsive in almost every respect. But that is not the point. The point is that America saw two different films. The enormous gulf between viewpoints shows no sign of moderating.
This is not merely a cultural divide, it is a political-cultural divide, a dangerous and at times frightening curdling of the United States into two countries. We knew already that these two countries existed. We found out in the last election that they are excruciatingly evenly matched. But what we are beginning to realise is that, even during the war on terror, there is no chance of reconciliation. Indeed, war is breaking out.
In the gay marriage debate, each side believes the other is morally wrong. One side sees the very existence of marriages for gay people as tantamount to the abolition of America. The other side sees writing anti-gay discrimination into the constitution as an emblem that they are about to be written out of their own country.
One side looks at a movie and sees love; the other side looks and sees hate. Gays and evangelicals; Jews and Catholics; urbanites and heartlanders; blacks and whites.
President Bush came into office pledging to be a “uniter not a divider”. But the nation under his leadership has rarely been more polarised. The war is upon us. And the presidential election will be its battleground.
Maybe we will one day look back on last week as the moment when the culture war in America finally eclipsed the other war President George Bush is still waging. Two apparently unconnected events converged to split the country in two. All it took to set the tinder ablaze was a presidential announcement and the opening of a film. Trivial in some respects. Anything but trivial in reality.
Last Tuesday, Bush announced he would support an amendment to the constitution of the United States that would forbid any state, city or locality from ever allowing two people of the same gender to marry. There is no more drastic action than amending the constitution. Banning civil marriage for gays therefore represents a huge and risky upping of the ante in the strife over marital rights.
The president had many other options. He could have said nothing. He could have said that the legal, legislative and court battles over gay marriage that are now going on in California and Massachusetts should be left alone to resolve themselves. He could have said that the Defence of Marriage Act, signed by Bill Clinton, his predecessor, in 1996, would prevent marriages in Massachusetts or California from being recognised in any other state, thereby minimising the scope of the rulings. Or he could have argued that if the act were struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional, he would support a constitutional amendment to ensure its principles remained the law of the land.
He could even have proposed some kind of compromise — backing federal civil unions for gay couples, speaking to gay citizens about his own views about religious marriage or explaining to the religious right that civil marriage is not a sectarian issue but a secular, civil one.
Instead, he dropped the equivalent of a political nuclear bomb. He repeated the word “sanctity” again and again when referring to marriage, which is a civil institution. The religious right was ecstatic. For evangelical Protestants, preventing gay couples from legally marrying is the most important issue in America right now. The bedrock base of Bush’s Republican party will not tolerate even the most minimal civil unions for gay couples — which is why Bush was forced to make an entire speech on the subject without saying the words “gay”, “lesbian”, “homosexual” or “civil union”.
When he had to utter some words to describe what protections he would deign to give gay relationships, he spluttered “legal arrangements”.
As he made the speech, Bush seemed to wince in discomfort. He wants the whole issue to go away, but he also knows politics requires that he use it, especially in a week when he sunk to new lows in the polls. So he dropped the bomb.
Bush’s calculation is that he can mobilise his political base while not alienating the moderate voters he needs if he is going to win the election. Using an inflammatory amendment is an old and trusty tool when you are behind in an election year.
His father backed a constitutional amendment to ban burning the American flag back in 1988. It never passed; but Bush Sr was able to portray his opponent, Michael Dukakis, as a wimpy liberal because he believed in free speech — even to the extent of letting protesters incinerate Old Glory.
This year, Bush’s political advisers realised that John Kerry could be skewered on the issue. Kerry is from Massachusetts, where the first civil marriage licences for gays will be issued in May. If Bush can make Kerry seem pro-gay, he calculates he can peel away some conservative Democrats.
It’s called a “wedge issue”. You use a disliked minority — black criminals, gay couples; you get your opponent to defend them; then you get to win over all those offended by the association. Nifty. And disgusting.
The trouble is, this isn’t 1988. Gays are by no means the reviled minority they once were. And by raising the issue to the level of a constitutional amendment, Bush shifts the grounds of the debate. Polls show that about 60% of Americans oppose civil marriage for gays. But other polls show that a narrow majority also opposes amending the constitution to prevent it.
Even those Americans who oppose letting gays marry tend to think an amendment is too extreme a step and that the matter should be left to individual states.
The constitution has never before been used to limit civil rights, only to expand them. Denying rights to one group of Americans — gays — might also conflict with other amendments guaranteeing equal protection of the laws or separation of church and state. And the last amendment designed to enact social policy sponsored by religious groups — that prohibited the sale of alcohol — was not exactly a good precedent.
Any amendment is also very hard to pass. It requires two-thirds of the House of Representatives and the Senate, then it needs to be ratified by three-quarters of the state legislatures. Even its most passionate religious supporters acknowledge they will need a miracle to get it through.
But in some ways Bush had no choice. His political base is the growing population of white evangelical Protestants whose pastors have been inveighing against the menace of gay marriage. All the inchoate anxieties of the modern world — sex and violence on television, abortion, feminism, divorce — have somehow coalesced on this issue. While the Bible-belt states have some of the highest divorce rates in the country (Texas has double the rate of Massachusetts), the main focus is on the threat of homosexuality. When the mayor of San Francisco started issuing civil licences to gay couples on Valentine’s Day this year, it sent the religious right into hysteria. They threatened to withhold their support if Bush didn’t stop it.
But at the same time, in the big cities, gays are part of the mainstream. One-third of Americans support gay marriage and more support civil unions; gays are everywhere in popular culture (the television series Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is just the tip of the iceberg). There are openly gay congressmen, mayors, talk-show hosts, comedians, film actors.
As one part of the country has intensified its religiosity and abhorrence of gay relationships, another part — particularly those under 30 years of age — is adamant about gay normality and equality and supports gay marriage. Among independent voters, the amendment is opposed by almost 60%. So one America looked at the images in San Francisco and sent bouquets of flowers. The other America went ballistic.
Into this came Mel Gibson with a film about the Passion of Jesus. In most circumstances this kind of movie would be primarily a cultural event. But this time it was deeply politicised. The film was shown in advance of its general release to select groups of religious-right intellectuals, theologians and activists — as well as to very conservative Catholics.
The word was out: this was a conservative movie and all conservatives were urged to endorse it. Evangelical groups booked cinemas for thousands in advance — despite the fact that the film (which I had the misfortune of sitting through on opening night) is medieval in its Catholicism and anti-semitism. But today’s social conservatives in America form what appears to be a popular front. Old Catholic-Protestant divisions are subsumed under the rubric of opposition to secular, liberal America.
National Review, a good bellwether of social conservatism, said the film was better than any ever made. Charges of anti-semitism were dismissed as “chutzpah” by the head of the conservative Catholic League. Other contributors focused on the film’s implicit rebuke to Hollywood: “For the first time the film industry will realise that profits have been forfeited over the years by creating films which were out of sync with the interests of the citizens.”
Even Jewish conservatives toed the party line. The classic and gratuitously anti-semitic imagery in the film was overlooked in the interests of solidarity with the social-conservative cause.
I have yet to read a single conservative pundit criticise the movie. My own view is that it is largely a piece of soul-deadening, pornographic sadism. If Quentin Tarantino became a member of Opus Dei, this is the kind of film he would make. And with 20 minutes of a man being flayed alive as the centrepiece, social conservatives will never be able to criticise film violence again.
But as soon as you venture outside the conservative or religious press, the reaction is equally strong. In the liberal New Republic, Leon Wieseltier wrote: “It is a repulsive masochistic fantasy, a sacred snuff film.”
Frank Rich, of The New York Times, said of the movie’s defenders: “They practise what can only be called spiritual McCarthyism, a witch-hunt in which ‘secularists’ are targeted as if they were subversives and those who wrap themselves in God are patriots.”
I agree with those who found the film repulsive in almost every respect. But that is not the point. The point is that America saw two different films. The enormous gulf between viewpoints shows no sign of moderating.
This is not merely a cultural divide, it is a political-cultural divide, a dangerous and at times frightening curdling of the United States into two countries. We knew already that these two countries existed. We found out in the last election that they are excruciatingly evenly matched. But what we are beginning to realise is that, even during the war on terror, there is no chance of reconciliation. Indeed, war is breaking out.
In the gay marriage debate, each side believes the other is morally wrong. One side sees the very existence of marriages for gay people as tantamount to the abolition of America. The other side sees writing anti-gay discrimination into the constitution as an emblem that they are about to be written out of their own country.
One side looks at a movie and sees love; the other side looks and sees hate. Gays and evangelicals; Jews and Catholics; urbanites and heartlanders; blacks and whites.
President Bush came into office pledging to be a “uniter not a divider”. But the nation under his leadership has rarely been more polarised. The war is upon us. And the presidential election will be its battleground.
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