Culture Wars The Struggle to Define America by James Davison Hunter (z-lib.org)

10 INTRODUCTION

or Memphis or in the hinterlands of the country where people don't know any gays. But we have it only a few blocks away."

Richmond Young is thirty-eight years old and an editor at a legal publishing firm. His roots in San Francisco are about as deep as any Californian's can be; his family arrived in 1856. Some of his ancestral attachments to the city are fairly prominent. One grandfather was a superior court judge; the other was president of the San Francisco Bar Association. Richmond traces his political roots to the legacy of his maternal grandfather (the judge), who was an early-twentieth-century pro- gressive-a "classic middle-class reformer," as Richmond describes him. His grandfather's legacy influenced the. formation of his own political ideals, ideals that crystallized during his involvement in the antiwar protests of the 1960s. Even as a teenager, Richmond walked the precincts for Eugene McCarthy. It was when he was in his mid-twenties, however, that he became politically active on behalf of gay rights issues. He had known he was a homosexual since he was nineteen, but had repressed th~ inclination for seven years. Then the "Briggs Initiative,"· requiring the dismissal of homosexual teachers from public schools, was introduced into the state legislature. "It was time," Richmond says, "to come out of the closet and to fight the discrimination."

Addin to this complex portrait is the fact that Richmond Young

is a so an adult conve	to a o 1cism. He was twenty-rune years old at
~1me. "One mght,11	he recounted, '4: had a sudden impression or

realization of the reality of Jesus and of God. It came over me like a sudden revelation, and I do think it was the same experience that other people describe as being born again." Richmond Young's conversion gives him another ironic point of agreement with Chuck Mcllhenny. Richmond turned to Catholicism rather than Protestantism, however. "My lover at the time," he says, "was a devout Catholic." Through him Richmond met people "whose Catholicism was an integral part of their lives-not just a sterile set of doctrines." He had philosophical and theological reasons for becoming a Catholic as well, one being that, as he puts it, "Catholics don't believe in the inerrancy of the Bible." Richmond's view of Catholicism as a universal church also led him to feel that Catholicism "was more accepting of deviations or differences than Protestantism. The church," he explains, "has always been a part of the history of the world. It never set itself apart. Its sins are also mankind's sins."

Yet the Catholic church does oppose homosexuality, as resolutely as do Evangelical churches like Chuck's. How then does Richmond

PROLOGUE II

reconcile his sexual orientation with his newfound Catholic faith? He argues that the Church may be a vehicle of divine grace, but the Church itself is not a divine institution. It is a human institution, and like any human institution, it makes mistakes. Richmond believes, therefore, that the traditional Catholic opposition to homosexuality results not from divine revelation but from an unthinking accommodation to prevailing cultural opinion. As he puts it, "On the matter of sexuality, the Church reflects ancient prejudices designed to control people-to make them more dependent on the Church-rather than the true teachings of Jesus." The teachings of the hierarchy on homosexuality, then, really don't apply. Homosexuality, he concludes, is not a sin at all. "Jesus," he reflects, "wasn't interested in what people did in bed but with whether people deal with others in a loving and compassionate way. In the end, Christ will judge us on the basis of our actions toward others."

One sees a certain symmetry between Richmond's religious faith and his political ideals. Central to his religious faith is the belief that "Jesus came to offer liberation for anyone who would listen." But in his view, the liberation Jesus brings is not a personal liberation from the "sin of homosexuality," as Chuck would have it, but rather the liberation of individuals to live according to the dictates of personal conscience and style, and the liberation of society as a whole from the prejudices and intolerances that keep it from being genuinely free. Says Richmond, "I see Jesus recognizing everyone's radical equality."

The ideals of liberation and equality that he sees embodied in the life of Jesus provide a theological foundation for his views of politics and national life. The same themes are pFOnounced. "The essence of Americanism to me," he contends, "is contained in the words of the Declaration of Independence, particularly in the lines that say, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' That, to me, expresses the essence of Americanism. It's what America is. We're not really much else except for that. I mean, everything else is sort of decoration. Our other accomplishments are not all that different from other countries. But our essential Americanism and what sets us apart are contained in those words."

It is in the context of this political philosophy that Richmond sees both his own struggle as a politically conscious homosexual and the struggle of the larger gay and lesbian community. He puts it this way: "Rights always have an existence, but our perception of their existence and what kinds of rights people are seen to have are determinedby our

12	INTRODUCTION

historical circumstances. I believe that as we grow in understanding and knowledge we·develpp a fuller understanding of the concept of rights, and as a consequence, the list of things that qualify as rights .expands. The men who wrote the Declaration of Independence, for example, originally only applied its principles to white males who owned property and who belonged to established churches. Since then, however, the whole doctrine of who has access to civil rights has continued to broaden. I think of gay people as those who stand in the line with many others who are waiting to have their claim on that part of the Declaration of Independence recognized. We're just the latest to get in line for that."

All of this quite naturally leads Richmond Young to a very different view of San Francisco than the one held by Chuck Mcllhenny. in sharp contrast to Chuck's view of the city as a cesspool of moral decay, Richmond says, "I like to think of San Francisco as the vanguard of fulfilling the Declaration [of Independence]. San Francisco ha~ a reputation of tolerance, and a history of enjoying and reveling in eccentricity. That's just part of the common experience and identity of the city." How then does he e~plain the tremendous political power of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and the Evangelical churches, both in the Bay Area and in the country as a whole? "I'd like to think it is their last spasm before they go into final decline," he says, laughing. "At least I hope it is!"

DISPATCH: 7 MAY, NEW YORK

Hundreds of people gathered in front of an abortion clinic in midtown Manhattan today to protest abortion. Many of the demonstrators were native New Yorkers, but they were joined by hundreds of others who had come from as far away as California, Texas, and North Carolina- a total of thirty-live states. What made today's rally unique was that the protest involved civil disobedience-a "rescue," as the leaders of the demonstration put it. The locations of the clinics to be picketed were kept secret right up to the time of the protest in order to maximize the surprise and effect of the action. By sitting, standing, or marching in front of the clinic, the picketers created a human barricade, preventing anyone from going in or feaving. According to a spokesman, thi:. was the protesters' objective-to prevent this clinic and every other one they visited from conducting abortions for one full day. Despite the protesters' prayers and hymns, the air was thick with tension. Pro-choice advocates who had learned of the demonstration argued, chanted, and carried

PROLOGUE

13

their own placards. Tempers flared on both sides until police finally arrived and carried away the protesters. Eight hundred people were arrested, including four rabbis, several Evangelical Protestant pastors, and half a dozen Roman Catholic leaders.

Yehuda Levin

One of the protesters arrested that day was Yehuda Levin, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi from Brooklyn. It was the first time he had participated in a "rescue," but as someone whose thinking on abortion had crystallized over the previous several years, he felt it was time to express his opposition to the practice through this kind of action. Though he would become involved in other rescue activities later that summer in Atlanta, the events of 7 May remained fixed in his memory: the crowd, the police, the arguing and shouting, the confusion, being carried onto a police bus with dozens of others and being booked at the local station. Maybe he remembered that particular day so well because he was pictured on the

_front page of Newsday the next day, holding a sign that read, "New York Rabbis Condemn Abortion."

As a Jew, Yehuda opposes abortion for reasons different from those of the Catholics or Evangelicals who participate in the "rescues," yet his are no less binding. The ultimate reason he opposes abortion, Yehuda says, is that God opposes it. "The Torah tells tis that feticide is prohibited," he explains. "It's not only prohibited, it's equated with a capital offense. That really is the beginning and the end of the subject." At a more philosophical and theological level, he argues that the very first commandment is to be fruitful and multiply. In this, God offers to humankind a partnership in creation-the act of producing children. "When a person destroys that seed," Yehuda says, "they are in effect rejecting this partnership.... To destroy this seed is to abrogate the covenant, and that's one of the most serious infringements of our tradition there is."

Thinking back, he says, he never could have imagined himself in this situation ten years earlier, as he was finishing his rabbinic training. "I had little knowledge of Roe v. Wade," he admits, "no idea of how many abortions were being performed every year in America and scant knowledge of what abortion was in the first place. It was beyond my purview." Indeed, Yehuda's whole world had been that of Orthodox Judaism--;- the community of other believers, the yearly traditions and daily observances, and the yeshiva. As he put it, "I had very little contact with

14 INTRODUCTION

the Gentile world. I was living in a ghetto without walls. You see, it is inbred within our community that what goes on in the outside world is meshugah [crazy]. Just look at what the newspapers report or see what the billboards advertise. So if it is meshugah, why should we bother with it." At the age of twenty-four, however, Yehuda's awareness of the world outside of his religious community began to grow. "I began to lea.rn up front," he says, "that a war was being waged between those who were concerned ivith traditional morality and those who wanted to break down as many barriers as possible."

This realization would be the beginning of a new chapter in Yehuda's life. Not long after his graduation from rabbinical school, he was invited to give the invocation at a March for Life rally in Washington, D.C., where he met the famous pro-life activist Nellie Gray and several members of Congress and saw over 100,000 people show their support for "the sanctity of human life." "It.gave me a tremendous jolt," he says, "to see and encou.nter so many Gentiles with deep moral sensibilities that were akin to mine. They were fighting the meshugah." This experience and a few others like it made Yehuda realize-indeed, in his view, divine providence was leading him to see-that "the Orthodox were not a dynamic force in this struggle-but should be." The latter belief spurred him to speak out publicly about the evil of abortion in America and about the general moral· decline that had brought this to pass.· It also prompted him to run for Congress against the Democratic incumbent, Stephen Solarz. With no political organization and no experience, Yehuda not only obtained the Republican nomination (despite being a registered Democrat) but by his count acquired 35 percent of the vote as the district's Right to Life candidate. (It happened to be the district with the single highest concentration of Orthodox Jews in the country.) A year later, Yehuda's conviction moved him to run for mayor of New ·York City. He claims he had no illusions about winning, and indeed, he gained no more than 1 percent of the vote. His goal was not to win but to distance traditional Jews from the liberal incumbent, who to most people seemed "the quintessential Jew." "I felt I had an obligation to demonstrate clearly," he says, "that we did not countenance many of the things that the mayor was doing."

For Yehuda, abortion is merely one symbol of a larger pattern of moral decline in America. "Obviously," he says, "society is heading down a very, very dangerous roa~." The source of the problem is clear: "We have got to be blind not to see a parallel between the decline of religion and religious values ... and all the other things that are happening

PROLOGUE

15

today." He insists that he is not acrusader, that he never set out to become involved the way he has, bui: that he came to see that he had a "religious obligation," as he put it, to take the message of God's righteousness "to the middle of the city" (a reference to Lot and his family in the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah). As for Chuck Mcllhenny, the scriptures of Yehuda's religious tradition not only shape his views on moral issues like abortion, but also compel him, perhaps even against his personal inclinations, to take a public stand on behalf of what he believes to be God's created purposes for human society, including the protection of unborn children.

His aggressive and even confrontational style of "going to the middle of the city" has made Yehuda not simply a curiosity but a serious annoyance to many of his fellow New Yorkers. His personal abrasiveness, some have said, is legendary. He tells, for example, of the time he and a number of other clergy marched into the office of the chair of the Board of Education to demand a meeting, in response to a newly initiated sex education curriculum that they considered "totally devoid of values." Even Yehuda admits that his methods have been excessive froi;n time to time, but he considers his actions to be consistent with his passionate stand on the issue of values and morality. The host of a local television show once observed that it seemed rather inappropriate, even ·~undig­ nified," for a man of the cloth to do the things he did. "What is it to me,'' Yehuda came back sharply, "if I lose some of my dignity. You tell me, what does it take to get you upset? Do they have to rape your wife and daughter in Central Park? Is that when you start screaming?"

Hostility toward Yehuda's actions has come not only from non-Jews but from .members of the broader Jewish community in New York. Outside of the Orthodox and some parts of the Conservative movements in Judaism, his views on abortion, and on moral decline in America more generally, are not widely held. But to Yehuda, his liberal Jewish opponents do not really qualify as Jews. "If we were to give them a test," he says, "use any standard recognized by the most uneducated, uninitiated Gentile as to what would constitute Jewish affiliation-Sabbath obser-. vance, eating kosher, frowning on adultery, the Ten Commandmentsthese people would not match up in any way. So therefore I think that they are practicing a religion which is not Judaism. They certainly are not practicing Judaism as it was practiced by their grandparents." One particular experience a few years back crystallized Yehuda's feelings toward such people; perhaps indelibly. He tells the story this way: "I was at the annual New York City Council hearings on gay rights when

16	INTRODUCTION

roughly fifty HasidiC Jews came in. All were dressed in their long gabardine coats and black hats, beards and side curls. Some were wearing sackcloth. All of a sudden, a number of militant homosexuals stood up, raised their hand in a Nazi-style salute and began to chant, 'Sieg heill Sieg heill Sieg heil!' Everyone in the room was paralyzed. How could they accuse us-those who suffered and died in the Holocaust-of being Nazis? Was itjust because we are morally opposed to homosexual license? In the midst of this, I stood up and yelled above the chanting at the head of the City Council-:-who happened to be a liberal Jew-and [who was] not responding at all, 'Have you no pride as a Jew? These are your people! Are you going to say nothing! Aren't you ashamed of yourself?' The city councilwoman in charge finally stood up and gaveled the room to order-but did so without giving but a word of chastisement for what they had done. This was horrifying to me. It showed me that liberal Jews are more concerned with appeasing the forces of immorality than they are of representing or defending their own people." To Yehuda, politically and religiously liberal Jews have "painted a black eye" on the Jewish community. Thus, besides giving witness to religious and moral truth, he also sees his role as "clearing the record on where the Jewish community stands and to be a voice amongst other voices in the center of the city crying out against injustice and immorality."

"To be a voice amongst other voices ..." While Yehuda has been alienated from many in the broader Jewish community, over the years he has found himself making common cause with others outside of Judaism-namely, many Catholics and Fundamentalist Protestants. These are the others whom he sees crying out against injustice and immorality. One of the women participating in an ad hoc counterprotest on the day of the rescue, Yehuda recalls, spoke harshly to him about just this. "You're aJew,"she screamed at him. "How can you stand with these Nazis? They'll get you next." In his own mind, he could stand there in common cause with the Evangelicals and Catholics because he and the larger Orthodox Jewish community "very much shared the values and concerns of those in the Christian community who were fighting to maintain those values."

Does he mind practicing Christians having such an influence on American public life? Not really, he contends, particularly if the alternative is a completely secular society. In the rabbinic tradition, Yehuda responds with a parable: "In Europe at the time when Jews were thirdrate citizens, it was not uncommon for them to get bloodied and beaten up-and they didn't have much recourse in a cri~inal justice system.

PROLOGUE

17

This kind of thing happened a lot when they traveled and often it was the Gentile wagon drivers themselves who perpetrated these crimes. So how did a Jew know what was going to happen to him when he traveled? Rabbinic legend has it that the Jew should watch the wagon driver closely as he passed a church. If the driver made the sign of the cross the Jew should continue on his journey; if he didn't make the sign of a cross, the Jew should ask to be dropped off right there. Why? It was believed that if the driver manifested enough of a religious feeling to make the sign of the cross-even though making the sign of the cross is not exactly the Jewish thing to do-the odds were he would be safe. If the driver didn't show any religious devotion, the risk of being manhandled later on in the journey was much greater. That's my attitude toward the idea of a Christian majority in America.... When you have a secular society, you have the rapists and the muggers and the family breakers and you have what is happening today.... Quite frankly, it would be better if we did things separately, the way we've always d~me them. But we can have a greater impact sometimes if we work together.... We traditional Jews appreciate any positive efforts on the part of the Christian clergy and leaders to protect moral standards.... We may not be as strong as the more liberal segments of the Jewish community, but we stand with [the Christian leadership] to the best of our abilities."

Bea Blair

For Bea Blair, the event that took place on that morning in early May and others like it were actions she has come to expect. For her, the socalled rescue was not about saving babies, but, as she put it, about "denying women the right to health care"-in some cases the right to get an abortion, in others, the right to something as innocuous as contraceptives, or as "pro-life" as infertility treatment. More than this, the "rescue" represented the adoption of certain terrorist tactics by the "antichoice" movement to further thefr ends. Thus, Bea rejects the claim of Rabbi Levin and others in the pro-life movement that their protests follow in the tradition of Martin Luther King,Jr.'s civil rights movement. "Martin Lu.ther King and his followers never screamed and yelled at people," she says. "They were sitting, they were quiet, and they never interfered with other people's rights.'' She recognizes that the antiabortionists have probably not killed anyone, but explains that in these rescues, they scream at people entering the clinic, calling these patients

18 INTRODUCTION

murderers. "If the right-to-life movement sees itself as nonviolent, then Operation Rescue really gives the lie to that."

Though echoed by many others, Bea's opinions on the abortion issue carry a particular authority, for she is an ordained Episcopal priest. As president of a New York chapter of the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, she leads a group of religious leaders and laity· from a wide array of denominations-Protestant, Catholic, Jewish; and humanistwho believe that there is a religious pro-choice position. Their chief goal is to make the case that the pro-life movement does not have a monopoly. on the abortion issue-that in fact, one can be religious and pro-choice at the same time.

As an Episcopalian, Bea does not believe that abortion is murder because she does not believe that the fetus becomes a person until it is born. "The fetus is life," she explains, "and it is human, but it is not a person-just as an acorn is not an oak tree." She comes to this view in part because, unlike Yehuda Levin or Chuck Mcllhenny, she is not a scriptural literalist. Scripture, she contends, is not a document frozen in time: "The Bible is a history of our growing understanding of God. It needs to be read, listened to, and studied in its context." So too, in the context of modern society, "people have to interpret the Scripture or

·the traditions for themselves." Nevertheless, Bea points out that "there are passages in the Bible that support my point of view on abortion.... The book of Genesis in the Old Testament reads that 'God created Adam from the dust of the earth and brdthed-the breath of life into him and Adam became a living person.' From this text, she explains, "it is dear that when the person starts to breathe, that Is when it is real."

Bea's belief that abortion is morally acceptable, and even appropriate at times, should not imply that she believes it is always an easy decision. Often, she says, "it is the lesser of two evils. Yet if a woman really believes that this is the right thing to do, then I don't believe that an outside authority should interfere. The decision is hers and hers alone."

Bea's beliefs about abortion as well as her involvement today is part of a certain fabric of social concern that has given form to her life. She was raised in Washington, D.C., where her father was a pediatrician, a man whom she still remembers getting up in the middle of the night to care for his patients. Her mother was also socially active on .the liberal side of social issues, at one point even working with Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. Bea's great aunts were also, in her words, "strong female figures.'' Indeed, her heroines growing up were

PROLOGUE

19

Margaret Sanger and Eleanor Roosevelt. In her years as a mother and wife in Rochester, New York, she experienced "thejoy of having children · who were wanted," but during that time she also worked at a Planned Parenthood clinic, where ·she saw, in her own words, "how devastating it was when a child was not wanted." "In the early years before Roe," she explains, "all we could do was to make contraceptives available. But it was dear that contraceptives didn't always work and that we needed a safe alternative.'' Even then, she participated in the effort to liberalize abortion law.

After twenty years of marriage, four children, and nine grandchildren, she divorced her husband and moved to New York City. There she worked for Planned Parenthood and later for the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), where she served as executive director. After several years in this position, she resigned to attend General Theological Seminary, also in Manhattan. After her studies she took the post at the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights.

Bea sees her work on abortion as serving the larger causes of freedom and justice in America, ideals to which she is deeply committed. Two basic moral principles inform this commitment. One is "the belief that nobody should come between a person's conscience and their God.'' How a person lives is a private matter and should not be hindered by constraints created by others. This was one of her chief complaints about traditional marriage. As she put it, "you can't be happy living your life through somebody else.'' For Bea, the right to live your own life as a free agent, without having someone else's opinions and decisions imposed on you-whether through marriage or through childbearing-is a basic principle of liberty. A second principle is a sense of fair play: the belief that each person, regardless of his or her personal circumstances, should stand on level ground. The matter for her is particularly acute in the issue of abortion. "It seems so obviously and enormously unjust to have laws restricting or forbidding abortion," she says. "The people who suffer are the poor and the young and the uneducated and even the rural who can't get the service, not the rich, educated, and often white women, and that's just unfair.'' In Rochester, she says, the wealthy women would fly to Puerto Rico or England for an abortion, while the poor never had that recourse, and went instead to back-alley abortionists. "You know," Bea says, "laws will not stop abortion. Theyjust make them dangerous, even fatal, for women, and to me, that is so obviously unjust."

In the contest over abortion as with so many other family issues, Bea feels, those who bear the brunt of societal constraints and inequities