Note to Mods: Eric Zorn gave me permission to post this in
it's entirety. His email permission has been sent to Skinner, please check with him before deleting or snipping due to copyright rules. One more thing, Mods... you rock!
From Eric Zorn's Chicago Tribune blog (link at the end):
So, the big story of the election is how public concern over "moral issues" gave George Bush the decisive edge over John Kerry.
In most of the coverage, however, we never hear articulated exactly what these "moral issues" are, what distinguishes them from plain old issues and why it's taken as a given that conservatives are more "moral" than liberals and progressives.
The term seems to encompass opposition to gay marriage – rejected by a majority of voters in 11 out of 11 referendums – and so-called "partial-birth" abortion, along with support for an increased role for religion in the public sphere.
It doesn't so much disturb me that I may be hold a minority viewpoint on all three of these questions, but that pollsters and pundits so readily employ terminology that assumes the idea that the above are the more "moral" positions.
To use the word "moral" so narrowly yet so casually is to yield vast territory in the culture wars before the first rhetorical shot is fired.
I won't do it.
I refuse to concede the idea that the person who wants to amend the Constitution to prevent a loving, consenting same-sex couple from creating a legally recognized bond containing all the rights and responsibilities of marriage has higher "moral values" than the person who doesn't.
I refuse to concede that the person who believes it's his right to interpose his beliefs about right and wrong into the often painful and very difficult decisions made by pregnant women and their doctors has higher "moral values" than the person who doesn't.
I refuse to concede that the person who wants the government to endorse one particular belief about the supernatural over another has higher "moral values" than the person who thinks it's none of government's business to take sides on matters of faith.
There's more.
I refuse to concede that a person has higher "moral values" if he believes in God.
I refuse to concede that a person has higher "moral values" because he strives to restrict free expression of political and artistic ideas that may offend others.
I refuse to concede that a person has higher "moral values" because he subscribes to the errant notion that "abstinence-only" is the best way to teach teenagers about sex.
I refuse to concede that a person has higher "moral values" because he believes in diverting public education money into voucher programs that would end up using tax dollars to fund parochial schools.
I refuse to concede that a person has higher "moral values" because he favors capital punishment and opposes medical marijuana and fetal stem-cell research.
In short, I refuse to concede that true "moral values" are inherent in the entire grab-bag of conservative causes, notions, paranoias and fantasies to which we have attached both that label and the equally abused and co-opted term "family values."
Morality – right and wrong – is bigger than that.
U.S. Sen.-elect Barack Obama made that point in his second debate with challenger Alan Keyes, who made incessant, hectoring attempts to claim the moral high ground:
Well, I think there's something immoral about somebody who's lost their job after 20 years, has no health care, are seeing their pension threatened.
I think there's something immoral about young people who've got the grades and the drive to go to college, but just don't have the money.
It's at this level that Democrats/liberals/progressives need to start trying to bridge the "moral values" gap into which John Kerry evidently fell Tuesday.
Yes, morality is important.
But it's obscene to apply the term to something as ultimately harmless as the legal status conferred upon a gay couple and not apply it to, oh, say, the idea of waging a pre-emptive war based on an ill-supported conjecture or giving huge tax breaks to the richest Americans while cutting funding for education and after-school programs.
The left should eagerly embrace the term "moral values" and join the debate.
Link added on edit:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ericzorn/chi-zornlog.story#moralvalues
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