From: mss2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer)
Subject: Re: More elections, a victory...
Keywords: discrimination, hatred, intolerance
Reply-To: mss2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 19:00:14 GMT

In article <1992Nov6.153358.27547@news.columbia.edu> tje3@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Tammy Jo Eckhart) writes:
>	WARNING:  Opinionated post.  Conservative people with high blood
>pressure should avoid reading the following.

>	"Yes," says the Lamplighter, "hooray for all the folks in Oregon, who
>said no to such a bigoted measure."

>	"However, what's not in any of the newspapers is that in Iowa, the
>proposed equal rights amendment failed.  The amendment would have changed
>'men' to 'men and women' in 'all men are created equal,' and it would have
>prohibited the legislature from making laws that discriminated on the basis
>of sex.  That's all."

>	"Pat Robertson was sending letters to people in Iowa, telling them
>that the amendment would lead to wives leaving their husbands and killing
>their children.  Excerpts from the letter were published in the newspapers.
>He was telling them that women would be encouraged to practice witchcraft and
>become lesbians (oh no!).  What business is it of his, or of anyone's who
>doesn't live in Iowa, for that matter?  Of the seventy thousand dollars they
>had to campaign with, only eight hundred came from within Iowa."

	"Conversely, though, no amount of money can make the
difference unless people are willing to be persuaded.  The sad fact is
that there appear to be a fairly large number of people in Iowa who
are willing to listen to Pat Robertson.  That being the case, I wonder
if the money really mattered-- do you really think that people who
take that sort of thing seriously weren't already opposed to an equal
rights measure, or wouldn't have been persuaded when the
televangelists started ranting about it on their shows?"

>	"Is it any wonder that I don't like the Republican party in general?
>The religious right has been a factor in the party's beliefs since before I
>was old enough to vote, and its role is increasing.  But I'm wandering off
>my own topic."

	"The nature of American politics is that both parties are
essentially loose coalitions, rather than being ideologically based.
Because of this, each party has extreme elements which form part of
its base, and must be mollified from time to time.  In the case of the
Republicans, the major example of this element is the religious
right-- the Democrats have their own albatrosses about their necks,
which have contributed to the fact that next year is only the second
Democratic administration in a quarter-century.

	"But I disagree that the influence of the religious right is
increasing.  Reagan and Bush accepted their aid and gave them lip
service-- but what did they ever _do_ for them?  Sure, every four
years like clockwork, Republican candidates call for school prayer and
glad hand with evangelists.  But has prayer been mandated in public
schools after 12 years of Republican presidents?  Have they expended a
dime of political capital to do more than talk about it?  Not that I
think Reagan and Bush wouldn't have been happy to see it happen, but
it wasn't _important_ to them.  Ditto for most of the religious
right's specific agenda.  The Moral Majority broke up years ago, no
one organized a significant boycott of Murphy Brown, and Pat
Robertson's campaign in '88 had virtually zero impact.

	"I'll answer two objections which I expect to hear:

	"One: Pat Buchanan.  Buchanan was not a representative of the
religious right, though he may well have drawn support from there.
First of all, he's a Catholic, and the religious right is one of the
lingering homes of anti-Catholic prejudice.  Fundamentalists and
hardshell Baptists are the heirs of the people who called the Catholic
Church the Whore of Babylon, and while they may make an alliance of
convenience, they aren't identical.  Buchanan, rather, represents the
nativist, protectionist, isolationist strain of American politics
which has existed since the 19th century.  Charles Lindbergh's America
First movement was the last prominent standard-bearer.  During the
Cold War, this strain had faded to near-invisibility in the Republican
Party, with free trade and international involvement becoming
dominant.  However, with the end of the Cold War, it's no surprise to
see it return-- there are people in every country, and in both
parties, who hate people who are different from them, and don't want
to be involved with them.  But the important thing about Buchanan is
that, despite the fact that _no one_ liked George Bush, and many
people would have liked to see him dumped, Buchanan went down to
overwhelming defeat.  Bush then missed the point by pandering to
Buchanan's supporters at the convention.  But even there, while he gave
them speaking time, he himself (spineless, visionless weasel though he
be) never backed down on free trade or on US overseas committments,
nor did he adopt any significant part of Buchanan's program.

	"Two: abortion.  I'd like to avoid a major discussion of this
topic here, because tempers run high.  And I wasn't happy about the
Republican platform freezing out pro-choicers-- though given the fact
that _no one_, including the President, actually seemed to consider
the platform as a whole to be a statement of his overall positions
suggests to me that the platform was really a dead letter in any case.
(It was also rather difficult to find out what _else_ was in the
platform, since there seem to have been about two copies owned by
collectors.  But I digress.)  Suffice it to say, though, that
opposition to abortion isn't a monopoly of the religious right, and is
the position of a significant fraction of the country's voters.  I
don't think that anti-abortion rhetoric is indicative of being
dominated by the religious right-- it's indicative of the fact that
when there is a significant controversy in the US, often one party
will take one side, and the other party will take the other.
(Sometimes they change places-- the Republicans used to be strong
boosters of tariffs from Lincoln to World War II, while Democrats were
for liberalized trade; now Republicans are the party of free trade
(with a minority dissenting) while the most prominent protectionists
(Gephardt, Riegle, etc.) are Democrats.)"

>	"At least," the Lamplighter says after sipping his drink, "they can
>try again in two years.  I think it's two years."

	"Just out of curiosity, is there legislation currently which
discriminates on the basis of sex?  In other words, was this entirely
a matter of symbolism (which is admittedly not unimportant-- symbols do
affect us) or are there substantive changes to the laws which would
have occurred?  If so, would it be possible to persuade the legislature
to change the offending laws now instead of waiting two years to amend
the constitution?"

Michael

-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS	"Indeed I tremble for my country
mss2@midway.uchicago.edu	 when I reflect that God is just."
mike.schiffer@um.cc.umich.edu	 -- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on
mss2@amber.uchicago.edu     Virginia (1784)
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