November 07, 2004
Demographic Anxieties
What made "moral issues," specifically abortion and same-sex marriage/civil unions such a (to use the ugly poli sci word) salient issue for a significant number of voters in this election?
Having taught for most of my life at religious colleges (and the one I've been at the longest, Texas A&M;, is perhaps the most religious of all, even if nominally a public institution), I am well aware of the religious objections to both abortion and homosexuality. I have the greatest respect for pro-life Catholics like the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, who argued for a "consistent ethic of life," opposing abortion, the death penalty, and war. Also, from the standpoint of traditional moral theology, "lust" (under which, I guess, one would subsume homosexuality) is clearly the least deadly of the deadly sins (see Dante's Purgatorio, for example), even if it is a "sin." But what accounts for the peculiarly "obsessive" emphasis on these two issues in the election?
The seeds of an answer occurred to me last spring when teaching Foucault in my 20th century rhetorical theory class. His discussion of biopower in the early modern period as centering on the state's interest in "population" (Malthus and all that) made me wonder if there is some essential demographic anxiety that underlies the Christian Right's rhetoric. I do not know how one might "falsify" an argument like this (yes, I am a closet social scientist), but it seems worth exploring. The argument proceeds as follows:
1. Homosexuality and abortion threaten "the family." At a superficial level, this seems odd; how do my GLBT friends affect my family, for example? But at a deeper level, the family is threatened because the net number of children is reduced if homosexuality and abortion are widely practiced.
2. Texas this year (about 5 years ahead of schedule) was the first year in which the white population ceased to be the majority. California hit that threshold a few years ago. Whites aren't reproducing enough to retain demographic and, hence, political power. One commonly accepted explanation for Tom DeLay's gerrymandering of Texas congressional districts is that it was an effort to forestall the political impact of the coming Hispanic majority in the state.
3. One also hears arguments from "minority" (we're going to need another word soon) advocates that homosexuality threatens "the race"; Molefi Asante, architect of "Afrocentrism," makes the argument that gay men must give up their sexual orientation for the good of the race. Arafat frequently argued that the future of Palestine lay "in the wombs of Arab women," because the Palestinian birth rate is so much higher than the Israeli Jewish birth rate.
4. So do abortion and homosexuality in this year's election, like everything else in America, eventually come down to race?
I'm not sure, but I wanted to try out the argument. I think we need generally to account for the phenomenon of social anxiety as we continue to refigure our understanding of the role of emotions in political rhetoric.
Posted by jim at November 7, 2004 11:09 AM
Comments
I think you are on to something. There was a 2002 article in Mother Jones magazine on Evangelical Christians trying to convert Muslims where the following quote appeared
"A former missionary himself, Larson fears that Christianity might be losing the race for world domination. "Islam is biologically taking over the world," he says. "They're having babies faster than we are."
The rest of the article is available at: http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2002/05/stealth.html
This type of thinking also supports the pro-war stance of the evangelical right.
Posted by: Karen McCullough at November 7, 2004 05:58 PM
I've actually heard this kind of thing a lot here in texas--the notion that only those who SHOULD get abortions, don't (eg: those who are in the lower socio-economic brackets and not white).
Posted by: ddd at November 7, 2004 06:22 PM
I doubt that the primary effectiveness of the argument comes at the rational (i.e., demographic) level, as you imply here; instead it's largely code, I think, for the sexualization of the Other -- which in turn ties in with the argument that Jim makes below about "the crisis of masculinity" going on currently in the US.
Posted by: Randy Cauthen at November 7, 2004 07:47 PM
It has more to do with an underlying view of the structure of societies with respect to families than with an unspoken racism or classism.
To a large extent, a form of Abraham Kuyper's "sphere sovereignty" doctrine of the social realm has been imbibed by generic American evangelicalism, and more explicitly so by Reformed Christians (subsequently communicated to the broader evangelical world via persons like Charles Colson, for example).
This follows a long line of Protestant thought which emphasizes the centrality of institutions like marriage and family to the structure of a healthy and well-functioning society. These institutions, of course, are to be biblically normed, thus the exclusion of gay "marriage." And I would think it is self-evident how abortion undermines the long-term viability of a family structure.
The effects you point to as primary in your analysis end up as second- or third-level consequences. With respect to the Christian vs. Muslim argument, that doesn't seem to square, since the traditional Muslim view on issues of homosexualism and abortion are generally in line with the evangelical Christian.
Posted by: Jordan at November 8, 2004 10:17 AM
Some proof that the emphasis on marriage isn't a 20th century Nazi invention, from Luther's Table Talk:
Then he began to speak in praise of marriage, the divine institution from which everything proceeds and without which the whole world would have remained empty and all creatures would have been meaningless and of no account, since they were created for the sake of man. “So Eve and her breasts would not have existed, and none of the other ordinances would have followed. It was for this reason that, in the power of the Holy Spirit, Adam called his wife by that admirable name Eve, which means mother. He didn’t say ‘wife’ but ‘mother,’ and he added ‘of all living.’ Here you have the ornament that distinguishes woman, namely, that she is the fount of all living human beings. These words were very few, but neither Demosthenes nor Cicero ever composed such an oration. This is the oration of the very eloquent Holy Spirit, fitted to our first parent. He is the one who declaims here, and since this orator defines and praises [marriage] it is only right that we put a charitable construction on everything that may be frail in a woman. For Christ, our Savior, did not hold woman in contempt but entered the womb of a woman. Paul also reflected on this [when he wrote], ‘Woman will be saved through bearing children,’ etc. [I Tim. 2:15]. This is admirable praise, except that he uses the little word ‘woman’ and not ‘mother.’ ”
Luther, Martin. Vol. 54, Luther's Works, Vol. 54: Table Talk. Edited by Pelikan, Jaroslav Jan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann. Luther's Works. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1999, c1967. P. 223.
Posted by: Jordan at November 11, 2004 02:25 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment