Red, Blue, and Purple: American Views on Personal Morality and the Law

...support stem-cell research aimed at ending serious disease...

...An optimistic reading of the most recent events is that the changes haven't been rolled back—despite the post-election punditry—but their vitality remains fragile and contested...

...The success of ABC's racy 2004 television hit Desperate Housewives couldn't come only from the blue states...

...Medical marijuana laws have passed in several states, including Montana and other traditionally "red" states...

...But what gave him the edge in the election, which he won 51 percent to 48 percent, was a perceived sense of morality and traditional values...

...The changes in sexual mores are longstanding and pervasive, and certainly cut across red states and blue states—see the much-heralded statistics on divorce being higher in the red states (and lowest in Massachusetts...

...Even progressive writers such as Joel Rogers have commented on the desertion of white working-class men (presumably including evangelicals as well) from the Democratic Party in the last thirty years, even as they felt economic pressures in a restructuring economy...

...progressives...

...As Luis Lugo noted in the Atlanta Journal - Constitution, "Nearly twice as many respondents say there has been too little reference to religion by politicians (41 percent) as say there has been too much (21 percent...

...Gay rights: Although 2004 may be remembered for the political fallout from legal decisions, extralegal actions, church pronouncements, and philosophical discussions about gay marriage, there actually was a lot of common ground...

...The conservative critique of modernity is a powerful one, in no small part driven by alarm at how rapid and pervasive changes in culture have been (and how strong the influence of the media and the culture writ large are on the ability of the family to hold the line on traditional values...

...DISSENT / Spring 2005 89 POLITICS OF THE FAMILY Gambling still appears on the radar of Christian conservative groups, though not as a high priority...

...And the New York Times pointed out in November 2004 that three red states have the highest subscription rates to Playboy magazine...

...Or was this all a continuing example of false consciousness, as Thomas Frank argued so effectively in What's the Matter With Kansas?— leading working-class evangelical Protestants to collaborate in their own economic demise by joining forces with a coalition of corDISSENT / Spring 2005 87 POLITICS OF THE FAMILY porate power and social conservatives in the Republican Party...

...Robert Scheer notes that the show is #1 in the Atlanta market and #4 in the Salt Lake City market, both in safely red states...

...Now, that shows on the one hand a split, but on the other hand some crossing over on that issue...

...increasingly support alternatives to the War on Drugs...

...As noted above, the New York Times was sure that "what gave him the edge in the election . . . was a perceived sense of morality and traditional values...

...Unpacking the "Culture Wars" Not acknowledging that many people are concerned with the rapidity with which social mores have changed is a risk for U.S...

...Moderate Approach toward Personal Morality In a listing that approximates the concerns of many Christian rightists, a lay group called Catholic Answers has identified the "five nonnegotiables"—abortion, gay rights, assisted suicide, stem-cell research, and cloning—for focus in its political activity...

...At the same time, only a minority of Americans support a constitutional amendment opposing gay marriage...

...Were they a continuation of the conservative mobilization that had followed the Clinton sex scandal...

...By 2005, this 1999 interpretation may seem overly optimistic...

...The election results were not necessarily a surprise to those who had worried throughout the campaign about whether the Democrats had a "church gap...

...I'll defend three propositions: (1) The importance of the "value voters" was overstated, but they remain a vital force...

...But let's not pretend that cultural transformation comes primarily from an agenda advanced by the American left...

...A poll by the Pew Charitable Trusts found Americans wanting more religion in public life...

...In an antidote to Frank's position, Todd Gitlin argues that even abortion is not a veto 88 DISSENT / Spring 2005 POLITICS OF THE FAMILY issue for all voters who oppose it, finding in his conversations with pro-life Pennsylvanians in fall 2004 that they were willing to support a pro-choice candidate like John Kerry because he agreed with them on economic issues and displayed egalitarian values...

...DISSENT / Spring 2005 91 POLITICS OF THE FAMILY Since Clinton has been President, homosexuality has gained public acceptance...

...Two in three Americans reported in 2004 that they had participated in some form of gambling in the prior twelve months...

...This fits in with a more generally accepted argument that the War on Drugs has not been successful...

...and the extralegal marriages performed in San Francisco and other cities in 2004...

...Political commentator Jeff Greenfield, while disagreeing with the "value voters" hypothesis, described conservatives' critique of a dominant culture that, they say "is at odds with what I'm trying to do as a parent...

...Dionne, Jr., adds, "Twenty-five percent of people who think abortion should always be legal voted for Bush...

...The appeals to the electorate— like those in the 1994 and 1997 Oregon assisted-suicide campaigns—found doctors and others asking for the opportunity to cure life-threatening diseases through stem-cell research...

...Value Voters" The night of the November 2, 2004, presidential election, exit polls—which had already caused havoc earlier in the day by predicting a Kerry victory—became the basis for a story line that startled many: that "moral values" was the leading reason given by voters for their reelection of George W. Bush...

...A few years back, toward the end of a national debate over the scope of privacy, the relative seriousness of adultery, and the impeachment of President Clinton, Jacob Weisberg wrote in a New York Times Magazine cover story, You can . . . say that the Lewinsky scandal says something not just about the development of American political morality, but also about American morality in general...

...With the support of newly elected governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a pro-choice Republican, California solidly passed a state initiative to invest $3 billion in stem-cell research, beyond the parameters of what the federal government would allow...

...Within a few days, though, critiques had arisen from political analysts and pollsters, noting that the closed list of choices had skewed the results...

...Were the election results, then, a sign of the continued vitality of the "culture wars," twenty-odd years after that term had first been used...

...an open-ended list elicited a much weaker finding about moral values...

...Where many "family values" come into debate, Americans are more "purple" than red or blue...

...Were they also a sign of the "stealth" network of Christian conservatives, a factor especially in previous local elections...

...The American paradox is that the United States has clearly grown more secular over the past forty years, and Americans have changed attitudes regarding personal morality in ways that are at odds with the teaching of major churches...

...Another 60 percent reported attending religious services at least once a month...

...Progressive Christian minister Wallis noted that two weeks after the election a Zogby poll found that the specific "moral" issue that most voters said influenced their vote was overwhelmingly "the war in Iraq," and far more people mentioned "materialism" as morally troubling than mentioned same-sex marriage...

...JOHN DOMBRINK is a professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine, and the author recently of Dying Right: the Death With Dignity Movement (Routledge, 2001, with Daniel Hillyard...

...This level of interest and support extended even to the young, with three of five teenagers reporting that religion was "very important" or "pretty important" to them in a national poll...

...Nonetheless, there is a slow movement of some states (and smaller jurisdictions) to adopt treatment regimes (Arizona, California, Washington) or reduced penalties (Kansas, Michigan, New York) or needle exchanges, adopting the "harm reduction" or public health approach...

...Political commentator E.J...

...At the same time, polls have captured the ambivalence of many toward the implications of that support or, more appropriately, the limits of that support— such as Medicaid funding, teenage access, and late-term abortions...

...Still, it was dismaying that such strutting by the Christian right came so soon after an unusual trifecta in the "gotcha" category of politics: who could have predicted that 2003 would have seen conservative author and former drug czar and cabinet secretary Bill Bennett exposed as an inveterate gambler who lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in video poker in Nevada and New Jersey...

...Even Michael Barone, a conservative political analyst, allowed as to how, when aggregated, the combination of the Iraq War and terrorism (37 percent) or four leading domestic issues (37 percent) both dwarfed the values item...

...Twenty-two percent of people who thought abortion should always be illegal voted for Kerry...

...Christian Smith argues that the secularization process—however strong—is characterized more by contest and struggle than by easy evolution...

...On the religious front, only a minority of Americans favor allowing same-sex marriages...

...The Pew Research Center concluded that 36 percent of Bush voters were white evangelical Protestants, a significant portion of the base of the Republican Party (a group originally talked about as Reagan Democrats and the focus of Frank's book...

...the issue of gay marriage, which had been raised by the decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court in early 2004...

...are willing to allow suffering patients to enlist a doctor's assistance to end their lives...

...While 54 percent of the respondents thought that conservative Christians would gain influence in the next four years (an almost identical number had responded similarly in 2001), only "education" elicited a response in which "traditional values" played a significant part...

...And it's equally clear that those surveyed also want to see religion play a more prominent role in policy-making...

...Although this has taken only full legal form in one state—Oregon, where a Death With Dignity Act was passed in 1994—polls have regularly shown that Americans are consistent in their support for patient autonomy at the end of life...

...Many note that practical considerations and fiscal crises—more than philosophical changes—have driven these shifts, but, for whatever reason, they are occurring...

...A majority (53 percent) believed that doctor-assisted suicide is morally acceptable...

...Drug policy: The criminalization of drugs in the Reagan era was a fervent business...

...Or that conservative radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh would be admitted to treatment with a drug problem centering on illegally obtained painkillers...

...One night, he was explaining to Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball the failings of an ad campaign by the United Church of Christ, a liberal Protestant denomination, that depicted a church open to gays and lesbians—insinuating, according to Falwell and colleagues, that evangelical churches in America were bigoted...

...Still, gambling was a social issue raising concern for Protestant ministers as late as the 1980s...

...When First Lady Nancy Reagan made "Just Say No" to drugs her major project, it gave a boost to parent groups trying to roll back the normalization and decriminalization of marijuana...

...A majority of Americans favor at least the establishment of civil unions for same-sex couples...

...In many ways, it needn't have been, since the machinery of the state was seriously involved, and drugs were a major concern—with 38 percent of Americans ranking it first in an issues poll in 1987...

...and the vibrancy of progressive advocacy groups like Call to Renewal, Progressive Christians Uniting, and Catholics for Free Choice speak to this...

...Stem-cell research: The death of Ronald Reagan may have stirred the memories of conservatives who revered him, but the picture of his son Ron standing before the Democratic National Convention in July 2004 and arguing for expanded research on the use of stem cells to advance the treatment of debilitating disease was at odds with that conservative legacy...

...At this level, evangelical churches take on the centrality of labor unions or African Americans in the Democratic party...

...Taken by itself, the majority support for civil unions is a remarkable figure, especially given that only one state (Vermont) currently allows them, and that they were controversial not so long ago...

...Perhaps Weisberg captured a moment when the shift in values was generating a backlash that would crest in 2004...

...Could progressives take heart from anything in the 2004 results...

...In a 2003 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 85 percent of American respondents stated that religion was either "very" or "fairly" important in their lives...

...It is a condition that is neither purely red nor purely blue...

...These changes imply that traditional morality has receded...

...Polls showed that 60 percent to 70 percent of Americans favored such research, and fifty-four U.S...

...Something had happened, but what...

...Meanwhile, the public has become unshockable about sex and unconcerned about Presidential adultery...

...A quick survey might leave one with the impression that the 1990's were the decade that Puritanism died...

...Our moralistic stance on drugs is different from that of most of our West European counterparts, who have chosen a third way between legalization and criminalization...

...Certainly, eleven states' passing Defense of Marriage laws (DOMA) in November 2004, while not necessarily determinative of the electoral-college outcomes, suggests a political backlash...

...the advocacy of denominations like the United Church of Christ and other mainline Protes90 DISSENT / Spring 2005 POLITICS OF THE FAMILY tant groups...

...Note: Beyond the writers mentioned in the text, the author appreciated (re)reading various works of the following people for this essay: Jerome Skolnick, Mark Chaves, John Green, Peter Steinfels, and Alan Wolfe...

...Another day he was on Meet the Press debating with progressive evangelical Christian minister Jim Wallis about the role of religion, politics, law, and society...

...Legal gambling has been spreading in the United States since New Hampshire legalized its lottery in 1964, and state and local gambling revenues have risen from $10 billion in 1982 to $72 billion in 2003...

...legal gambling has swept the country...

...Supreme Court's anti-sodomy decision in 2003...

...Ambivalence best characterizes the American approach to legislating personal morality...

...By January 2005, the Pew Center reported that the concerns of most Americans—Republicans, Democrats, and Independents—did not include a concern with "values" as large as that indicated by the November exit polls...

...That said, overstating the power of Christian conservatives in the body politic cedes ground that needn't be ceded...

...We stand out in our embrace of religion...

...2) Americans have a moderate approach toward a range of policies in the personal morality area...

...Now forty-eight states permit legal gambling of at least one form, with only Utah and Hawaii as exceptions (one red state and one blue state...

...and (3) Not all persons of faith are conservative, but the marriage of secularization and religiosity is a confounding one...

...Still, while the widespread use of recreational drugs was decried as yet another example of moral decay, the full force of the Christian right was not enlisted in the War on Drugs...

...support civil unions for same-sex couples and oppose a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage...

...and vice has been redefined as disease...

...The Pew Research Center concluded that while ". . . moral values is a top-tier issue for voters . . . the relative importance of moral values depends greatly on how the question is framed...

...The State of Morality What is the true state of our national character on these personal morality issues in 2005...

...The rush to engage Falwell, Reverend James Dobson, and other leading lights of the Christian right as interpreters of the American public's attitudes about politics in general and the law and personal morality in particular was a result of one frame the media had quickly placed on the 2004 election results: the importance of "values...

...Since California's vote, several other states have begun to frame stem-cell legislation, lest California get too far ahead in such research...

...A 2004 Gallup poll found that two-thirds of respondents agree that doctors should legally be allowed to intervene in a situation in which a patient has "a disease that cannot be cured and is living in severe pain...

...They deserted, he says, in part because they believed the party "focused on liberal social programs to help gays, women, and minorities...

...He notes that "American evangelicalism is thriving as a religious movement not despite the forces of secular modernity but in part precisely because of them...

...IN PLACE OF the "five nonnegotiables," it might be better to focus on the "Three As": anxiety, ambiguity, and ambivalence...

...The top domestic priorities chosen were terror defense, the economy, Social Security, Medicare, education, and the military...

...They are not only focused on issues such as abortion or prayer in the schools...

...As a formula for holding together a dominant political coalition," Frank wrote, "the backlash seems so improbable and so self-contradictory that liberal observers often have trouble believing it is actually happening...

...Or that the late Dixiecrat senator Strom Thurmond would be disclosed to have fathered a child with an African American woman...

...WANT TO ARGUE that there is a broad consensus on moderate views among the American public on issues of law and personal morality...

...support legal gambling in many forms throughout the country...

...92 DISSENT / Spring 2005...

...Compounding this, a January 2005 Los Angeles Times poll found Americans "deeply divided over President Bush's performance and priorities . . . " Supporting Weisberg, it could be argued that progressive changes over four decades in law and personal morality have solidified the zone of privacy that John Stuart Mill wrote about in the nineteenth century, even if the zone hasn't been expanded to the limits hoped for by some legal scholars and movement activists...

...Death with dignity: Gradually, since the 1970s, Americans have come to support the right of a patient to end his or her life when terminally ill—first through withdrawal of treatment, living wills, advance directives, and "do not resuscitate" orders...

...Were they a specific backlash to the U.S...

...As the New York Times reported, In the survey, a striking portrait of one influential group emerged—that of a traditional, church-going electorate that leans conservative on social issues and strongly backed Mr...

...Progressive issues do seem to be of enormous importance to people...

...No Monolithic Faith-based Conservative Bloc Political historian Michael Kazin noted in an article after the 2004 elections that the "United States remains a nation with an evangelical soul, a fact that liberals ignore at their peril...

...As UCC minister Madison Shockley commented in the Los Angeles Times, "Right-wing fundamentalist Christianity has so dominated the media that many Americans don't believe liberal/progressive Christianity even exists...

...Drugs may indeed be "de-problematized" in the near future, but with almost half of our nation's prisoners locked up on drug-related charges, it seems that such sentiment in the past has been overly optimistic...

...He is at work on another book, tentatively titled Sin No More: The Paradox of American Laws and Views Toward "Moral Values...

...Still, a November 2004 poll taken for the Associated Press found what many precursor polls had—that most Americans (59 percent in the AP poll) think that President Bush should choose a Supreme Court nominee who would uphold Roe v. Wade...

...By most measures, however, Americans currently support Roe v. Wade...

...Weisberg goes on to argue that such an implication would be misguided, that what characterizes the American public at the beginning of a new century is instead a commitment to strict personal morality but a reluctance to judge the morality of others...

...Gambling: It may seem like padding this section to include gambling as an example of a personal morality issue that does not deeply divide Americans...

...As Alan Cooperman wrote in the Washington Post of November 10, 2004, Wallis and fellow ministers have "contended that there is a vast religious middle, including 'progressive evangelicals,' 'resurgent mainline Protestants,' and 'socially conservative African Americans,' that could be attracted by biblically based 'prophetic' appeals to make peace, fight poverty, and spread social justice...

...Even Kansas, the state of Frank's false-consciousness argument, has taken itself off the fast track of the War on Drugs, reducing drug penalties in 2003...

...Shockley's comments resonate with the findings of noted sociologist of religion Robert Wuthnow, who found in a 2000 study that the "perception that religious groups are really only interested in conservative issues is not true...

...Abortion: Since 1973, Americans have been supportive of the main tenets of Roe v. Wade in polls, even as the Supreme Court has been reshaped so as to undercut it...

...pornography has become ubiquitous...

...Recent analyses of the 2004 vote emphasize Kazin's point...

...And yet America is a decidedly observant nation in religious terms, far more so than our European counterparts, even if there is some dispute about exactly how observant...

...senators in the 108th Congress (including fourteen Republicans) supported softening the federal position...

...The movement of Jim Wallis's 2004 book, God's Politics, up the New York Times bestseller list...

...After all, it's been many years since a majority of Americans considered gambling a serious moral issue or since the laws criminalizing gambling were much enforced...

...Young Reagan, who had witnessed the steady deterioration of his father, afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease, spoke strongly about the promise of scientific breakthroughs...

...This change can be seen as signifying increasing support for a range of legal protections for gays and lesbians, beginning with city and county antidiscrimination ordinances in the 1970s...

...Everywhere one looked after the presidential elections, the Reverend Jerry Falwell, who many thought had flamed out with his uncompromisingly conservative religious positions and ubiquitous media role since the Reagan years, was all over the airwaves...

...The Christian right became a force of significant impact and attention in the 1990s, as the "culture wars" exploded to include contests over abortion, gay rights, pornography, and changing sexual and cultural mores in general...

...The Christian right became a much-used reference in the 1990s to describe groups like the Christian Coalition and an aligned group, the Traditional Values Coalition, and allies such as the Moral Majority, the Family Research Council, and Focus on the Family...

...With gay marriage a prominent issue, 2004 brought no reversal in this trend...

...There is no easy "receding" of traditional morality...

...It would be naive to assert that full drug legalization, or even decriminalization, can be predicted for the near, or even far, future in the United States...

...Bush . . . . Bush appealed overwhelmingly to voters on terrorism and to many others on his ability to handle the economy...

...Fundamentalist activism has increased at the same time as, and indeed as a reaction to, this same secularism...

...Their efforts have been successful in small local campaigns to prevent the expansion of gambling, but as Bill Bennett's explanations indicate, gambling has been fairly well normalized as an unproblematic leisure activity in America...

...As drug czar, Bennett argued for recriminalizing marijuana in Alaska and Oregon...