Attack of the Theocrats!: How the Religious Right Harms Us All—and What We Can Do About It (12 page)

Think of Joan Baez, queen of folk. Her ability to attract men and women during the folk era was legendary. She had a magnetism that was Draper-like. (Although men go for the visual more, accomplishment matters to us as well.) And who did Joan Baez pick? For whom did she write the great torch song “Diamonds and Rust”? Dylan, of course—not exactly a man with matinee-idol good looks, but one of unique skill.

Draper and Dylan lead me to King and Kennedy—two other iconic males of the 1960s who, like Dylan, demonstrated remarkable skill. Songwriting and speechwriting are topics that have fascinated me since childhood. A well-crafted speech is like a beautiful pop song. Concise and punchy—with numerous “hooks” and artful phrasing that combine with a mood and feel that spark in the listener an increased and surging sense of passion. I collect speeches like other people collect coins or shot glasses and, for me, the summer of 1963 stands out. The summer of 1963 is to speechmaking what the summer of 1949 is to baseball.

In the summer of 1963 President Kennedy delivered his famed “Berlin Wall” speech, which called for freedom for all people, not merely freedom from Communism. That same summer, his speech on civil rights was correctly
lauded by Dr. Martin Luther King as the first clear moral call from a president for racial justice. And Kennedy delivered his exceptional “We Are All Mortal” speech at American University, calling—successfully—for the first major step toward nuclear disarmament with the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Then, on August 28, 1963, Dr. King delivered his stunningly brilliant “I Have a Dream” speech. All of these speeches will stand for all time, in terms of writing, reasoning, and delivery.

Now to a little secret about these skillful men: you may have heard that Kennedy was rather friendly with a number of women, but you may—in fact—not have heard (perhaps because of political correctness) that Dr. King had similar friendships with women. Like Don Draper, these men shared an unapologetic frankness in approaching women and, truth be told, a number of sophisticated, educated women welcomed these advances. You can condemn these men—or condemn the women—but they were consenting adults, not children—and they did not partake in hypocritical lectures about sex.

Unlike Don Draper, Kennedy and King used their superlative skill to advance causes we as a people find deeply ennobling. Their skill was energizing, and, yes, attractive—in a very positive way.

It is the purview of women to decide what to do with their own response to whatever skills males display, and vice versa. Similarly, we must understand men and their behavior for what it more typically is—not what we might pretend that it should be. The same holds true for understanding women. Assent is never required, but understanding can’t hurt. Let’s not get so all-fired mad at people for being human. Gossips and name callers should be forcefully reminded by all to mind their own business.

Perhaps the greatest wisdom on this topic is to laugh together, men and women, about our human foibles and show affection for each other despite all our “naughty” predilections and to give sanctimonious condemnation a much-needed rest. Do women today long for the times of Don Draper and his early sixties sexism? Certainly not. Men shouldn’t either. Yet there is a longing today for more candidness and less cornball political correctness—which can border on Victorian drivel. In our times, it may be possible to revive a refreshing candor while unequivocally rejecting outdated sexism and coerciveness. Can we dare to hope that Americans will finally lighten up and laugh a little more (or a lot more) about sex? If sexual choices between consenting adults are kept within the bounds of good will, let us not condemn our instinctual actions and reactions that long predate the gossips and grouches of all political stripes.

And I’m not just speaking about the Religious Right here. Many liberals today—in their rush to be politically correct—often seem most uncomfortable with acknowledging human beings for being human. Punishing people of either gender for sex, making people feel guilty for sex, is, as the blogger Greta Christina puts it, like “punishing you for getting hungry.”

Notes Katie Roiphe in a July 2010
New York Times
article, Don Draper exudes a skilled candor, a bold spontaneity, that, for all his evil ways, makes us in our present zeitgeist feel a twinge of discomfort. Draper wears crisp, well-tailored suits, but there’s risk just under the surface. There’s an old-school reserve, yet the real possibility that there will be a tumble into bed that wasn’t calendared a week in advance. We twenty-first-century Americans live in times compartmentalized and tidy, calendared and subject to endless strategic planning meetings. Wild office parties? We’re too busy looking at other people’s lives on Facebook. Fun flirtation? That’s for the Europeans. Drinking at the office party? We’ve got to get to the garden supply and buy mulch for our perfectly arranged yards, and choose the right shade of accent paint for our well-appointed den. Don Draper, with his many faults, seems to live energetically—in the present. That’s magnetism.

Don Draper is different from us in all our hyperarranged “busyness.” And, for more noble reasons, but with similar style, King and Kennedy are different from us today. They wore the suits, the conservative ties. They didn’t share their feelings, yet they displayed their passions and they acted on those passions in every aspect of their lives. They fascinate and inspire us to this day.

Within American life in the twenty-first century—so tidy, so organic foods, so arranged, so scheduled, and so planned—there is this call in the heart for something impulsive, sexual, unplanned—something grabbed just for that moment of intensity, right away without hesitation. The passion to be skillful and the passion to be fully alive are closely intertwined.

Sex has become America’s great sleight of hand. It is the bait and switch. The Meese Commission of the Ronald Reagan years lied about the connection between porn and violence, because those at the top really want us to focus on the easily understood trivia of Victorian sexual regulation rather than the complexities of the common good for an entire nation.

This prudish obsession with sex emanates from something inside that is twisted, dark, and vicious. Take a step back and survey the scene from Prop 8 in California or the attempts to gut Planned Parenthood in Washington, DC. Is there anyone more sex-crazed than a fundamentalist? We cannot allow the veneer of propriety to hide the truth: the old sexual
attitudes really are poison. People get hurt by sexist laws and malicious Victorian gossip dressed as political correctness.

We must embrace the science of our sexual behavior, though being honest about our sexuality is not the same as being crass. Science cannot, and should not, justify male privilege nor adolescent ogling of women. Science can and should justify understanding and openness and acceptance and compassion, and maybe a little flirting every once in a while. What the hell.

Flirting is a joyous activity. Think about the last time you did it, and you may agree. It is an activity entirely consistent with moral values—and human nature. In those cases where it happens to lead to something more, well, we don’t need pinch-lipped gossipy prudes regulating our bedrooms like referees with whistles at a football game.

The Morality of Conscience

For all their very human behavior, Kennedy and King—with refreshing vigor—understood real morality and spoke for morality at its most essential and its most vital. They exuded passion. We should thank them for that, not spend time nosing around in private places to which we were not invited. This repugnant obsession among those on the Right (and on the hyper–politically correct Left) with sexual trivia is deeply immoral because it distracts us from the real moral issues.

Lies about sex education and restrictions on women’s health care are harmful to people and they are also bad public policy. The prude police are also very harmful to society as a whole because false religiously biased genital morality dominates American debate—and distracts the American people from the challenging and important moral issues of justice and compassion for our fellow citizens and for people throughout the world.

As a politician, I knew the guys who lobbied for companies that pollute, for tobacco companies that kill, for the alcohol companies that market to children. While it is socially acceptable, even brag worthy for some, to be a mouthpiece for a tobacco company, a polluter, a corporate exploiter of children, society can still make women and men uncomfortable with what the statistics say are normal and harmless sexual urges.

I remember in private practice being appointed by the court to represent a child rapist. I walked down the street about one block from the courhouse to the home of the victim. Entering the apartment where the little girl lived, I was struck with a sickly sweet smell of unclean neglect. The apartment was dirty, as was this little girl. The sheetrock in her apartment wall was broken open, cold air streamed in from a Maine winter. The
neglect this child experienced in this home spoke of a harsh life that long predated her hideous rape. I then walked a few steps down the same street to the home of the young man who had raped her. My client’s actions can never be excused, but his life can be examined realistically. He was a young man of about twenty with a mental disability. His parent’s apartment had the same sickly sweet smell of dirty neglect. None of this excused his conduct, but the impact of seeing both these lives has never left me. There are larger issues that must be addressed, societal issues that require more effort, thought, and long-term thinking than one sanction for one crime can remedy. A greater moral vision is needed for the many children living in the most vulnerable of homes.

Moral is the right word. Morality should govern our actions. The morality of which I speak is the morality of conscience, not the morality of the mob nor the petty morality of the sexual gossip. The mob shouted out Bible passages to justify slavery. The mob thought we should burn alleged witches as friends of the devil. The mob thought innocent lives should be ruined to defend against godless Communism.

I was once scolded when speaking before a secular humanist group for using the word “morality,” because, an audience member said, morality was a word for the fundamentalists. I disagree. I say the word morality has been stolen from us and we must take it back. When I served on the judiciary committee in Maine’s legislature, we dealt with such issues as a woman’s right to choose, discrimination based on sexual orientation, and child sex abuse and sex-crime law in general. Indeed, I chaired a sex-crime commission, and we successfully changed laws to better protect children who cannot consent.

In the midst of these efforts and successes, I’d inevitably have fundamentalist activists lobbying me with heavy use of the word “moral” as they wagged a finger at me. The implication was that I was immoral because I didn’t think the sex lives of gay people was any of my business—nor the government’s business—and because I didn’t condemn women for their private sexual choices.

No matter what you might think about their own sense of morality, fundamentalists are very involved in the political process. They are passionate and vocal. Are you passionate about secular advocacy? Are you vocal?

Let’s be passionate and vocal about allowing consenting adults to make their own decisions, and if they decide to indulge with gusto, so be it. If you lack moderation in eating, it will increase your risk of heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. But what is it exactly that happens when you enthusiastically enjoy protected sex? Your smile muscles are sore? Here’s an idea: let’s
be more honest, and less Victorian, about our urges. And for gosh sakes, let’s lighten up.

Let’s celebrate sex, not because we are immoral but because we are moral.

And above all, let’s work for a new sexual revolution—a revolution with no sexist overtones, a revolution filled with understanding, understanding between men and women, straight and gay, an understanding founded on our common humanity and an extra dose of good humor. When we reach that last day we will look back fondly on moments that were spontaneous, passionate, and full of laughter. To quote George Bernard Shaw, “I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

Too many Americans have been hoodwinked into joining a huckster preacher in pointing an accusing finger at some alleged Hester Prynne in our midst. To make matters worse—it’s a good bet the huckster’s other hand is on their wallet.

There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design
.

—Michele Bachmann

There is nothing which can better deserve our patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness
.

—George Washington

In 1966 the managers of radio station KLUE in Plainview, Texas, decided they didn’t like it when John Lennon said, “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink.” So the station owners of KLUE organized a huge bonfire, burning hundreds of Beatles records. The next day KLUE was taken out by a huge lightning bolt! I don’t believe in divine intervention, but I do enjoy a little irony every once in a while.

John Lennon had numerous unpleasant qualities. Lennon admitted to domestic violence at one point. Lennon could be an angry drunk, sometimes drug addled to the point of delusion, and a dabbler in the political fringes. Lennon could be neglectful, ungrateful, and sometimes downright mean to people who were devoted to him (his first wife, his oldest son, Brian Epstein, George Martin, even Paul McCartney without whom the sometimes-ornery Lennon would never have risen to his unparalleled heights). Lennon’s thoughts on cigarettes and I Ching and many other topics were downright wacky. His worldview was arguably flawed, particularly for believers in capitalism like me, but—all that said—John Lennon stands as one of a handful of twentieth-century figures who will be remembered—and justly revered—five hundred years from now. One of many
reasons is his brilliantly simple song “Imagine.” In that song Lennon looked into the future. Imperfect as Lennon was, his song’s simply stated vision of a more humanitarian society, a vision already widely embraced around the world, will guide us for centuries. And, the music that Lennon created, especially when working with McCartney—marked by its unparalleled innovation and sheer joyfulness—will reverberate well into the future.