Culture war rages
The murder of a physician in Wichita, Kansas, who provided late-term abortions, comes just as political factions are lining up for the debate over progressive Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
Accusations of racism and reverse-racism are flying fast.
Meanwhile, protests were also held in California over the weekend, supporting and opposing same-sex marriage.
In a speech a couple of weeks ago at Notre Dame, President Barack Obama appealed to both sides of the culture war.
He urged activists to listen respectfully to one-another and engage in a real dialogue about thorny issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion.
But I fear that the rift in America between traditionalists and social conservatives (on the one hand) and more progressive, modernist-leaning groups (on the other) is wider than ever.
If, for example, the Roman Catholic church were advocating a simple ban on abortion, the conversation would be confined to a fairly understandable ethical and moral debate.
When does life begin? Where do a woman’s rights end and her unborn fetus’s begin?
But the Church — and a wide variety of other traditionalist organizations — also oppose contraception, sex-education, divorce, and (of course) homosexuality.
Many conservative groups are also uncomfortable with the idea of women holding equal authority within society, especially within their religious organizations.
Modernist groups, meanwhile — many, though not all, secular — see these matters entirely differently.
They focus on a completely different set of ethical concerns: climate change, poverty, social injustice, etc.
And they see the activism of conservatives as a direct threat to their personal, moral freedom.
How do you begin to have a reasonable dialogue when worldviews differ so fundamentally?
The simplest answer in America is that we try to decide these things peacefully, at the ballot box. But it doesn’t always work that way.
Sometimes our passions, and our zealots, push their way to the fore.
Which is why mainstream activists on both sides have a moral duty to moderate their language, and to help constrain the more destructive elements that exist on the fringe of any movement.
That said, I have a feeling we’ll be negotiating this long, troubled path for years to come.
