We're Winning the Culture Wars

by Michael Jones · 2009-04-10 07:48:00 UTC
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Culture Wars

I always hated the use of the phrase "culture war," because the very premise of the term assumes that radical conservatives have a sense of legitimacy when it comes to influencing U.S. culture.  Still, I had to chuckle when I read this article over at Politico: "Gays, Guns Put Right on Defense."

According to the article, "The culture wars are making a comeback, but this time around, social conservatives find themselves in an unfamiliar position: playing defense."

The article itself is nothing more than propaganda to get the wingnut, Rush Limbaugh crowd worried that the homosexuals are coming to take away their guns and force them to adhere to UN treaties like the Convention on the Rights of the Child.   The horror!

But seriously, the article is nothing but public relations for the radical right, regurgitating the talking point that President Obama is going to face backlash from social conservatives because he wants to turn the whole country into a sodomy-fest.  It's the same mindset that feeds into the work of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), which earlier this week announced a $1.5 million advertising campaign to combat marriage equality.  (It turned out to be a disaster for them, with audition tapes for the advertisement leaking to the blogosphere that shows just how phony NOM really is.)

The problem of course is that people are tired of social conservatives crying wolf at everything.  The wedge issues that make them so popular - gays, guns, international law, immigration - have been the reason that the GOP lost seats in Congress (and the Presidency) in 2006 and 2008.  Sure, social conservatives are trying to regroup - and Politico is certainly helping them - but people have grown tired of warring over social issues.  Proposition 8 may just have been the social conservative culture war's last stand.

As Mark McKinnon, the former advisor to Sen. John McCain, is quoted in the article, "“I think most people want relief from the divisive debates of the culture wars.  Given the economic hardships most are facing, they probably view these arguments as old, irrelevant and a distraction."

One can only hope that McKinnon is correct, and that the tired "culture warriors" of the last three decades have finally lost all credibility.

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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