"Sex Wars" and Public Life

Daniel Henninger in Opinion Journal blames "sex wars" for the broader, and dangerous, loss of religious and serious moral influences in public life.

Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973, ignited a 33-year war over sex, bowdlerized for political discourse as "privacy." [The categorization in the 2004] Pew [public opinion poll] collapses all moral life in America down to abortion and gay rights because the political class believes those issues move votes. And the result is that anything else important, like what Messrs. [Barry] Bonds or [Enron's Andrew] Fastow represent, is ignored. . . .

Our political culture's preoccupation with sexual boundaries has smothered the more important ability of religious or ethical formation to function in the U.S. Currently the most rigorous whole-person moral system resides among evangelical right--at least in terms of keeping one's earthly life in perspective. But because the religious right has "positions" on abortion and homosexuality, politics seeks to undermine its entire function in the life of the nation.

Inner-city parents desperate to use vouchers to send their children to values-forming parochial schools can't, because the reigning political calculus holds this would somehow "advantage" an abortion-resistant Catholic Church. . . .

Maybe it's time for the sex obsessives on the left and right to take their fights over abortion and gay rights into a corner somewhere and give the rest of society space to restore some ethical rootedness in an endlessly variable world.

This certainly voices the frustration I (and I think others) feel over how two or three issues have driven the whole "religion and politics" debate, distracted from the myriad crucial contributions that "conservative" religion makes every day to civil society, and led "progressives" to exalt individual autonomy and denigrate their own history of religious-moral judgments.  But what does "taking [the sex wars] into a corner" mean?  I assume that it would mean, for example, that Massachusetts would preserve Catholic Charities' contributions in placing foster children instead of giving it the boot, even though it won't place children in gay families.  Perhaps more generally, "taking the issue[s] into a corner" would mean gay-rights laws with religious exemptions?  The Religious Right would accept such laws on the ground that they don't imply "normalization" of gay behavior or that any such limited implication is overcome by the more important public value of ensuring access to jobs, public accommodations, etc.  But taking the issue into a corner means not expanding disagreement with a non-profit organization's traditional position on sex issues into punishing it or disqualifying it from providing other benefits to civil society (like Catholic Charities in special-needs adoptions, or a Catholic hospital refusing to provide abortions).

The big problem with the idea is that some contested practices concern not just sex but (in opponents' view) basic questions of human rights and civic well-being (Henninger overlooks this, as Protestants for the Common Good did concerning abortion in its statement on the Christian Right that we blogged about).  The abortion issue will resist being sent off "into a corner," whatever constitutional or pragmatic limits there are on public policies addressing it.  And even if we could agree that basic issues like abortion and same-sex marriage shouldn't expand imperialistically into others (like general health-care or adoption-placement), those basic issues will still be on the table.  Finally, of course, there are problems of reciprocity and the "prisoner's dilemma": how does one side know that, if it reduces its efforts, the other side will abide by the bargain?

Tom