Recently in theocrats in the attic - (pop) culture wars Category

My co-denizen Scott has, as usual, succinctly summed up the myriad of legal controversies and contradictions in which the Terri Schiavo spectacle has become entangled, and far be it from me to gild the lily. However, what's also worth pointing out is that the sordid ongoing struggle has become a perfect storm for the religious right wing and their political allies in congress -- and the White House.

Not only does it give the right-to-lifers an easily exploited posterchild -- She "smiles!" She "laughs!" The only thing she can't do is speak for herself! -- but it also pits the forces of pro-life righteousness against a favourite whipping boy of talk radio's America. Who is to blame? Why, those dastardly "activist judges" who stubbornly insist on enforcing the law, rather than bending to the will of whichever side presents the slickest, most soundbite-friendly public relations campaign. While there has been no shortage of grumbling about "judicial activism" in right wing circles in recent years -- just do a search on FreeRepublic if you need a couple of thousand examples -- a case like this puts the question squarely in the centre ring of public policy debate.

One could expect that the usual social conservative Republican suspects would be only too happy to drag a morbidly incapacitated woman into the spotlight to score political points, but the silence of elected Democrats on the potential consequences of this attempt by legislators to flout the rule of law speaks volumes.

The New York Times reveals yet another battleground in the anti-evolutionist War on Science. The latest potential portals of heretical thought? IMAX movie theatres:

The fight over evolution has reached the big, big screen.

Several Imax theaters, including some in science museums, are refusing to show movies that mention the subject - or the Big Bang or the geology of the earth - fearing protests from people who object to films that contradict biblical descriptions of the origin of Earth and its creatures.

The number of theaters rejecting such films is small, people in the industry say - perhaps a dozen or fewer, most in the South. But because only a few dozen Imax theaters routinely show science documentaries, the decisions of a few can have a big impact on a film's bottom line - or a producer's decision to make a documentary in the first place.

[...]

"Volcanoes," released in 2003 and sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation and Rutgers University, has been turned down at about a dozen science centers, mostly in the South, said Dr. Richard Lutz, the Rutgers oceanographer who was chief scientist for the film. He said theater officials rejected the film because of its brief references to evolution, in particular to the possibility that life on Earth originated at the undersea vents.

Carol Murray, director of marketing for the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, said the museum decided not to offer the movie after showing it to a sample audience, a practice often followed by managers of Imax theaters. Ms. Murray said 137 people participated in the survey, and while some thought it was well done, "some people said it was blasphemous."

In their written comments, she explained, they made statements like "I really hate it when the theory of evolution is presented as fact," or "I don't agree with their presentation of human existence."

[...]

"We have definitely a lot more creation public than evolution public," said Lisa Buzzelli, who directs the Charleston Imax Theater in South Carolina, a commercial theater next to the Charleston Aquarium. Her theater had not ruled out ever showing "Volcanoes," Ms. Buzzelli said, "but being in the Bible Belt, the movie does have a lot to do with evolution, and we weigh that carefully."

Pietro Serapiglia, who handles distribution for the producer Stephen Low of Montreal, whose company made the film, said officials at other theaters told him they could not book the movie "for religious reasons," because it had "evolutionary overtones" or "would not go well with the Christian community" or because "the evolution stuff is a problem."

Hyman Field, who as a science foundation official had a role in the financing of "Volcanoes," said he understood that theaters must be responsive to their audiences. But Dr. Field he said he was "furious" that a science museum would decide not to show a scientifically accurate documentary like "Volcanoes" because it mentioned evolution.

"It's very alarming," he said, "all of this pressure being put on a lot of the public institutions by the fundamentalists."

[read the rest here]

It's one thing, of course, for a privately run movie theatre to decide what films to show. But in this case, it seems that, once again, the threat of blowback from a bellicose and aggressive minority is depriving the rest of the populace of the opportunity of the freedom to choose. Make no mistake; this is even a question of arguing for 'equal time' for theories of Intelligent Design. This is a flagrant attempt to put a stop to any discussion of evolution -- and that should send chills down the spine of anyone who cares about education and public discourse. (One has to wonder why the throngs of outraged conservatives condemning bias in schools aren't leading the charge against such a concerted effort to stifle debate.)

The anti-evolution campaign may have been born and nourished in the often unscrutinized schoolboard politics of small town America, but it's hard to deny that its influence is spreading -- and that few institutions, private or public, are eager to take on the challenge. It's important to support and publicize the efforts of groups like the Dover parents, but it is equally essential to make sure that companies like IMAX know that their actions are being watched by those outside the fundamentalist community as well.

On the same day that the Supreme Court of Canada clears the way for same-sex marriage in the northern half of our shared continent, the Bush administration takes up the torch carried by supporters of crackpot Alabama judge Roy Moore, and urges the U.S. Supreme Court to allow courthouses to display the Ten Commandments.

From the Washington Post:

Many American youngsters participating in federally funded abstinence-only programs have been taught over the past three years that abortion can lead to sterility and suicide, that half the gay male teenagers in the United States have tested positive for the AIDS virus, and that touching a person's genitals "can result in pregnancy," a congressional staff analysis has found.

Those and other assertions are examples of the "false, misleading, or distorted information" in the programs' teaching materials, said the analysis, released yesterday, which reviewed the curricula of more than a dozen projects aimed at preventing teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.

In providing nearly $170 million next year to fund groups that teach abstinence only, the Bush administration, with backing from the Republican Congress, is investing heavily in a just-say-no strategy for teenagers and sex. But youngsters taking the courses frequently receive medically inaccurate or misleading information, often in direct contradiction to the findings of government scientists, said the report, by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), a critic of the administration who has long argued for comprehensive sex education.

Several million children age 9 to 18 have participated in the more than 100 federal abstinence programs since the efforts began in 1999. Waxman's staff reviewed the 13 most commonly used curricula -- those used by at least five programs apiece.

The report concluded that two of the curricula were accurate but the 11 others, used by 69 organizations in 25 states, contain unproved claims, subjective conclusions or outright falsehoods regarding reproductive health, gender traits and when life begins. In some cases, Waxman said in an interview, the factual issues were limited to occasional misinterpretations of publicly available data; in others, the materials pervasively presented subjective opinions as scientific fact.

Read the whole depressing article here

From the New York Times today:

The school, part of Liberty University, whose chancellor is the Rev. Jerry Falwell, is for now a makeshift affair in a vast industrial building that used to be a cellular phone factory. Its students compensate for the surroundings by dressing well - many of the men wore jackets and ties - and by showing attentive enthusiasm, even for a heavy dose of civil procedure at 8 a.m.

The school, which says its mission is to train "ministers of justice," is part of a movement around the nation that means to bring a religious perspective to the law and a moral component to legal practice.

"People are realizing that some of the biggest issues of the day are being decided in the courts - the 2000 presidential election, the question of what is marriage, abortion, stem-cell research, cloning,'' said Jeffrey A. Brauch, the dean of Regent Law School, which was founded in 1986 in Virginia Beach by Pat Robertson, the television evangelist. "And maybe there are eternal principles of justice that will tell us how to approach these questions."

The new law schools say they are a sort of counterweight to the views that dominate the legal academy.

"The prevailing orthodoxy at the elite law schools is an extreme rationalism that draws a strong distinction between faith and reason," said Bruce W. Green, Liberty's dean.

...

The Liberty School of Law offers no courses in religion as such, and most of its classes are rigorous, practical and conventional. Like law students everywhere, students at Liberty spend much of their time reading and discussing judicial decisions. But where mainstream law professors tend to ask questions about judges' fidelity to precedent and the Constitution, Liberty professors often analyze decisions in terms of biblical principles.

"If our graduates wind up in the government," Dr. Falwell said, "they'll be social and political conservatives. If they wind up as judges, they'll be presiding under the Bible."

Many of the dozen students who chatted with a reporter over two days at the school, representing a fifth of the school's first and only class, said they were drawn to its emphasis on fundamental and enduring truths.

"We study the law that's written on the heart, the things that no one can deny," Brian Fraser said.

Frank Rich makes a great point - America is no stranger to Republican-spearheaded symbolic wedge issues in election years, only to see those issues die cold lonely deaths in election-year winters. While it's true that their most useful function for Republicans is as Democratic tar-pits, Rich may be giving Bush too much credit. Even as Kevin Drum points out that Bush's first verbally stated initiatives have nothing to do with a social-conservative agenda, it seems clear that the line has moved somewhat. I mean, Tom Coburn is closer to a moderate Fred Phelps than a moderate Republican and would never have ascended to a Senate seat in a less divisive environment. And no, Newt is Chomskyesque next to Coburn. Even scarier than the headline grabbing Coburn is South Carolina's Jim DeMint, who is a member of the "The Fellowship" DC insider jebus-cult, best known for their sponsorship of the "National Prayer Breakfast". So while I appreciate Rich's tempering of the current hypewave, I'm less quick to shove my fear of a nationally supported evangelical agenda away in a corner for four years, for the simple reason that for the first time, we have a president who listens to these lunatics with an unjaundiced and uncynical ear.

Update: More about the super-creepy Fellowship Foundation here and here.

According to CNSNews.com, televangelist superstar Jerry Falwell has already figured out how to capitalize on the culture war with a brand new lobby group:

he Rev. Jerry Falwell is launching a new organization called The Faith and Values Coalition, which he describes as a "21st century resurrection of the Moral Majority."

The new coalition will lobby for pro-life judicial appointments; a federal amendment barring same-sex marriage; and the election of another conservative president in 2008.

Falwell, now 71, said he would serve as national chairman of the new coalition for four years.

"Following the sweeping re-election of President Bush and a new generation of conservative lawmakers nationwide, a new organization, The Faith and Values Coalition (TFVC), has been launched," Falwell announced Tuesday from his headquarters in Lynchburg, Va..

He said the group would capitalize on the momentum of the November 2 elections "to maintain an evangelical revolution of voters who will continue to go to the polls to 'vote Christian.'"

[...]

"One of our primary commitments is to help make President Bush's second term the most successful in American history," Falwell said. "He will certainly need the consistent prayer and support of the evangelical community as he continues to spearhead the international war on terror and the effort to safeguard America."

Three priorities

Falwell said the new organization has a three-fold platform:

-- the confirmation of pro-life, strict constructionist U.S. Supreme Court justices and other federal judges;

-- the passage of a Federal Marriage Amendment;

-- the election of another socially, fiscally, and politically conservative president in 2008.

And, for anyone in the audience who wondered whether the forces of Falwell and company have put the whole apocalypse/tribulation/rapture/lake of fire agenda on the backburner, fear not: Dr. Tim LaHaye, "theologian" and co-author of the disturbingly popular _Left Behind_ series has signed on as chairman of the board. Because, after all, it's not a party until Jesus comes back and kicks a little liberal ass.

Update: This Associated Press story on the New, Improved Moral Majority reads suspiciously like someone just summarized Falwell's press release.

A plan to bowdlerize sex education textbooks in Texas could dictate lesson plans for the rest of the country, reports the Christian Science Monitor:

Presidential politics isn't the only realm where the Texas way prevails. As a heavyweight in the $4.3 billion textbook market, the state puts its stamp on materials bound for many of the nation's classrooms.

On Friday, two messages came through loud and clear as the State Board of Education voted on a new list of approved health books: That abstinence should be taught without any textbook discussion of contraception. And that the books should be explicit about marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Texas is one of 21 states with a centralized process to review textbooks, but it's the second-biggest market. "If [interest] groups can be successful in California and Texas in getting some restrictions as to what content is covered, that will have a major influence on textbooks that are sold nationally," says Martha McCarthy, chancellor's professor of education at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Everything from evolution to multiculturalism has come up for scrutiny in textbook debates over the past century. But the origin of the state-approval process dates even further back to just after the Civil War. Southern states organized to keep out textbooks that they saw as disparaging the Confederacy, so Northern publishers began sending separate books with more palatable references, like "the War for Southern Independence," according to a September report on textbooks by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington.

The report criticizes states that dictate what books schools can purchase, saying the practice "entices extremist groups to hijack the curriculum, and papers the land with mediocre instructional materials." Textbook publishing is ripe for reform, it argues, because students spend somewhere between 50 percent and 90 percent of class and homework time focused on textbooks.

In hearings before Friday's vote in Texas, the debate centered on the discussion of abstinence and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in four high school books. Protect Our Kids, a coalition of educators, health experts, parents, and religious leaders, raised concerns that three of the books don't talk about condoms or other contraceptives at all, while one mentions latex condoms briefly.

Instead, all the books teach that abstinence is the only 100 percent effective way to prevent pregnancy or STDs. One offers strategies such as going out in groups, avoiding alcohol and drugs, and getting plenty of rest to avoid having "to make a tough choice when you are tired."

(Read the full article here.)

Fellow editor Scott points out that, while the abstinence-only mandate is no less unsettling than the move to drive evolution out of the classroom, it does, at least, represent an legitimate point of view that isn't in flagrant conflict with reality.

However, let's transpose the argument made by the pro-abstinence "educators" to another high school staple. It is entirely accurate to state that the only way to completely prevent death or injury in a car crash is to never set foot in a car. However true this may be, though, it wouldn't make for much of a driver's ed class.

Once again, we see a clash between ideology and belief, and the reality that all the pro-abstinence messages in the world will not stop some teenagers from having sex with each other. Strategic editing of textbooks does not make teen sex, teen pregnancy, or same-sex relationships disappear. (In fact, it is far more likely to increase the incidence of teen pregnancy, in which Texas already leads the nation amongst 15-17 year old girls.

And don't forget -- market pressures may result in the same material being taught to students across the country.

Thanks, Texas!

Michael Kinsley gets to the heart of the matter in asking whose values actually impose on the others':

I mean, look at it this way. (If you don't mind, that is.) It's true that people on my side of the divide want to live in a society where women are free to choose and where gay relationships have civil equality with straight ones. And you want to live in a society where the opposite is true. These are some of those conflicting values everyone is talking about. But at least my values — as deplorable as I'm sure they are — don't involve any direct imposition on you. We don't want to force you to have an abortion or to marry someone of the same sex, whereas you do want to close out those possibilities for us. Which is more arrogant?

We on my side of the great divide don't, for the most part, believe that our values are direct orders from God. We don't claim that they are immutable and beyond argument. We are, if anything, crippled by reason and open-mindedness, by a desire to persuade rather than insist. Which philosophy is more elitist? Which is more contemptuous of people who disagree?

Andrew Sullivan writes:

What we're seeing, I think, is a huge fundamentalist Christian revival in this country, a religious movement that is now explicitly political as well. It is unsurprising, of course, given the uncertainty of today's world, the devastating attacks on our country, and the emergence of so many more liberal cultures in urban America. And it is completely legitimate in this country for such views to be represented in public policy, however much I disagree with them. But the intensity of the passion, and the inherently totalist nature of religiously motivated politics means deep social conflict if we are not careful.

We're being careful to this point?