2008 Election Ends The Culture Wars

The 2008 presidential victory of Barack Obama and the Democrats’ sweep of the US Senate and House of Representatives signaled the end to the Christian Right’s culture wars, claims a new book, Sex Scandal America: Politics & The Ritual of Public Shaming.

“After three decades of growing influence and power, the fierce right wing assault on popular values, especially sexuality, is in eclipse,” says author David Rosen. “This round of the culture wars is over.”

The 1960’s and 70’s ushered in unprecedented sexual permissiveness in the United States. From the advent of mini-skirts to the birth control pill, America’s fashion, values, entertainment, and politics went through a great upheaval. A skyrocketing divorce rate, group sex, mate-swapping, one-night stands, and the acceptance of pre-marital sex defined this period as one of experimentation and exploration. 1950’s conservatism gave way to hedonism. Casual sex, gay rights, abortion, and free love were finding a mainstream voice by the time a popular televangelist, Jerry Falwell, formed the Moral Majority in 1979. He led a Christian revolt to take back the government and, in essence, to dictate the morals of America.

During the 1980s the Moral Majority claimed a constituency of 50 million people. By 1985, Falwell’s operations had budgets of over $100 million per year. Their goal was to gain political power and repress the growing homosexual influence, mount a coordinated fight against pornography, and counter the ACLU.

For all the efforts of The Moral Majority, the 80’s witnessed more of the same. David points out the 80s featured the following:
• A flurry of nearly two-dozen major sex scandals involving the political elite.
• Revelations about a Supreme Court nominee’s alleged sexual harassment of a fellow federal employee.
• An alleged gay prostitution ring operating out of the White House.
• Sex scandals involving two of the nation’s leading pastors.
• Scandals involving Catholic priests began to emerge.

“The culture wars were a conservative counter-revolutionary rebellion against the 60’s,” says David. “A Christian-Republican alliance turned a host of important sex-related personal and social issues into a moralistic nightmare. Drawing inspiration from a fundamentalist religious fervor rooted in the Puritans, the Moral Majority’s movement sought to police the sexual life of fellow citizens.”

The Religious right sought to restrict sexual pleasure in America, to limit who can do it, when, where, and how. It was deeply troubled by the sexualization of Americain its fashion, advertising, television, movies, and news media. The “family values” that it proposed came as a backlash to the wild times of the 60’s and 70’s. For a good quarter-century the culture wars were a battle for America’s sexual soul.

However, the recent election put an end to the culture wars on a number of fronts. For one, with Democrats running the White House and Congress, the conservative agenda will be on hold for a while. For another, because the nation is more concerned with the wars it is waging, the eroding economy, energy independence and the cost of healthcare, there is little debate being waged about previous - “hot-button” topics such as abortion, teen pregnancy, gay rights, or evolution. The cultural wars left America conflicted and exhausted.

“America suffers from sexual schitzophrenia,” says David. “On one side, innumerable politicians, clerics, and much of the media decry what they see as the threat of illicit pleasure. On the other side, consenting adults, young people and the popular culture push for increased sexual explicitness. And in the middle, a growing and diverse assortment of ordinary Americans challenge restrictions on acceptable pleasure. Since the Puritans settled New Jerusalem nearly four centuries ago, American sexual life has embodied this tension. The nation has never dealt comfortably with human sexuality, or the wilder impulses like homosexuality long decried as immoral or illicit. This unresolved tension haunts American sex culture today.”