This just in: we're winning the culture war

I didn't get much of a chance to read up on the blogosphere today, but I noticed that several of the writers I read commented in amazement at the Washington Post's decision to publish an editorial by Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, entitled "America's Secular Saboteurs." These bloggers quite accurately pointed out that the content of this piece is unhinged and naked bigotry, and argued that its publication reflects extremely poorly on the Post's editorial standards. The truth is quite the contrary. The Post has done a great public service in giving this column such a prominent platform, as it ably illustrates the desperation and intellectual bankruptcy of religious conservatism in 2009. It would take far too much time to point out every instance of ignorance and historical contradiction in Donohue's piece (read it yourself and they'll likely jump right out at you), so I'll only address what I see as the highlights. The editorial's first paragraph:

"There are many ways cultural nihilists are busy trying to sabotage America these days: multiculturalism is used as a club to beat down Western civilization in the classroom; sexual libertines seek to upend the cultural order by attacking religion; artists use their artistic freedoms to mock Christianity; Hollywood relentlessly insults people of faith; activist left-wing legal groups try to scrub society free of the public expression of religion; elements in the Democratic party demonstrate an animus against Catholicism; and secular-minded malcontents within Catholicism and Protestantism seek to sabotage their religion from the inside."

The standard practice in this type of writing is to identify your ideological opponents as a marginalized but devious band of schemers seeking to deceive the larger body of honest citizens into complicity in their agenda. By contrast, Donohue rattles off a laundry list of conspirators: educators, sex enthusiasts, artists, civil libertarians, the Democratic Party, and even unnamed fifth columnists within Christianity itself. Note that this 'paragraph' is actually only a single hysterical sentence. One can almost feel Donohue's paranoia rising with each successive semi-colon. Indeed, given the vagueness of his language, Donohue may well be including up to half of the U.S. population under his "cultural nihilist" rubric.

Shortly thereafter, Donohue pinpoints his villains' sinister logic:

"If societal destruction is the goal, then it makes no sense to waste time by attacking the political or economic structure: the key to any society is its culture, and the heart of any culture is religion. In this society, that means Christianity, the big prize being Catholicism. Which explains why secular saboteurs are waging war against it."

The magnitude of ignorance displayed in Donohue's equation of Catholicism with the essence of American culture is nothing short of breathtaking. The heyday of American anti-Catholicism to date took place in the nativist movement of the mid-to-late 19th century, when Catholic immigrants began arriving en masse to United States from Europe. The reaction from the largely Protestant populace was to mount a campaign of violence and economic and social marginalization against Catholic immigrants for - you guessed it - their perceived lack of allegiance to American culture. (Feel free to watch Gangs of New York for a fictionalized primer on the religious politics of the era, but be sure to fast-forward through the scenes where Cameron Diaz has speaking roles). In fact, as recently as 1960 John F. Kennedy, still the only Catholic to hold the U.S. Presidency, had to take pains during his campaign to assure the electorate that he would not be beholden to Papal authority in making decisions as President. Beyond the typical religious-right "religion is the primary arbiter of culture" fallacy (which I'll return to later), it's nearly impossible to argue that American history and culture are synonymous with Catholicism without ignoring a great deal of salient historical facts.

Donohue later follows with this bit of revisionism:

"There was a time when Hollywood made reverential movies about Christianity. But those days are long gone. Now they just insult. And when someone finally makes a film that makes Christians proud, he is run out of town. Were it not for Mel Gibson, there would have been no "Passion of the Christ." But for every Harvey Weinstein who likes to bash Catholics, there is always someone else waiting in the wings to do the same."

Mel Gibson was not "run out" of any town for making The Passion of the Christ. Donohue conveniently neglects to mention the very public incident in which Gibson was caught driving while intoxicated and proceeded to sexually harass a female arresting officer, all the while spewing the kind of rank anti-Semitic beliefs that he had so vigorously denied holding during the run-up to The Passion of the Christ's release. Isn't it interesting, in this context, that Donohue prefers to pin Gibson's downfall on the likes of Harvey Weinstein (what kind of last name is that, anyway?)

"The ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State harbor an agenda to smash the last vestiges of Christianity in America. Lying about their real motives, they say their fidelity is to the Constitution. But there is nothing in the Constitution that sanctions the censorship of religious speech. From banning nativity scenes to punishing little kids for painting a picture of Jesus, the zealots give Fidel a good run for his money."

No. What Donohue and those who think like him fail to understand is that these groups and their supporters, with very few exceptions, have no designs on censoring private religious expression. Rather, they push back forcefully on the fiction that religious belief, in general or particular forms, is an intrinsic part of American society and should receive official sanction and support as such. Preventing public property and money from being employed to display a nativity scene or a statue of the Ten Commandments is not religious censorship and is no way equivalent to denying private citizens the right to do the same with their private property. Rather, it's a judicious assertion of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which remains deeply ingrained in American culture no matter how loudly the Donohues of the world disdain it.

"Catholics were once the mainstay of the Democratic Party; now the gay activists are in charge. Indeed, practicing Catholics are no longer welcome in leadership roles in the Party: the contempt that pro-life Catholics experience is palpable. The fact that Catholics for Choice, a notoriously anti-Catholic front group funded by the Ford Foundation, has a close relationship with the Democrats says it all."

I'm sure that the gay activist overlords of the Democratic Party are quite pleased with President Obama's speedy and bold moves to overturn the federal Defense of Marriage Act and the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban on homosexuals serving in the armed forces. More fascinating is the rapid sequence of assertions that (1) the Democratic Party does not welcome "practicing Catholics" (2) there exists a group called Catholics for Choice, which in fact has a close relationship with the party, and (3) Catholics for Choice is "notoriously anti-Catholic." The message here is fairly obvious: personal religious belief and identification mean nothing when it comes to determining whether or not a person "counts" as a Catholic, while toeing the Church's anti-abortion hardline means everything.

Donohue concludes with this gem:

"The culture war is up for grabs. The good news is that religious conservatives continue to breed like rabbits, while secular saboteurs have shut down: they're too busy walking their dogs, going to bathhouses and aborting their kids. Time, it seems, is on the side of the angels."

Let's leave aside the more explicitly disturbing connotations of asymmetrical breeding as a strategy to achieve cultural and political goals for the time being and focus on the real implications of what Donohue is saying here. In a single sentence, he's managed to neatly encapsulate his view that children are little more than empty vessels to be indoctrinated with an unaltered version of their parent's religious, cultural, and political beliefs, for the purposes of continued engagement of a vaguely defined and ever-changing enemy on a metaphorical field of battle. It is inconceivable to Donohue that, absent some nefarious outside influence, children raised in a conservative religious family could grow up to become atheists, homosexuals, members of Catholics for Choice, or any other of the myriad means of "deviancy" that populate his worldview. To him, these are not their choices to make. They are to be made for them by authority; specifically, by a glorious singularity of parental power and religious dictate.

Bill Donohue is a grubbing fascist with not one shred of respect for the United States of America's rich and dynamic culture of individualism, mutual tolerance, and democracy. He makes no secret of his profound contempt for American citizens who fail to reflect in full his personal prejudices. All of this is abundantly clear in every sentence of his idiotic and vile editorial. We are fortunate to live in a time where this can be made clear, and even more fortunate that Donohue himself has chosen to discredit himself so thoroughly and nakedly on the public stage. It's clear that Donohue imagines himself to be a holy warrior leading a vast army of the devout to a divinely ordained victory. His writing reveals him to be little more than a cheap dictator huddled in a bunker, cursing the names of imagined conspirators under his breath, while promising his dwindling camarilla a glorious triumph in a war that he has already lost.