Roy Edroso agrees that the culture wars are going nowhere just because the fight to save the economy is dominating headlines.  I hold both the belief that culture wars are a distraction tactic used by the right to obtain votes that would be harder to get for the Republicans, but that doesn’t mean that the content of the culture wars isn’t important.  The culture wars live on, because they are about those things that hit closest to home for people—-questions of sex, identity, and power within your very own home.  Reproductive rights are a boutique issue only in the sense that the opponents are working the batshit crazy angle, but it’s not boutique on the level of importance; few things impact a person’s life like how many children you have.  And that’s just one example of many.

I think that’s why Lindsay and I were trying to use Ross Douthat’s rather ridiculously prestigious new job as an opportunity to educate about what kind of nut an anti-choice nut really is.  And when to hear liberal men dismissively point out that there wasn’t a chance in hell that the NY Times would give that job to a sane person is insulting—-we get that.  But the problem is that if Douthat were equally nutty on other issues, you’d hear a perfunctory outcry/education project from all corners, but I suspect that reproductive rights is something many liberals are allergic to, because engaging it feels like you’re feeding the culture wars.  But really, what you’re doing is defending half the human race against wretched bigotry that affects their self-esteem, economic well-being, and health. 

With that in mind, I have to link Brad DeLong, who graciously found this passage of Douthat’s tath shows how his supposed concern for fetal life is actually, like it is with most of the fucknuts, just a gloss to make misogyny and a hardcore virgin/whore complex look like something it’s not.  Douthat wrote this in his book “Privilege”: 

One successful foray ended on the guest bed of a high school friend’s parents, with a girl who resembled a chunkier Reese Witherspoon drunkenly masticating my neck and cheeks. It had taken some time to reach this point—“Do most Harvard guys take so long to get what they want?” she had asked, pushing her tongue into my mouth. I wasn’t sure what to say, but then I wasn’t sure this was what I wanted. My throat was dry from too much vodka, and her breasts, spilling out of pink pajamas, threatened my ability to. I was supposed to be excited, but I was bored and somewhat disgusted with myself, with her, with the whole business… and then whatever residual enthusiasm I felt for the venture dissipated, with shocking speed, as she nibbled at my ear and whispered—“You know, I’m on the pill…”

Obviously, there’s a lot to unpack,  but certainly this passage could be called “patriarchal neuroses distilled”.  He has to disdain the sexual woman while highlighting his own prowess by bragging about bagging her.  Putting a religious gloss on this sort of nastiness is not about making men with these attitudes be better people so much as to give them a pose of respectfulness so they can push these ideas with less pushback.  But despite all of his hand-wringing about the evils of porn, I honestly don’t see how Douthat’s attitude about women is any less different than the “stab sluts in the face with a fork” hatefulness of the new movie “Miss March”.

Want to really boil with anger about this culture war crap?  The Pope claimed that distributing condoms makes the problem of HIV worse.  That’s where these attitudes lead directly.