Public Health and the Culture Wars
In our last post, we acknowledged that the GOP attempted to derail economic stimulus efforts by studding the recovery package conversation with fear-mongering blather about STDs and condoms. This is an old trick to peddle failed policies. The Republicans tax-cut centric governance style doesn't work, but when they add rhetoric about promiscuity and condoms, people for some reason go all woozy and vote GOP. With such a recipe for success why change?
Just as evolution keeps bumping up against religion when fundamentalists gate crash the classroom, family planning based on science, statistics, and good public policy will always encounter obfuscatory politicians spurred by religious advocates trying to portray serious conversation as lasciviousness to be resolved by morality talk.
The CDC's annual STD report released January 13th indicated that STD infections were rising in the US. That might be expected. The former president George W. Bush removed birth control education from aid programs in favor of abstinence information doled out by religious organizations. During that dark time, the Republican party corralled the vote of church goers by regaling them with grisly horror stories about the godless amorality and depravity of birth control. The GOP honed this strategy over decades before it began to bear fruit during the Reagan era. It reached a apex (I hope) during the Bush administration.
Still In the 80's?
I was reminded of how long ago the condom tirades started when I came across an editorial from a May, 1987 issue of U.S. News and World Report. The story also reminded me that this wasn't always a Republican strategy.
In 1987 the AIDS crisis was a growing public health threat. New York city Mayor Koch wanted to run 30 second TV spots, print ads, and radio announcement to encourage heterosexual women to use condoms. At that time half a million people in NYC were infected with HIV.
Harold Evans, a contributing editor of US News and World Report reported in "A Necessary Offense", that ABC and CBS refused to run the ads, which Brooklyn Democratic Councilman Noach Dear called "'disgusting'". The stations also opposed the advocacy of Surgeon General Koop, who also recommended using condoms in addition to abstinence and monogamy.
In 1987 religious leaders and network executives protested that advocating condoms would promote promiscuity. However as the US pursued this policy, Denmark and Sweden were publicly promoting condom use, as was Britain. And as Evans wrote on the European policies: "no widespread disorder is reported."
Beyond Fundamentalism
Evans wrote in US News & World Report, "birth control is not only accepted by the majority; it is rightly advocated..." Furthermore, in the context of the AIDS epidemic:
"Minorities cannot reasonably expect to prevail when their scruples threaten not just the right of free expression of a majority but the very existence of majority and minority together."
Twenty-two years later, television stations still "parade" morals with an even steeper gradient of "ultimate hypocrisy". TV programming has of course advanced in licentiousness beyond the "sexual soaps" and "exploitative product marketing" of the 1980's, and the internet takes off where television leaves off. The initial Republican strategy to win votes based on morality plays, once so successful, most recently begot devastating GOP seat losses. Meanwhile, the banking fiasco, health care, climate change and job losses -- all real problems having nothing to do with condoms -- paralyze the legislature. Despite their crushing losses though, some GOP politicians still resort to this cheaper populist strategy in times when clear headed leadership is so critical.
The US touts the superiority of its advanced technology. But if the nation is to be effective against pockets of global fundamentalism as well as the current global economic crisis, politicians best continue to elevate the tenor of their argument beyond reflexive smut and groveling to thoughtful negotiations and leadership. "Tax-cutting" (bolstered by cultural fear mongering) confuses consumer "choice" with democratic freedom and grinds the country down.
