The conservative right thinks you’re a ‘cultural Marxist’ when you express tolerance and acceptance of people not like them, or suggest they ought not to be governed into submission.
I expected to raise some hackles when I posted an article, entitled ‘Rampant child sexual abuse is occurring in churches — not at drag shows,’ to Twitter.
It made what to me seemed the quite reasonable argument that child sexual abuse cases get reported in alarming numbers in churches (and it isn’t only the Catholic Church), while there are few, if any, credible reports of sexual abuse of children at drag shows, yet the religious conservatives in many US state legislatures ‘falsely equate drag shows or LGBTQ+ people with sexual perversion’, and are rushing to enact bans on drag in the presence of minors, and bans on any expression of LGBTQ+ themes in schools.
Religious conservatives do not like to be reminded that children are not safe in their churches, that many of them are massive hypocrites, and that churches have a very poor record of reporting crimes against children to the authorities instead of ‘handling’ them internally.
Some retorted that teachers are much worse than pastors and priests, and molest children in far greater numbers, which is true. But that does not let the religious leaders off the hook, nor make drag artists more guilty.
Many resorted to baseless and defamatory insults, calling me a ‘groomer’ who supported the systematic sexualisation of young children for my own perverse ends.
Puberty
News flash: children get sexualised all by themselves. It’s called puberty, and this happens long before they turn 18 or get married (which some religious conservatives, ironically, would happily allow at the age of 12).
It is the role of parents and caregivers to assist children on this journey, and make it less scary, confusing or traumatic, especially if their feelings and development make them feel different from the majority of their peers.
It is also the role of parents and caregivers to furnish children with the information they need to make sense of the changes in their bodies, and to understand how pregnancy and diseases can be avoided should they choose not to abstain from sex.
(It is ironic, but not unexpected, that conservative religious beliefs are associated with higher teen birth rates in the US, as illustrated on this map.)
Perhaps most importantly, children need to be taught how to guard against the people most likely to abuse them: family members, adults in their circle of acquaintances, pastors, priests, youth leaders, teachers, sports coaches and scout masters. Nine out of ten abuse cases involve people a child knows and trusts.
I was accused of supporting an ‘ideology’ that seeks to convince children as young as five that they are, or should be, trans or gay. According to these right-wing hysterics, not confining children to stereotypical gender roles, or suggesting that one should not hate or discriminate against people who express their gender or sexual orientation in different ways, is all a plot to pervert them.
This is absurd, of course.
Being exposed to gay people, or trans people, or drag artists, isn’t going to turn anyone into a homosexual, transsexual or transvestite. These things cannot be taught. They are innate.
Gayness isn’t a contagious disease, and what the right calls ‘LGBTQ+ indoctrination’ does not infect children with gayness.
It merely engenders tolerance, acceptance, broad-mindedness and non-discrimination – virtues which only the religious right appears to oppose.
It also teaches children that if they themselves are gay, or otherwise different from the traditional norm but are afraid to say so, that they need not be ashamed and are free to live their lives on their own terms.
The religious right certainly does not like that idea, and have driven many of their own children to suicide because they wouldn’t accept their sexual orientation.
Mrs Doubtfire
Nobody objects to keeping children out of adult-oriented shows of any kind. But not all shows involving people in drag, or gay characters, are adult-oriented. Just like some stage shows are lewd and titillating while others are not, and some films are for adults only while others are not, some drag shows are adult entertainment while others are not.
The only people who disagree are those that consider cross-dressing to be sinful, in and of itself. That means that the objection is strictly based on religious dogma, rather than any rational considerations.
Passing anti-drag laws that essentially ban under-18s from cosplay conventions, or Mrs Doubtfire screenings, or Monty Python skits, or nativity plays performed by all-girls or all-boys schools, does not protect children.
Children ought to be exposed to people who are different from them. They ought to be taught not to hate or discriminate against people who look different, dress differently, or live different lifestyles from them.
Sheltering children from the real world turns many into bullies and bigots, or into rebels who find their own way, unmoored from any moral guidance.
Cultural Marxism
Many of my religious-right critics accused me of being part of a far-left ideology, summed up by one of my virtual attackers as ‘cultural Marxism’.
This reflects the polarisation of the American culture wars. If you’re not a Christian nationalist defending traditional Western values, you must be on the other extreme of the spectrum, preaching Marxist identity politics.
On the left, there is indeed an ideological movement that divides people into victim and oppressor classes, based on their race, gender and other markers of identity.
These classes, in Marxist doctrine, are at war with each other, and victory will not be achieved until the oppressors have been trampled into the dust and the victims own the world (or the means of production, at least).
This ideology is just as exclusionary as any ideology on the right.
On the right, it is much the same, except that racial and gender identity is used to define who belongs to the community of ‘traditional family values’, and who does not.
Discrimination against dark-skinned people, gay people, non-Christian people, is rife on the right. Right-wing ideology and its disdain for out-groups is just as collectivist as left-wing ideology.
Liberalism
Liberalism, in its classical incarnation, rejects racism, sexism and other forms of identitarian discrimination altogether.
It respects people not as members of this or that class or community or collective, but as individuals. It values individual liberty, recognising that what makes people happy and contented is entirely subjective, and cannot be imposed by someone else who claims to know better what’s good for them.
It respects community groupings based on common culture or heritage only inasmuch as those communities also respect the liberty and rights of people who choose not to associate with them, or not to conform to their cultural or traditional values.
(Likewise, although I personally disapprove of religion, I am tolerant of religious people to the extent that they, in turn, are tolerant of those of us who do not share their religion and do not wish to live under their religious laws.)
Liberalism is tolerant. Liberalism is accepting. Liberalism rejects hatred and prejudice and discrimination, on any grounds other than the demonstrated actions of individuals.
Liberals will not condemn you for who you are, but only for what you do. And only actions that violate the rights to life, liberty and property of others are grounds for condemnation.
Classical liberals should welcome the teaching of diversity, equality and inclusion, because they inculcate the basic moral value of respect for individual freedom.
They should resist, however, the right’s attempts to dismantle diversity teaching and to instead impose their religious or cultural values upon others. Equally, they should resist the left’s attempts to hijack diversity teaching to introduce crude identity politics and critical race theory.
Narrow path
Liberals walk a path that is neither right nor left. It rejects the hateful identity politics of the left, as well as the hateful out-group prejudices of the right.
And for that, liberals are despised. They get insulted by both right and left.
Christians will display their Christian love by publicly (and falsely) accusing them of the most heinous motivations or crimes. Left-wing ideologues will denounce them as racists and sexists who cannot be redeemed because of the colour of their skin or the hairiness of their chin.
It is a difficult and narrow path to walk (to appropriate a religious metaphor).
Classical liberals must resist the polarisation that permeates global political discourse. Classical liberals must be especially careful not to get sucked into the American culture wars. They are toxic and polarising battles between two illiberal extremes, between which the liberal should never feel pressured to make a choice. It is okay to reject both.
Classical liberalism is between a rock and a hard place.
The right wing, an amalgam of religious fundamentalists and white nationalists who hide behind terms like ‘culture’, ‘language’ and ‘tradition’, is upset when they get denounced by classical liberals, when they think that the far left on our other side is more deserving of that fate.
The left wing, an amalgam of socialists, identity politicians, and environmental religionists, gets equally upset when classical liberals criticise them, when they think the right wingers standing on our other side are more deserving of our critique.
Neither understands that classical liberals consider the real battle to be between liberalism and illiberalism, and that it views both sides as illiberal. The battle is between tolerance and intolerance, and both sides are intolerant.
Classical liberalism is tolerant, except of intolerance.
[Image: Robin Williams as Mrs Doubtfire]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR
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