9 Ways To Halt The Right Wing Culture Wars And Bring Sanity To Sexual Policy

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http://www.alternet.org/sex/109563/9_ways_to_halt_the_right_wing_culture_wars_and_bring_sanity_to_sexual_policy_

9 Ways to Halt the Right Wing Culture Wars and Bring Sanity to Sexual Policy
By David Rosen, CounterPunch. Posted December 3, 2008.

We have a unique opportunity to overturn the perverse agenda of the Religious Right.

The recent electoral victory of Barack Obama and the Democratic party presents a unique opportunity to overturn the most perverse policy of the Bush administration and the religious right, the conservative repressive sexual agenda. The following nine proposals can help frame a new sexual agenda to be introduced in the first 100 days.

For the last three decades the religious right fought a take-no-prisoners war over popular morality. Taking power with Bush’s victory in 2000, Christian conservatives were finally in the position to impose their beliefs as public policy. And they did so with a vengeance. At the local, state and federal levels, religious zealots, working through the Republican party, took control of the apparatus of the State and aggressively implemented a diverse set of programs to further their goal of creating a morally upstanding, Christian society. Family life, sexual relations, education, scientific knowledge and popular entertainment became battlegrounds of the culture wars.

The culture wars played a decisive role in the 2000 and 2004 elections, but were eclipsed in the 2006 Congressional elections, the religious right’s moral fervor spent. While sex issues were all but absent from the 2008 national presidential campaign, they did help rally the conservative faithful at the state level. Efforts to outlaw gay marriage were successful in Arizona (Proposition 102), California (Proposition 8)and Florida (Marriage Protection Amendment) as was Arkansas’ Proposed Initiative Act No. 1 that prohibits co-habiting couples of the same sex, whether gay or straight, from either adopting a child or serving as foster parents.

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Proposal #1: Safeguard Roe v Wade

President-elect Obama was a co-sponsor of the 2007 Senate version of the Freedom of Choice Act (S. 1173) that would reaffirm Roe as a fundamental right. As he stated: “Throughout my career, I've been a consistent and strong supporter of reproductive justice, and have consistently had a 100% pro-choice rating with Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America.” Congress should pass and Obama should sign the Freedom on Choice Act.

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Proposal #2: End Abstinence Policies

The Bush administration’s abstinence-only crusade is a failure. Mounting research data indicates an upswing in pregnancy among teen girls, including Sarah Palin’s daughter, Bristol, and that the abstinence-only policy must be replaced. Abstinence-only education contributes to unwanted pregnancies, oftentimes leading to unwanted abortions. According to the ACLU, the federal government has spent more than $700 million since 1997 on abstinence-only programs and, last year, allocated approximately $170 million to such programs.

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Proposal #3: Remove Religion from the Classroom

The tyranny of religion is the ignorance it fosters. As evident in the Dover decision and other battles over evolution, this ignornace has found expression and public-policy legitimacy in the many false Bush-administration claims like those that linked abortion to breast cancer and advised that condoms to not prevent conception or transmission of sexual diseases. The administration of lies must be thoroughly repudiated and replaced.

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Proposal #4: Accept Civil Unions & Marriage among Same-Sex Couples

President-elect Obama has come out in favor of civil unions and in opposition to marriage among same-sex couples. The recent electoral decisions banning gay marriage in Arizona, California and Florida reflect a deep fear among many Americas about the meaning of marriage, personal intimacy, in a rapidly changing world.

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