Uncompromising Positions: God, Sex, and the U.S. House of Representatives

6. Cultural Scuffles and Capitol Hill

181 6 Cultural Scuffles and Capitol Hill [A] case needs to be made for cooperative work on a committee and in a party setting. . . . I think there’s an ethical burden of proof on the person who will not cooperate in doing what needs to be done to bring policies to fruition. —Rep. David Price (D-N.C.) T he original working title of this manuscript was “Culture Wars and Capitol Hill.” That title, however, mischaracterizes the argument I pursue. As a national deliberative body, the U.S. Congress is an arena for punctuated cultural conflict (or scuffling) but probably not continuous culture war. Consider, for example, the spring 2005 conflict over judicial nominations . Democrats threatened to filibuster five of the president’s nominees, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) threatened to invoke the “nuclear” option (also known as the “constitutional” option), which would have eliminated the filibuster for judicial nominations with a ruling from the chair and would have set a Senate precedent. The cultural stakes were high. After all, courts ultimately decide what constitutes establishment of religion and what is and is not protected by the right to privacy. Prayer, abortion, and homosexuality: the Supreme Court has ruled on all of these issues, and religious traditionalists have suffered several major defeats (Roe v. Wade, Engel v. Vitale, Lawrence et al. v. Texas, to name a few). Thus, Christian conservatives support confirmation of judges who 182 Chapter 6 reflect their values. Of course, progressives also support nomination of fellow travelers to the federal bench. The matter is especially pressing for traditionalists, however, in that they hope that the Supreme Court will overturn a string of precedents. Ultimately, a bipartisan group of fourteen senators forged a compromise: The Republicans agreed to oppose the nuclear option , and Democrats agreed not to filibuster three of the five contested nominations and not to filibuster future nominees except under “extraordinary” circumstances. To be sure, some political observers repudiated this arrangement.1 If nothing else, however, this episode illustrates that compromise is possible on seemly nonnegotiable cultural issues. Religious traditionalists and sexual progressives embrace different values and, accordingly, different policy agendas. For many culturally animated activists, their policy agendas are truly incompatible . Yet many Americans are moderate in their cultural preferences and are likely to support moderate policymaking. The challenge for congressional leaders, then, is to govern constructively , in a way that builds policy from the center outward. In this way, culture war will be avoided though cultural scuffles will endure—which probably is inevitable in a pluralistic society. With this context in mind, in this chapter I revisit the argument and findings of the preceding chapters and suggest implications and directions for future research. COMPETING CULTURES Implicit in this analysis is the assumption that congressional politics unfolds as the foreground and background interact. In the foreground, goal-oriented legislators pursue reelection and policy outcomes on a continuous basis. In the background, the modern era of American politics has seen the development of two sociocultural groups that have nursed conflicting visions of the good life.2 The culture of religious traditionalism embraces a vision of society in which individual decisions are made with an eye toward divinely ordained social relationships. The culture of progressive sexuality embraces a vision of society in which individual decisions are made autonomously, and traditional sex and gender relationships are not taken for granted as preferred. As this cultural conflict relates to Congress, legislators operating in the Cultural Scuffles and Capitol Hill 183 institutional foreground will find themselves in a position to aggrandize their values in law. Again, however, this is not to suggest that there is a continuous culture war raging at either the mass or institutional level of American politics. The exit polls of the 2004 election seem to belie that possibility.3 Certainly there are cultural undercurrents that have the potential to produce political conflict. For example, the data in table 6.1 point to a pronounced electoral cleavage centering on religion. In the 2004 election, a majority of Catholics, mainline Protestants, and born-again and evangelical Protestants voted for President Bush. Moreover, among Protestants and (to a lesser extent) Catholics there appears to be an attendance gap. Overall, 59 percent of Protestants voted for President Bush; among Protestants who attend church weekly, however, 70 percent voted for Bush. Among Catholics, 52 percent voted for Bush. Among Catholics who indicate weekly church attendance, 56...