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"  Given the obsessions of the various New York Times op-ed columnists, and if I have to choose, I will gladly take Gail Collins&amp;#039;s slavish devotion to the saga of the late Seamus Romney, or the various voices from old movies and her dusty libido that scream imprecations in Maureen Dowd&amp;#039;s head, or even Our Mr. Brooks and his Apple Jacks sociology over the preposterous notions held by Ross Douthat about all those people who are having the sexytime of which he disapproves, and who insist on having it, and enjoying it, regardless of the opinion of clerical apparatchiks and professional scolds. If there&amp;#039;s ever been anyone who fairly well defines joyless fking, it&amp;#039;s this guy. After not too long a reprieve, Douthat is back again today, bleating about the latest in phony political scandals ginned up by the professional wingnut outrage machine \u2014 namely, that the institutions of the Roman Catholic Church are being asked to choose between their twisted view of human sexuality as expressed by a dimwitted encyclical that&amp;#039;s been ignored for four decades, or some federal tax breaks. Of course, Douthat doesn&amp;#039;t see it that way: Before he disappointed his many admirers by declining to seek the Republican nomination, Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana told the Weekly Standard&amp;#039;s Andrew Ferguson that the gravity of the economic and fiscal challenges facing America&amp;#039;s next president might require calling a temporary &amp;quot;truce on the so-called social issues.&amp;quot; On culture war controversies like abortion and same-sex marriage, he suggested, &amp;quot;we&amp;#039;re going to just have to agree to get along for a little while.&amp;quot; (Okay, so we&amp;#039;re starting off on Fantasy Island. Mitch Daniels didn&amp;#039;t run because his wife&amp;#039;s a little, ahem, wayward, and because he knew his record in Indiana wouldn&amp;#039;t stand up to scrutiny any more than Willard Romney&amp;#039;s record in Massachusetts has, and, anyway, one of the first things Daniels did in his state was defund Planned Parenthood. So, we have already passed the International Oh-Just-Bite-Me line.) But even amid downturns and deficits, the culture wars are still inevitably significant, for the very simple reason that there&amp;#039;s no common ground on which to call a truce. (Yes, because one side of the culture wars, which happens to be the side on which Douthat is a troubled young top kick himself, has no intention of calling a &amp;quot;truce&amp;quot; until it has absolutely everything it wants, which includes the right to tell women what to do with their lady parts because that&amp;#039;s what Jesus entitles that side of the culture wars to do. That&amp;#039;s why we&amp;#039;re suddenly arguing in our politics about contraception, as though the Church&amp;#039;s record on that issue hasn&amp;#039;t been laughable since 1965. Only one side of the culture wars, it should be noted, has a body count.) Start with the contraception mandate. To many observers, myself included, a mandate that required insurers to cover reproductive interventions while exempting religious employers seemed like the obvious way for a liberal White House to advance its social agenda while preserving social peace.  (Big of you, lad. Of course, you&amp;#039;re not a Dominican Episcopalian making $16,000 a year cleaning bedpans in a Catholic hospital who can&amp;#039;t afford the $600 a month co-pay for the birth control she needs to control her heavy bleeding and yet who, through no fault of her own, finds that she has to live with the theological horse-pucky of Humanae Vitae as enshrined as an &amp;quot;exemption&amp;quot; in American secular law. Here&amp;#039;s the truce: Bishops can decide to act on their principles, or keep the tax breaks.) It seems obvious to abortion opponents that a breast cancer charity that finances an abortion provider is effectively taking sides in the abortion debate, and that Komen&amp;#039;s temporary policy shift was an attempt to return to more neutral ground. (Also incorrect. The Komen Foundation didn&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;take sides&amp;quot; in the abortion debate until it handed its public-policy direction over to an extremist wingnut from Georgia. Also the &amp;quot;neutral ground&amp;quot; is not funding a medical procedure that is guaranteed to American women by the Constitution? Oh, okay. And, by the way, &amp;quot;temporary,&amp;quot; my ass. Komen&amp;#039;s just sorry they got caught.) There are all sorts of possible compromises one could imagine on the question of same-sex wedlock, ranging from civil unions to domestic partnership provisions to a federalism that respects New York&amp;#039;s recent vote legalizing same-sex marriage and the results of Proposition 8 alike. (Again, that&amp;#039;s a truce? &amp;quot;Accept all my definitions and we will all live happily together as one.&amp;quot; Marriage is not a sacrament under the secular law. The secular law has no sacraments. Once again, he seems to be confusing City Hall with a cathedral.) But the arguments that we remember longest, that define what it means to be democratic and American, are often the debates over human life and human rights, public morals and religious freedom \u2014 culture war debates, that is, in all their many forms.... Thus Plessy v. Ferguson, decided in 1896, is more famous today than, say, the Panic of 1893. (Oh, holy mother, is this all kinds of wrong. Plessy v. Ferguson was not a &amp;quot;culture war&amp;quot; debate. It was not essentially about human life or human rights, although the latter consideration certainly fared badly as a result of it, and it goddamn sure wasn&amp;#039;t about public morals or religious freedom, unless Ross is sticking up here for anti-miscegenation statutes and Southern preachers&amp;#039; hellfire sermons about who happened to be bearing the Mark Of Cain. Plessy v. Ferguson was a purely political decision with purely political consequences. It was designed to defend and to strengthen a system of American apartheid that systematically stripped African Americans of their rights as free citizens, left them exposed to terrible vengeance, and made a mockery of the Constitution until well into the 1960&amp;#039;s. It was a way of ordering society by repressing some of its members. The only way one can argue that it was a &amp;quot;culture war debate&amp;quot; in the context of Douthat&amp;#039;s column is to argue that there was some undeniable social legitimacy to the supporters of Jim Crow. If, in the name of a &amp;quot;truce,&amp;quot; you&amp;#039;re willing to toss aside the privacy rights of 51 percent of the American population, or deny the full and equal protection of the laws to the gay citizens of the United States, though, I guess that&amp;#039;s not too much of a leap.) "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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