“In this case, you have a movement that has so totally embraced a particular political party, that it’s willing to go along with any outrage as long as it’s within the tent of party.”
That was Randall Ballmer, identified as a “historian of American religion,” trying to explain to the Boston Globe “why” evangelicals are standing behind Roy Moore. Ballmer was trying to paint the entire conservative movement as selling its soul for a Senate seat (ignoring the anti-Moore conservatives), but his point was a perfect critique if you applied it narrowly to the politicized evangelical religious Right.
“… a movement that has so totally embraced a particular political party.”
And this phrase, though not intentionally, brings us back to the feminist movement during Bill Clinton’s tenure.
As stories of sexual harassment have dominated the news this fall, it’s eye-opening to reread Marjorie Williams’s account in the pages of Vanity Fair how the women’s movement responded to the allegations leveled against Bill Clinton. One observation about the feminist movement in particular surfaces several times throughout Williams’ reporting: its compete alignment with the Democratic Party.
“While most of the Washington-based women’s organizations that lobby and promote women’s participation in electoral politics maintain a veneer of bipartisanship,” Williams wrote, “a web of relationships links them to the Clinton administration.”
Gloria Steinem, a fierce Clinton defender and famous feminist activist, admitted it plainly: “We would not be doing our job if we didn’t take into account that this president and his policies are crucial to the lives and welfare of the majority of women in this country.”
“That’s not bending over backwards,” Steinem said, “that’s being sensible.”
Another woman interviewed for the story made Steinem’s case even more directly:
Among the most honest women I interviewed for this piece was Marie C. Wilson, president of the Ms. Foundation for Women, who related her experiences, early in her career, as a lobbyist for liberal causes in the Iowa legislature. “I knew how to talk about the kinds of emissions standards I wanted for Iowa companies, and what kind of child-care standards I wanted for the children of Iowa, and Would you please move your hand? And most times I didn’t get the emissions standards or the child care. Now,” she says of Clinton’s presidency, “I’ve gotten emissions standards, and I’ve got better child care, and I’ve still got the hand. But that’s better than the other way.”
“A very few women were willing to make this argument directly,” wrote Williams, “that feminists could find some honor in making a dispassionate, tough-minded decision that Clinton’s value in office outweighs the sordidness of his personal life.”
“But making this argument is something different from simply sweeping his behavior under the rug,” she asserted, “it’s the pretense, above all, that does the damage.”
The pretense is the key.
Parallels are striking between the feminist Left’s rationalization of its support for Clinton and the parts of the religious Right rationalizing support for Roy Moore today. Williams wasn’t wrong to suggest there is more honesty, perhaps laudably so, in frank defenses predicated on a calculation like the one Wilson made. But to another point, when value-based movements — for women, for religion — become so closely aligned with one political party, leaders in either party will inevitably fail them.
That’s when those pretenses become problematic.
Movement leaders on both sides justified their skepticism of accusers by pointing to the messenger. Democrats, amid this #believewoman moment, say they would have believed Clinton’s accusers, but these women were being peddled by the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy dead set on taking down Clinton.
Moore’s backers wave off the accusations as a smear by major media outlets with liberal biases — “Fake News.”
So movements — liberal feminists or the religious right—start acting like partisans.
Something interesting happens when moral movements become so deeply attached to political parties. The very nature of our politics means such movements will inevitably face the choice of compromising their values (justified with excuses and pretenses) or turning their backs on their own “side.”
Too many seem to compromise.
