Posted by Harcamone
Up to now, I had considered liberal fears of theocratic intrusion into public policy overblown, even a tad hysterical.
Andrew Sullivan shares your concern, Nick. See some of the stuff on his current front page relating to this.
Of course I take Andrew, and you, seriously. And I would fight to the death against even a slightly theocratic America.
But I also try not to forget to bring the salt-shaker to brunch with Andrew because I think he is too invested in homosexual- and other leftfield “normativity.” Remember our friend Randy, how comfortable he was with thinking of himself as a non-normal person? Andrew isn’t there, and never will be. He desperately wants the quilt of normativity to have more panels woven into it.
So, at least with Andrew, I think there are two issues he tends to conflate.
a] legitmate fear of theocratic ideologies, especially when they seem to be moving from the far fringes uncomfortably towards us.
b] unreasonable fear of the defensiveness of hetero-normal, and vanilla-normal, society.
Somehow I continue to believe that we are well innoculated against the worst diseases of a]. I trust the American people, I can’t explain why.
As for b], I can understand the longing to move past hetero-normativity. In my own private cosmos, I have no problem with this evolution, in fact I think I’m part of it.. But there is also the Public Space, and it’s there that I think we need to back off from the idealistic desire to repair the world (or tikkun, to use the talmudic word so beloved of Jewish “progressives”).
All things call forth their opposites. This premise has not been disproven, so I think everyone needs to be a bit careful. Including, of course, the theocrats. Don’t get me wrong. They do need to be opposed.
But here is an unwelcome idea — it might turn out that everyone is going to have to compromise on some important things.