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It’s the Substance, Not the Process

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Regular readers of Lawyers, Guns & Money (if any) will know that I am often puzzled by those who claim that reactionary culutral countermobilization is primarily driven by the fact that the courts have intervened in these policy disputes (see, for example, here and here.) I won’t reiterate the argument here, but essentially I think that these claims don’t make much sense theoretically if you examine them, and also don’t hold up empirically when you study how religious conservatives responded to similar policy-making when it came from the executive branch.

As Jill and Jesse point out, the regrettably DOA legislation conferring gay marriage rights in California provides another case in point. Not only were the usual suspects highly agitated by the acts of an elected legislature, but their rhetoric is remarkably similar to the rhetoric they direct when the courts do something they don’t like. Take these quotes, for instance:

“The only word I can see here is prostitution,” said Randy Thomasson, president of the Campaign for Children and Families. “Instead of obeying the voters and the Constitution, the Democratic politicians have prostituted themselves to the homosexual marriage agenda. It’s not gay, it’s bad.”

Okay, it’s one thing for the California legislature to ignore the 61-percent majority against so-called “gay marriage.” But is it some kind of sick joke to call the shred-the-Bible bill the “Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act”?

What proponents of the countermobilization myth simply fail to grasp is that reactionary ressentiment is remarkably adaptable; any political institution can be subject to being described as “a bunch of out-of-touch elitists imposing their will on the God-fearing majority.” When courts do something you don’t like, legislatures represent the will of the people. When legislatures do something you don’t like, then referenda or public opinion polls are “the will of the people,” and the legislature suddenly becomes “those out-of-control bible haters down in Sacramento.” When public opinion is against you, you just claim that it is anyway. And round and round we go. The brutal truth is that conservative activists and politicians do not rigorously adhere to consistent theories of democracy and/or jurisprudence. Anybody who thinks that cultural reaction can by largely disarmed by, say, overturning Roe and allowing a couple dozen state legislatures to ban abortion is dreaming in technicolor. Major social changes will produce a backlash no matter which institutions are involved.

Cross-posted at Majikthise. (P.S. I followed Paperwight’s advice and used Crimson Editor to compose the post in text format; if any Mac users can let me know if this solved the textual problems, I would appreciate it.)

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