Protecting Sexual Freedoms

The conservative media obsession with Columbia, recently manifested in an obsession with our sex lives, is hilarious. But I see a serious side to all of it as well, especially to the latest round of moralism. The problem with the "University of Havana North" garbage is an old one-angry neoconservatives attacking the source of the facts that undermine their philosophy. With the recent episode, however, we have a return to an even earlier battle.

The fact that major news outlets think it is acceptable to speak with revulsion about clubs established for those seeking safe exploration of sexual alternatives is a sign of a real threat to sexual liberation and social freedom. Columbia has struggled to become a place in which the austere, repressive sexual politics that dominated society for most of recent history are absent. Students are vigorously protected from harassment, but consensual exploration and honesty have been encouraged. Groups like Go Ask Alice! have worked to create a safe environment for sexual discussion and, yes, sex. Student groups have struggled to break taboos and open dialogue on issues that are important to the student body, no matter how deviant from the residual puritanism of the American sexual mainstream. Put more bluntly, we have worked to form a campus on which real sexual liberation and equality can be achieved. In doing so, we have tried to spurn the more common American college culture of rampant chauvinism, gay bashing, and marginalization of the weird "biggest losers on campus" who Ann Coulter sneers at in her recent Fox interview with John Gibson on the subject of sex at Columbia.

I do not attempt to judge our success. But I will say that the goals of the actions I described are more than worthy-they are necessary. As many of us experienced in high school and still see even in oh-so-progressive Morningside Heights, much of the progress supposedly made in the days of the sexual revolution appears to have been reversed. In much of America, sex is again a topic to be swept under the table, and the predictable pattern of shame, suppression, and gender discrimination results. Members of the Columbia community should be lauded for their attempts to reverse this trend, and members of the media should be shamed for bolstering it.

These cultural conservatives are not just attacking Columbia, they are using us as a proxy for the fact-loving intellectual left, and now, sexual progressivism. Our response has been one of dismissal so far-appropriate given the absurdity of the attacks. But we should also respond seriously to the broader attack on progress in sexual and gender equity and liberation in a society in which these things are far from assured.

All people have a right to a lifestyle that does not meet the approval of Ann Coulter's evangelical "sex club," which she seems to mistakenly believe constitutes the mainstream to Columbia's immoral fringe. In 1999, Paul Weyrich-the man who coined the term "moral majority"-surveyed the wreckage of the Republican scheme to impeach Bill Clinton and wrote in an open letter to conservatives, "I no longer believe that there is a moral majority. I do not believe that a majority of Americans actually shares our values." He continued, "I believe that we probably have lost the culture war." Weyrich watched voters reject the agenda of the conservative movement, and we have now seen them reject its leaders.

Why? Because the majority of Americans do not subscribe to Weyrich's vision of morality. We believe in personal freedom and we would prefer that our government keeps its eyes away from our personal lives and its hands out of our pants. We know that majoritarian moral politics have never been the American way, and even the opportunists of the Republican Party have turned on conservatism in the aftermath of the 2006 election. I was surprised to find myself agreeing with former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-TX, who recently said that Christian conservatives have become so powerful "to a large extent, because [Focus on the Family leader James] Dobson and his gang of thugs are real nasty bullies." He even labeled the Republican behavior during the Terri Schiavo disgrace "demagoguery," saying, "Demagoguery doesn't work unless it's dumb ... These issues are easy for the intellectually lazy and can appeal to a large demographic."

It seems that the only thing Armey had wrong was the size of the demographic. Watching the end of Movement Conservatism in 2006, I can only wonder about the future of the Republican Party. America is not the place for moralizing reactionaries, but there is a gaping hole in American politics where the Rockefeller Republicans used to be. Let us hope that this party returns to its small government roots and abandons the hateful far right of Ann Coulter and John Gibson.