The Culture War Ain't What It Used to Be.

[cali]

Jonathan Bernstein makes an excellent point about the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell:

his issue will now promptly go away, entirely. Oh, we'll have a bit of reporting on implementation, but seriously: does anyone think that Republicans are going to run in 2012 on re-instating DADT? Or, even less plausibly, on re-instating the ban that DADT replaced? Forget it. It's possible to believe that a DADT vote could be used in a GOP primary down the road, but it's utterly implausible to believe that the policy would ever be revived, no matter what happens in the 2012 (or any future cycle) elections.

With the possible exception of John McCain, pretty much every conservative knew they were going to lose this argument eventually. And many of them know they're going to lose the argument on marriage equality, too. As Jon Chait asks, "it was only six years ago that Republicans used the bogeyman of gay marriage to help win a presidential election. Does anybody expect that to happen again?"

Outside of some local issues and races in the South, we've reached a point where The Gay Menace just doesn't have much political potency anymore. Not that that means the culture war will disappear and all we'll talk about is economics forevermore. We've still got the anti-Muslim culture war (Rep. Peter King, the new chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, will be holding hearings on the threat posed by American Muslims, which should be a veritable hate-apalooza). And there's always the War On Secularism. Truth is, the culture war never ends, it just shifts its focus. A hundred years from now, we'll be arguing about whether advocates of the Robot Citizenship Act of 2111 hate God and America and everything we believe in.

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http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=12&year=2010&base_name=the_culture_war_aint_what_it_u

[frazzled]

1. It isn't?

Ask the Smithsonian:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/arts/design/11ants.html

The culture wars are still alive and kicking. Just as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 did not end discrimination, the repeal of DADT will not end discrimination. Institutional discrimination can be made illegal, but there's a long long culture war ahead.

The David Wojnarowicz story I wrote above is about the culture wars involving both gays and art. Art is still under assault in this country today.