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If theres one lesson to be learned from the sidewalk confrontation between a Downingtown Area School District administrator and a teen anti-abortion protester on the sidewalk outside a local high school, its this:

The uncivil war raging in American society right now is taking its toll on all of us, and its victims include our children.

Last week Zachary Ruff, the STEM Academy dean of academics and student life, was put on administrative leave by the Downingtown School District after a heated exchange on April 21 with a pair of protesters, a brother and sister. One of the siblings filmed the exchange and posted it online.

Few have defended Ruffs behavior as documented in the video, though many have commented that they believe he was defending his students. He is, after all, an adult who was talking to two children. His epic rant included the use of profanity, mocking the protesters beliefs, singing loudly, and even apparently dancing. On the other hand, the protesters (who told several media outlets they had come to Downingtown because of a Holocaust symposium at West High School), in filming the episode, clearly hoped to milk any dramatic moments for future use.

In a statement shared with district parents and posted online, outgoing Superintendent Lawrence Mussoline condemned Ruffs outburst in no uncertain terms and announced that the district was beginning an investigation.

Local television stations have featured the debacle, as have anti-abortionmedia outlets eager to draw attention to their cause. Two pro-life teenagers just had a pretty amazingencounter with the forces of tolerance, snarked Fox anchor Tucker Carlson, before airing an interview with the home-schooled videographers.

Many parents and students in the approximately 12, 000-student district have rallied to support Ruff. By midday Tuesday a petition begun last week by STEM students had garnered more than 35,000 signatures (though many signees were from outside the area). Students are reportedly preparing statements in support of Ruff for the school board meeting on May 3.

Dorothy Kirk is a parent at STEM my son graduated from the school last year. Kirk hopes Ruffs longandfavorablehistory with the district will outweigh hisbrief regrettable sidewalk outburst as he tried to help students and parentssafelyexit onto the busy street that runs by the school.

Dr. Ruffs a good man, said Kirk. Hes devoted tohisstudents, well-liked, and well-respected in the community.It wasnt like him to lose his composure. We live in a social media society where individuals are not allowed to make a mistake even once for a few minutes a singular worst moment can be captured on video and forever posted online.

For many, this hideously pitch-perfect cage match undoubtedly confirms their worst stereotypes about the blind zealotry of the religious right, and the intolerance of the secular left.

One doesnt have to watch the entire 18-minute video to be profoundly disheartened about the political and cultural moment in which we find ourselves.

When the teens begin to talk about the holocaust of abortion, Ruff fires back, Theyre cells, adding that STEM is a science-based school. Jesus Christ will set you free from your sins says protester Conner Haines. Its a public school, we dont believe in that here, responds Ruff.

Polls taken by Gallup and others suggest that Americans are closely divided between those who identify between as pro-choice and pro-life, but that most the public remains reluctant to impose their personal views on fellow citizens.

We often dont know what we think. Were conflicted.Life is messy. While some of us may believe sincerely that fetuses are merely clumps of cells, and others are sure that you must repent and believe in Jesus to be saved, a lot of us arent so sure. In a society in which the extremes set a low bar for public discourse, many of us either find our voices drowned out or are forced to man the barricades for positions we secretly doubt we can wholeheartedly endorse.

Ryan Zindel, a senior at STEM, says he has loved the smaller and more collaborative environment at his school, which has been rated the top-ranked school in the state several times. But, he adds, his conservative views arent always welcome in the classroom. A couple of other kids had the same ideas that I did, and some kids chose not to engage at all, he said.

I think people are very divided right now Zindel adds. A lot of it comes from there being no discussion between opposite sides of the political spectrum. Were so divided that there is no consensus.

Hopefully, he says, this controversy will be used as a learning experience, adding, You cant just tell people that their beliefs are wrong.

While some will characterize the episode as one pitting a beloved (though intemperate) administrator against anti-abortion interlopers, I think we need to look deeper to find solutions.

Local educators may need some basic training in how to cope with protests, which have occurred in other school districts around the country without sparking a potentially career-ending crisis. But appropriate behavior isnt just the province of teachers and administrators. Whatever our beliefs,all of us are being challenged tofigure out where we can stand together. Sometimes thats as simple as admitting that we need one another to succeed.

The culture wars,likely to intensifyin this tumultuous political environment, haveerupted in Downingtown. In this conflicted moment, we can only hope that we will find the strength and true tolerance to buildon our heritage and create anewa community story, however broad, that includes us all.

Elizabeth Eisenstadt Evans is a writer in Downingtown.bellettrelliz@gmail.com

Published: May 3, 2017 3:01 AM EDT | Updated: May 3, 2017 10:44 AM EDT

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Culture wars come to Downingtown - Philly.com - Philly.com

For nearly half a century, American Christians have, to greater and lesser degrees, embraced the role of culture warriors.

As evangelicals began to stake a claim on American culture and politics, they invoked the language of rights while lamenting the purported decline of Christian America. They pushed back against encroaching secularization and federal government overreach as they sought to carve out space to live out their faith in the manner they saw fit. Issues such as abortion, the ERA, school desegregation, school prayer, and media censorship were but a few of the flashpoints in the culture wars.

A short time ago it seemed as if conservative culture warriors were on the brink of defeat. The cultural sea change on gay rights in particular caught many conservatives off-guard. Even their own millennials seemed to be giving up the fight. In 2015, Obergefell v. Hodges seemed to seal the deal, enshrining same-sex marriage as the law of the land. Even the White House joined in the celebration, glowing with the hews of the rainbow to celebrate the achievement of what we always knew in our hearts, in the words of Valerie Jarrett.

But a lot can happen in a couple of years. Reports of the end of the culture wars, it turns out, had been greatly exaggerated.

The election of 2016 put to rest any such notion. Threats to religious freedom motivated many of the 81% of white evangelicals who threw their support behind Trump, and for many, the election emerged as a critical battle in the larger war.

In many ways Obergefell served as a catalyst for this resurgence, inducing panic among conservatives that they were not only losing their hold on American culture, but their very place in it. And on a practical level, it introduced same-sex marriage to red states that were unequipped with sufficient religious exemptions on the books. (With same-sex marriage illegal in those states, there had been no need to craft religious exemptions).

Religious freedom and LGBTQ rights were at loggerheads, it seemed, and the LGBTQ community appeared to have the upper hand, in the courts, and in the court of public opinion. A sense of impending catastrophe was heightened by new assaults on the freedom of religious institutions of higher education to prohibit same-sex relationships among students and staff. The identity and viability of religious institutions appeared to be at stake.

But then Donald Trump won the election. Suddenly, the threat to religious freedom didnt seem so dire. (With Betsy De Vos installed as Secretary of Education, the danger to educational institutions appeared to further subside.)

Indeed, if the rumors prove true, Trump is set to sign a religious freedom executive order today granting expansive religious-freedom exemptions, a move already being characterized by opponents as a license to discriminate against women or LGBT people. With the ACLU and LGBTQ activists gathering their forces, religious freedom and LGBTQ rights are once again pitted against each other in a zero-sum game. But this time its the LGBTQ community on the defensive.

Given the circumstances, it may come as a surprise that the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) is choosing this moment to extend an olive branch of sorts to LGBTQ rights activists.

The CCCU is about to go forward with a legislative initiative called Fairness for All, an effort to secure greater protections for their own religious institutions, while also expanding protections for LGBTQ persons. Essentially, FFA would ensure legal protections for LGBTQ persons in areas of employment, housing, restaurants, financial services, and jury duty, while also expanding religious exemptions in those areas.

The initiative seeks to enhance religious liberty and LGBTQ protections, rather than setting one against the other. In this way it avoids neglecting the concerns of both parties, which distinguishes this initiative from other efforts like the Equality Act, which seeks protections for sexual orientation and gender identity to the Civil Rights act without accompanying religious exemptions, or the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), which promises broad protections for people or organizations defining marriage as between a man and a woman without addressing LGBTQ rights.

Why would the CCCU move forward with this delicate balancing act when they might well press for more expansive religious liberty protections without tradeoffs at this political moment?

There are pragmatic reasons, to be sure. If the political winds change, religious liberty may once again be under siege. And then theres the matter of public opinion. Highly publicized conflicts over religious liberty and LGBTQ rights can be bad for all involved, stoking hostility against the LGBTQ community in some quarters, and against religious institutions, and individuals, in others. (And, in the case of Indiana and North Carolina, conflict around these issues can take a significant economic toll. Or, in the case of Gordon College, public conflict can end up estranging a religious institution from its surrounding community).

But this is not merely a question of pragmatism. As Shapri LoMaglio, the CCCUs vice president for government and external relations, argued at Calvin Colleges Henry Symposium on Religion and Public Life last week, this is a moral question as well. By putting forward FFA, Christians would be signing off to rights for jobs, for housing, really common grace kind of things. Things that promote human flourishing. This is simply a way for Christians to care for their neighbors wellbeing.

She was joined in this sentiment by Robin Fretwell Wilson, a University of Illinois law professor who helped put together the Utah Compromisea model of collaboration between religious freedom and LGBT activists. Wilson insisted that Christians ought to think about what theyre messaging: If you continue to say LGBT people are not worth of respect, it will look like the face of hate. And by using the courts to push through expansive religious liberty protections without also looking out for the rights of the LGBT community, she warned, we will continue to hurt faith in our society.

This legislation will not please everyone. Many LGBTQ activists would prefer legal protections without broad religious exemptions. Some conservative organizations, such as the Alliance Defending Freedom, think that advocating for LGBTQ protections in any way is imprudent. But Shirley Hoogstra, president of the CCCU, sees it otherwise. The Constitution, she explains, provides an array of rights that sometimes collide. When they do, government steps in to provide lawful exemptions based on constitutional principles. In this way, exemptions serve a cartilage functionprovide flexibility between two opposing rights.

It seems that Christian colleges may be especially well poised to offer a different path forward. As institutions that take faith commitments seriously, that are committed to the idea that a robust religious life can contribute to a rich and diverse citizenry, and they are also communities where LGBTQ students make their home. As institutions of higher education, they are not (arguably) primarily in the business of dictating beliefs. Rather, they are spaces where the exchange of ideas can take place within a religious framework, and within a supportive community.

By backing down from the culture war stance, by giving as well as receiving, Christian colleges may well find themselves better suited to serve their students, the church, and perhaps their country as well.

What might it look like if culture warriorson both sideslooked for opportunities to defuse the culture wars? If they refuse to see battles over rights as necessarily a zero-sum game. If they seek to be peacemakers rather than warriors?

What if Christians see this moment, one in which they may have the upper hand, as a moment not to press their advantage, but rather to put away their swords and look out for the needs of their neighbors? As Mark Galli urged his fellow Christians recently in Christianity Today, If it really comes down to a choice of protecting our liberty or the civil rights of others, a long stream of Christian ethics beginning with Jesus (e.g., Mark 8:34-35) argues we should deny ourselves. Although Galli believes the nation will be stronger if people of faith and not just of Christian faithare free to teach and enact their beliefs in the public square without fear of discrimination or punishment by the government, in the end, this is a question of Christian witness. Perhaps, if asked to bake a cake for a gay wedding, we might offer to bake two (Matt. 5:41).

If the culture wars do come to an end, perhaps it will not be an end marked by one-sided victory or defeat, but rather an end brought about by a truce. A truce that balances the protection of rights with love of neighbor, a commitment to peaceful resolution that seeks to promote human flourishing across cultural, political, and religious difference.

Originally posted here:
Fairness for All: A Call for Culture Peacemakers? - Patheos (blog)

Andrew Breitbart despised Donald Trump, and inadvertently predicted his presidency four years too early

Last week when he announced changes to the laws on Australian citizenship and foreign workers, Malcolm Turnbull spoke passionately about "Australian values"and the need to respect our culture and history.

It was a long overdue foray from him into the debate about our changing national identity. It is a debate that will only grow in importance. Unfortunately many on the political left demean that debate by labelling it as merely a manifestation of the so-called"culture wars"and as a debate not worth having. But as the left knows perfectly well, culture is everything.

On AnzacDay the Prime Minister's rhetoric about Australian values confronted reality when ABC presenter Yassmin Abdel-Magied posted inappropriate and offensive comments on Facebook about the day of commemoration.

Turnbull is now facing increasingly strident calls from Coalition MPs for Abdel-Magied to be sacked from her federal government posts. And MPs are asking the not entirely unreasonable question why the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade funded her international tour to promote a book she'd written.

Make no mistake. Abdel-Magied should be absolutely free to say what she said, nomatter how hurtful or offensive her comments.

As yet no one is suggesting she be the subject of an 18-month secret investigation by the Human Rights Commission as Alex Wood was when in 2013 as a student at the Queensland University of Technology he wrote on a Facebook page,"Just got kicked out of the unsigned Indigenous computer room. QUT stopping segregation with segregation".

But the question of whether what Abdel-Magied did should be unlawful is entirely different from whether it is appropriate for her to hold official government positions and be an ABC presenter.

What, if anything, the government does about Abdel-Magied remains to be seen. If the ABC could name among its senior ranks of journalists and commentators a single conservative who admitted to voting for Tony Abbott and to liking Donald Trump, then perhaps Abdel-Magied's position at the national broadcaster would be slightly more tenable.

The person who understood this better than anyone in recent times was Andrew Breitbart who is renowned for saying "politics is downstream from culture".

Breitbart was one of the co-founders of The Huffington Post, and in 2007 he started the Breitbart News Network. Steve Bannon was one of the company's original board members and took over when Breitbart died suddenly in 2012 at the age of 42.

The year before his death Breitbart published his book Righteous Indignation: Excuse Me While I Save the World.

Breitbart was quite explicit about the purpose of his network. He had the aim of starting a site that would be "unapologetically pro-freedom and pro-Israel".

Breitbart had an uncanny understanding of the intersection between culture, the media, and politics.

In aninterview on Fox News in April 2011, he talked about Donald Trump. At the time Trump was considering running for the Republican nomination for the 2012 presidential election.

"Is Donald Trump a conservative?"Breitbart was asked.

"Of course he is not a conservative,"Breitbart answered. "He was for Nancy Pelosi before he was against Nancy Pelosi. But this is a message to those candidates who are languishing at 2 per cent and 3 per cent within the Republican Party who are brand names in Washington, but the rest of the country don't know ...celebrity is everything in this country. And if these guys don't learn how to play the media the way that Barack Obama played the media last election cycle and the way that Donald Trump is playing the election cycle, we're going to probably get a celebrity candidate."

Breitbart's timing was only four years out. A few days after that interview Trump announced he would not join the 2012 presidential race. A public opinion poll at the time showed 71 per cent of those surveyed believed Trump hadno chance of becoming president.

If the Coalition wants to win the culture wars it is going to have to start to fight them. A country's public culture is not only about culture per se. The fact the Coalition can't pass its cuts to government spending through the Senate is entirely a product of Australia's public culture.

It might be that Malcolm Turnbull has realised the truth of Breitbart's dictum.

John Roskam is executive director of the Institute of Public Affairs

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Malcolm Turnbull must learn from Breitbart and fight culture wars - The Australian Financial Review

New York Times

In Ann Coulter's Speech Battle, Signs That Conservatives Are Emboldened New York Times And coupled with a realization by many conservatives that the culture wars on issues like same-sex marriage may have forever turned against them, the belief that their right of expression is under assault is acutely threatening. The First Amendment, Mr. Ann Coulter Cancels Berkeley Speech, Citing Withdrawal of SupportHeat Street Ann Coulter Says She Will Pull Out of Speech at BerkeleyNew York Times all 769 news articles »

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In Ann Coulter's Speech Battle, Signs That Conservatives Are Emboldened - New York Times

Ilyse Hogue knows best. The president of NARAL Pro-Choice America tore into Sen. Bernie Sanders for joining in a rally for Democratic mayoral candidate Heath Mello in Omaha, Nebraska. The rally was part of the "Unity Tour" sponsored by the Democratic National Committee, featuring Sanders and new DNC chair Tom Perez, although Perez did not attend the actual rally in Omaha.

"The actions today by the DNC to embrace and support a candidate for office who will strip women one of the most critical constituencies for the party of our basic rights and freedom is not only disappointing, it is politically stupid," said Ms. Hogue. If the Democrats are to be unified, it will be on her terms, and her terms are that the Democratic Party impose a litmus test on the issue of abortion rights. And, Sen. Sanders, whose voting record is 100 percent-approved by Hogue's organization, had best toe her line.

Actually, that is not exactly correct. Mr. Mello has stated publicly that he supports a woman's legal right to procure an abortion, but that he is personally opposed to abortion. Whatever you think of the distinction Mello draws, and I think it is very weak, it is hard to square his actual position with Hogue's characterization of his position.

The sin against the abortion rights' canon that Mello committed was to support a law in the Nebraska legislature that required doctors to inform women seeking an abortion that they had a right to receive an ultrasound beforehand. How is that not "pro-choice"? The law did not compel women to get an ultrasound as a condition for getting an abortion. It simply gave them information that an ultrasound was available. For this, Mello is accused of supporting efforts to "strip women" of the right to an abortion.

Hogue is a proponent of a more aggressive stance by the pro-choice activists. She took to the stage at the Democratic National Convention last summer and spoke openly about having procured an abortion. Like Katha Pollitt in her book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, Hogue's strategy is to demonize anyone who does not support the abortions rights agenda 100 percent and to insist that women stop buying into the idea that the decision to get an abortion is so fraught, and that the Democrats drop the "rare" in Bill Clinton's triptych: Abortion should be "safe, legal and rare." Hillary Clinton echoed that phrase during her 2008 race, but she dropped the "rare" last year, showing the influence of those arguing for a more aggressive posture.

To give you some idea of just how myopic Hogue is, compare her comments about Mello and the DNC support for him with her own comments in an article in TeenVogue. There, she wrote of her decision to get an abortion:

My best and closest friend at the time and still today is Catholic. And I thought she would think I was going to hell if I told her. But when I did tell her, she was absolutely nothing but supportive so that shattered another myth. Even though at the time she thought she would never do the same thing herself, she had empathy. I feel like the complexity of human relationships gets lost in the abortion debate. People do understand this to be a very personal decision, and their own thoughts about what they would do and what they see as right or wrong aren't things they would actually impose on other people.

She appreciated the empathy she received, but is unwilling to offer any such empathy to the good Democrats of Omaha: They must either side with her agenda in toto, or she will divide the Democratic Party.

Compare her dogmatism with Sen. Sanders' explanation of his support for Mello. Appearing on CBS's "Face the Nation," Sanders said, "If you have a rally in which you have the labor movement and environmentalists and Native Americans and the African American community and the Latino community coming together saying, 'We want this guy to become our next mayor,' should I reject going there to Omaha? I don't think so. It was a great rally, and I hope very much he wins."

No one comes off looking worse from his episode than Mr. Perez. He echoed Sanders' sentiments at first and then, in a series of subsequent statements, pulled back and started mimicking Hogue's intransigence. "Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman's right to make her own choices about her body and her health," Perez said in a statement. "That is not negotiable and should not change city by city or state by state." Perez looked weak, like he was caving to a special interest, which only feeds the narrative that the Democrats are beholden to pro-choice activists. And, there goes the 50-state strategy to which Perez if pledged. In large swaths of the country, pro-life Democrats are the only Democrats who can win.

There are times when a party can and should take an absolute stand on an issue. In 1948, the Democratic National Convention adopted a strong civil rights plank and the delegation from Mississippi, and half the delegation from Alabama, walked out. (Check out the whole video, which includes Harry Truman's great opening in his acceptance speech.) But abortion is simply not like other issues. Sen. Sanders understands that what unites Democrats fundamentally must be a commitment to a different, and more just, economic system. That unity must not be thrown overboard because Hogue insists on doctrinal purity on abortion.

Democrats lost the White House precisely because the smart people in the Beltway and in Brooklyn forgot that many people outside those precincts do not think the way they do. For many of us, abortion is an infamy, as the Second Vatican Council stated. We are not anti-women. We are not unsympathetic to the plight of women facing a crisis pregnancy. According to Hogue and, sadly, now Perez, there appears to be no room for us in the Democratic Party. That means the Democrats will continue fighting the culture wars. It is a recipe for remaining a minority party.

[Michael Sean Winters isNCRWashington columnist and a visiting fellow at Catholic University's Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies.]

Read more here:
Abortion litmus test: Democrats slide back into culture-war politics - National Catholic Reporter (blog)