Reagan's 'born Agi

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'Moral Majority' leader Jerry Falwell AMANI POLICE (right) ran into some trouble when he gave an interview to Penthouse' above. But, despite the fight from gays (above centre) and others, Reagan, the cops and the racist THE right-wing coalition in America which propelled Runald Reagan to power mas a very broad one. It didn't consist only of those whose main aim was to restore capitalist profitability and those who wanted to return to the days before 'detente' Virtually every reactionary and traditionalist group and interest in the United States saw in Reagan's election its opportunity to turn back the clock. Reagan's presidency is like a piece of rotting meat in which the grotesque sects of right wing maggots are flourishing in a way which they have not done since the days of Senator Joe McCarthy in the early 1950s.

On the other hand these born-again reactionaries are finding that it is quite a struggle to roll back some of the social changes and constitutional gains of the last 25 years in the USA.

Reaganism, therefore, has opened a period. of bitter fighting over all kinds of social and ideological issues - on religion, on the content of education, the rights of women, the rights of lesbians and gay men and on racial discrimination.

Dark Ages As an example of the attempted come-back of the dark ages nothing could be more apt than a widely publicised court case at the end of 1981 in the State of Louisiana.

The State legislature had passed a law which ordered that equal time in school natural history programmes should be alloted to the theory of evolution and to "creation science" la new euphemism for the biblical myth of Genesis). For several weeks a judge beard rival evidence - a British astro-physicist was even flown in to attest to the truth of creation.

In the end the judge decided in favour of Darwin and declared the law voconstitutional. But now the same process is likely to take place in neigh'bouring Missisipi where the judges may be closer to God.

uch a grotesque pro ecure. earlier century, illustrates a general point about the offensive of the New Right - its organisational and doctrinal link with religion, especially certain branches of the christian Church.

Moral Majority Although racist and fascist organisations like the Ku Klux Klan are showing greater signs of activity, the more archetypical case of the new right moveiment is a Christian organisation such as the famous Moral Majority (which, a popular lapel badge has it, is neither).

The Moral Majority, ted by the Rev. Jerry Falwell, who seems as ubiquidous as Superman, is a super-energetic, superbigored, well-financed and politically efficient group dominated by born-again Caristians of what in Britain are known as the Don cunformist' churches NIHOUS right wing are on the rampage.

and their various mutant offspring.

On a number of crucial questions, especially relating to sex and the family, the ideas and political pressures from this source coincide with those from the other extreme of the Christian spectrum, the Roman Catholic Church.

This holy alliance is now organising a major attack on the right to abortion, on equal rights for women, and on the rights of gays and lesbians. .. A few years ago the US Supreme Court held, in a historic decision, that it was unconstitutional to impose any legal restrictions on abortion rights. Although medical facilities for abortions are insufficient, and often very expensive, the decision meant that the United States has been one of the countries where abortion rights have been legally best protected.

During 1982 two bills will be debated in Congress which are designed to put a dramatic end to all this. The most radical of them is the so-called Human Life bill, sponsored by Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina.

This bill would simply define life as beginning at the moment of conception. Abortion would thus become not simply a crime but first degree murder. Even a natural miscarriage murder investigation. Police burde dvesurador The second bill, sponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, would overrule the old Supreme Court decision by allowing individual states to make their own laws on abortion. The Helms bill would require only a simple majority in both houses of Congress; but lawyers expect it to be declared unconstitutional, it passed. The Hatch bill is a constitutional amendment and so would require a two-thirds majority of each house and ratification by 35 of the states.

Family break-up

The so-called "prolife' lobby prefers the Helms bill but its likely fate is leading the most realistic lobbyists to favour the Hatch amendment. The Catholic bishops have now declared for this as an attainable second best. If passed (and that is by no means impossible) it would allow the equivalent of the Human Life bill to be introduced in individual states.

While this new threat to women looms ahead, an old promise of reform is rapidly receding. The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to the US Constitution requires the ratification by only two more states (to make 35) to become law. But it must get that before the (already extended) deadline of June 1982, or the whole process will have to begin again.

In December a Judge ruled that the extension itself was unconstitutional; and in any case the possibility of its ratification by two more states now looks quite low.

So, despite massive public support, the ERA appears to be nearly dead.

Reagan in his campaign explicitly opposed the ERA as unnecessary, but said that women deserved more rights and he would do his bit to see they got them in his employment policy in the Federal government. In fact out of his first 400 senior appointments, only 43 were women, though his appointment of Sandra Day O'Connor, a conservative Republican and no friend of women's liberation, to the Supreme Court was given maximum (and sickening) publicity.

Reagan's economic policies, too, are giving women maximum opportunities to go back to where the New Right believes they belong-the kitchen. In fact one of the main ideologues of Reaganomics, George Gilder, author of the best-selling Wealth and Poverty, believes that the whole problem of modern capitalism boils down to the erosion of the dominance of men:

•The man has the gradually sinking feeling that his role as provider, the definitive male activity from the primal days of the hunt and on into modern life, has been largely seized from him; he has been cuckolded by the compassionate state"

As the (admittedly limited and hazy) sunshine of the ERA recedes, another cloud is appearing in the sky in the form of the Family Protection. Act which like the abortion acts will be discussed by the Congress in 1982.

The Moral Majority and similarly minded groups are mounting a massive campaign in favour of what they see as the stabilising conservative influence of the traditional family. They can point to numerous pieces of evidence about the break-up of the family and its 'virtues' in the USA. In New York in 1980 37 per cent of births were to unmarried mothers (in Central Harlem the figure was 77 per cent); and there were many more abortions than births.

Recent census data reveals that there has been a tripling in the number of unmarried couples in the US during the last decade, most of them under 35. And in the same period the number of divorces doubled.

Gay rights

At the same time far more people in America than in any other country have adopted, a gay lifestyle. It is now generally accepted that about 10 per cent of the US population are gay and the proportion of gays in the adult population of New York City and San Francisco is put at between 25 and 35 per cent.

• The Family Protection Act would not by itself reverse any of these trends. But by stipulating the conditions for the receipt of Federal funds it aims to define a kind of official moral code on the family and sexuality; and it would be used as a precedent for even more powerful and oppressive legislation. But as it is it would involve a manifold attack on the rights of women, gays and lesbians and of racial minorities.

These have been summarised as follows by a group organising opposition to the act.

Against Women 1. Federal funds ended for any organisation offering abortion counselling, contraceptives, abortion or veneral disease treatment for unmarried minors without parental consent; 2. Abolition of federal spouse abuse regulations; 3. Federal funds ended for all law groups involved in abortion and divorce litigation; 4. No tax exemption for day care centres which participate in political campaigns; 5. No federal funding for schools which present educational materials which "do not reflect a balance between the status role of men and women, do not

Armal

reflect the different ways in which women and men live and do not contribute to the American way of life as it has been historically understood'; 6. Schools will be permitted to discriminate against students and teachers on grounds of sex as well as sexual preference, disability and religion; 7. No federal funding for training women in non-traditional jobs; Against lesbians and gays See 1, 5 and 6 above plus: 8. Law firms and groups involved in gay rights litigation will lose all federal funding;

9. No federal funding under → i is tig any provision of federal law to public or private groups or individuals who suggest that homosexuality can be an acceptable lifestyle.

This could remove medicaid payments, unemployment benefit, social security, old age pensions, food stamps, federal tuition grants, veterans' benefits, federal disability insurance and workmen's compensation payments for openly gay people; 10. Action by an employer or únion against a homosexual employee shall be excluded from the definition of "unlawful employment practice' Against young people See 1, 4, 5, and 6 above plus: 11. Runaway children mandated to be returned to their parents; 12. Child abuse

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id by creating an excepm for discipline or corporpunishment applied by parent or someone authsed by a parent; • School textbooks to be psored by committees of rents; . More opportunity to be -en for prayer and religis education in publie -ools; rainst racial minorities • No federal funds for gation relating to deseggation and busing; i Tax exemptions allowed : savings accounts earirked for tuition in prinon-profit schools in etfect, white, middle iss schools); • To prove a charge or ial discimination against →se schools, it must be own to have been delibte practice for at least I years. Then a year -er the school exhausts all -nues of appeal (which -y take years) the worst san suffer is loss of tax -mpt status;

federal funds for educan to be given to states in Ik grants. The Guidets would allow these -vate schools to apply for Ids. . Tax exemption for white ents adopting a child of ther race.

No provision for affirtive action or quotas to rect racial imbalance;

inst unions Union shops outlawed;

Private, non-profit Dols are exempted from ebligations as employers der the National Labor ations Act. Hence no eral protection. for ployees in these schools.

he Family Protection | is regarded as crucial many New Right stratits and lobbyists. One up, the National ComLee for the Survival of a e Congress (led by Paul yrich). sees it as a _tral legislative tool to ose liberals and the left inti-family.

he FPA embodies the in principle advocated another New Right up, the Conservative sus (led by Howard lips who was employed Nixon to dismantle the i poverty programme). his is the principle of *funding the left" , that tutting off federal aid anything even vaguely progressive.

The FPA also embodies the favourite principle of another prominent New Rightist, Onalee McGraw of the Heritage Foundation, the New Right's well-financed think tank. This is attacking "secular humanism" in the public schools system.

Bombarding

As with all the previous lovers of the family (for example Hitler and Stalin, and on a lesser scale James Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher), the authors of this monstrous bill are protecting the family as part of a very broadly based reactionary programme.

They rightly see marriage and the family as traditionally understood in capitalist society as an essential element in the preservation of both the reality and ideology of exploitation.

Their successors in America today are bombarding their fellow citizens with propaganda for the family. As an example, a recent issue of the Los Angeles Times carried a hugely expensive advertising supplement about the Mitterrand government in France (also carried in some British papers) paid for by the extremely obscure right. wing Catholic group, the Society for the Defence of Tradition, the Family and Property.

Before any other alleged actions of the French Socialist Party government this "analysis" was concerned about the 'Confirmation of State secularism - marriage put on the same level as cohabitation - complete sexual freedom - 'rehabilitation' of homosexuality - unrestricted access to free contraceptives - freedom of abortion for both adults and minors - the gradual death of private education - state education starting at age two"

Defeats

Against such values as these the women's and gay movement in America have still managed to win important new rights and freedoms in the last two decades. Increasingly, however, this struggle is becoming an uphill one.

The halt in the progress of the ERA is one example of this. So are a series of recent defeats for gay rights.

In November 1981 Bill outlawing discrimination on grounds of sexual preference was voted down for the third year in succession by the New York city council. This despite support from the allegedly popular Mayor Ed Koch (who has issued an executive edict banning discrimination which could easily be revoked by his successor). The opposition to the proposed New York bill was orchestrated by fundamentalist religious sects, Catholic, Baptist and Jewish.

In the first showing of a major new situation comedy series on one of the national TV networks an (extremely discreet) allusion is made to the fact that its middle aged leading character, Sidney Shorr, is gay. The Boston Globe described the allusion as "so muted it shouldn't upset anyone"

Closet

They had not countu, however, on the moral susceptibilities: of the Moral Majority. After an outery from that source Sidney Shorr had by the second episode returned for ever to the closet.

Another network, also under pressure from the Moral Majority, dropped plans to introduce a gay character into one of the most widely networked mid afternoon soap operas for which American TV is renowned.

In Florida the state legislature recently passed the Bush Trask amendment to the State budget which would cut off State funds from Universities and Colleges where gay rights groups are allowed to operate. This, of course, is the state where the infamous Anita Bryant ran her strident pro-family, anti-gay campaign in 1977. She herself, ironically, has since then been divorced and has publicly admitted that she may have been too hard on the homosexuals.

So maybe there's hope for everyone.

And the legislative pieture is not everywhere so bleak as it is in New York and Florida. As New York City was voting out gay rights, the State legislature of Wisconsin was voting them in. A number of cities now have gay rights ordinances and in one case, Washington DC, the city council has not only voted a gay rights bill but has also voted never to allow the issue to be reopened.

That, however, is ironic to say the least since homosexuality in Washington DC remains illegal. In fact so does the vast majority of the sexual activity which takes place in that city.

The responsibility for this is not with the city council, which in 1981 passed an eminently liberal law legalising virtually all consensual sexual activity. It replaced an existing law which outlawed everything except heterosexual ' missionary position" sex between legally married couples in private.

After a vocal campaign of lobbying by the Rev. Gerry Falwell, leader of the Moral Majority, the liberal reform was vetoed by the US Congress which has reserve powers over all legislation in the Federal capital.

This amazing decision has focussed attention on the extraordinarily primitive and oppressive nature of the United States laws on sex. Many states possess a host of repressive laws which, if they are not often used today, could easily be employed much more viciously if the present pro-family, anti-gay movement gains ground.

Sodomy laws, banning anal and usually oral sex, exist in 27 states. In 7 of these the laws apply to homosexuals only. Penalties range from 30 days prison in Arizona to a possible life sentence in Idaho.

These so-called blue laws are most used today against gays, but they create tricky problems for law-abiding heterosexuals too. In 19 states only the missionary position is legal even for married couples. In 26 states adultery is illegal and in 19 fornication (sex between people married neither to each other not anyone else is banned. Incest and prostitution are illegal in 49 out of the 50 states.

If the Kinsey report on modern American sexual behaviour are correct, then the great majority of Americans have committed acts which in a good part of the country are defined in law as "lewd and lascivious, abominable and unnatural."

Americans who travel a 'ot would have a tough THE .C.... HONK JINH NOA y 2577 time actually keeping in touch with what they could do where. The journalist Clark Newton, writing on the sex laws in Inquiry of October 5 1981, advises the law-abiding • that the safest thing is 'Never do anything in Utah"; it would be safer to stay in neighbouring Nevada where just about anything is legal.

If, he warns, "you're engaging in nothing more than straight and narrow heterosexual intercourse involving only governmentapproved orifices - but you aren't married" then you could be liable for a 10,000 dollar fine in Wisconsin, or six months hard labour in Alabama.

Newton's study uncovered such almost unfathomable anomalies such as the fact that "a married man or an unmarried woman can safely commit adultery in Minnesota or Michigan, respectively, but not vice versa, and not with each Other' So far it has been the economic plans and the militarism of the Reagan programme which have been kept in the limelight by the administration rather than the racist, sexist and other ideological concerns of much of the New Right.

In fact on these questions the most virulent sections of the New Right are denouncing the Reagan administration as liberal. And there have been strange spectacles such as a strong attack by Senator Barry Goldwater on the New Right for undermining American democracy!

Progressives and socialists, blacks, women and gays in America now face a very difficult battle to defend the limited but tangible social gains which have been made in the last two decades. It will not be won by rallying behind the loud-talking demagogy of the liberal Democrats, but only by an independent, united front coalition of those with no need to look over their shoulder at the needs of capitalism.

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Organiser, Thursday 4, Page As TUC rationalise retreat on Tebbit law Murray: would mass action interfere with the paperwork? dA-0.20. A IF we are to build united

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