It's a puzzling paradox. This is supposed to be the happiest, fuzziest time of the year and yet we get more of the culture-war tripe during these precious few weeks where we are reminded of the unique value of family and our fellow human beings than during any time of the year where we are generally given leave to be horrible human beings (full disclosure: I kick puppies during any time of the year not rhyming with 'Schmidtmas')
From Fox's perennial hyper-ventilations about the war on Christmas --because somewhere somehow, an aging braless feminist has put a stake through Santa Claus with her post-structuralist non-denominational greeting at a Whole Foods (which begs the question: what is a conservative doing at Whole Foods that they hear such an attack on Christmas? Talk about going into the belly of the organic free-range beast!) or other fine establishments to the renewed influence of one Randall Terry the incoming speaker, Duke of Orange, aptly enough, I think to try and lead another Glorious Revolution.
Seriously. What gives?
Christmas should be about all that warm and fuzzy stuff we like, and most arguments around Christmas should center around football, or which reindeer was the toughest, or just how Santa can get around so fast, and whether he strictly hews to modern workplace safety laws in getting so much anthracite out of the ground (an experience that I, sadly, have some experience with, getting enough coal some years to nearly start my own petrochemical empire.)
It should be. But it's not. The modern social reactionary Right is way too large to fit into one diary, and others have done a far better job (indeed, spent their whole lives) documenting it than I ever could.
I would just like to focus on one Randall Terry.
As others have documented, Randall Terry is a particularly repellent man. Even within the particularly febrile hard-right social conservative community (documented with particular adroitness in this tome), he's something of a pariah --though given his meetings with the incoming Speaker, and the general state of flux in contemporary right-wing politics, who knows how long that'll last?
I worry about all this, because even as a very relaxed, essentially relapsed Catholic (in the spectrum of theistic probability, I'm probably somewhere between a two and a three), this man is taking up space in the Christian dialog. I am not under any illusions that most Americans, even devout Christians are as uniquely delusional as Mr. Terry, but it is very easy for him to drive the dialog, by making his voice the default position of the right, he drags us all to the right like a really preachy overton window pane.
Consider abortion. Mr. Terry and his ilk hold that liberals like us like abortions. In their view, we are (to borrow from Alan Moore) Republic serial villains, gleefully rubbing our hands every time a fetus is destroyed. Please. As a college student I'm more likely to gleefully rub my hands together when I can get a meal that's slightly more sophisticated than cheez-whiz and ramen noodles.
In all seriousness, I would wager that no one likes abortion. It's an invasive procedure. It often leaves lasting psychological scars, and it always presents ethical quandaries. But I'm not a woman. I'm a man, and one who deeply admires his mother and the other women in my life for putting up with their problems (both biological and related to the men in their lives --we are not the fairer sex, after all) with so much grace and poise.
Most Americans probably feel the same way. They want their wives, sisters, and daughters to have a choice. The basic decency of our fellow Americans and the fact that we've already won this battle long ago (in terms of jurisprudence, the courts.) Unlike in so many other areas, we're status quo preservers. That's no reason to get complacent. The anti-choice crowd has eroded that right wherever possible, adding transaction costs and psychological impediments to the procedure.
Still, I feel a bit sorry for them. Whilst there has long been a strain of apocalyptic thought in American Christendom (the Millerites come to mind.) Because ultimately they can't rest. The culture war is a self-sustaining perpetual motion machine. Rather than enjoying the season with friends and family, Randall Terry and his ilk are busy creating self-abnegating theodicities about a loving god that still naturally "aborts" one-third of all fetuses, as many commenters here have noted.
Perhaps it's all a giant prank. Randall Terry might well cash into his self-contradictory logic and make a Christian-themed action movie. Can you imagine?
He might challenge God on the whole miscarriage thing. There'd be a lot of explosions and some kicking Christian rock. And doubtless some strawman liberal pussies to get kicked around by a Christian man of action.
It'd be called... Job 2: The Revengening.
Or something to that effect.
The point is, I don't want to be thoughtful on this issue around Christmas. I want to be thankful for my family and enjoy some Turkey and the warmth of the season. In a sense, the ramping up of the culture war around this season contains the seeds of its own defeat. Most Americans will look at petty bullshit like the War on Christmas and rightfully think "this is stupid."
But there will always be the social-right curmudgeons who want to fixate on how the (vast) Christian majority is under siege by Marxist-Muslim-gay-liberal-hippies.
In the spirit of the season, the best we can do is conserve our strength. The Culture War, as much as we may hate the term, can continue after Christmas. So imitate the example of the warring nations during the First World War. Have a Christmas Armistice. Do so unilaterally.
And when you see someone like Randall Terry, tell them "Merry Christmas." Or, if you're feeling particularly impish...
"Happy Holidays."