Stop Letting Repugs Define Us and Our Issues

Adele Stan is one of many liberals who have been saying this for years, but apparently some people (coughbarackobamacough) need to be smack upside the head with a rhetorical two-by-four.

What’s really at issue in Douthat’s column is the perils of accepting the right-wing frame when constructing liberal positions. By unilaterally presenting abortion as a very bad thing in the 1990s, the message mavens of the Clinton administration, with their construction of “safe, legal and rare,” gave abortion opponents a rhetorical rationale for piling on restrictions that, in many states, make abortion inaccessible to increasing numbers of women — despite the fact that the Supreme Court decided decades ago that their right to the procedure is protected by the Constitution.

A similar “moral hazard,” if you will, exists in the arguments of some LGBT rights advocates, who assert our rights via the idea that LGBT people are “born this way,” and should therefore not be penalized for sexual behavior, conducted in private between consenting adults, that falls outside the realm of heterosexuality. In rooting one’s rights in the “born this way” claim, one basically makes the case that if one weren’t “born this way,” the behavior would be wrong. How ‘bout the simple constitutional claim that, hey, it’s none of your business?

Our rights come from the Constitution, not from some set of “Judeo-Christian values” selectively defined by right-wing politicians. Leave it to the religious institutions to promote their values as they see fit. After all, that’s their constitutional prerogative.

Every time liberals cede the moral frame to the right wing, liberals lose.

Preach it, girlfriend.