Word: moralizes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Implicit in all these controversies over sexual privacy has been the admirable social goal of protecting and supporting the family. The traditional religious taboos probably once had a similar goal. Government lawmakers simply followed that tradition (Burger's "Judeo-Christian moral and ethical standards") when they tried to ban lewd movies or lewd whatever, and the Justices did much the same, even in their Georgia sodomy ruling...
Americans have always wanted it both ways. From the first tentative settlements in the New World, a tension has existed between the pursuit of individual liberty and the quest for Puritan righteousness, between Benjamin Franklin's open road of individualism and Jonathan Edwards' Great Awakening of moral fervor. The temper of the times shifts from one pole to the other, and along with it the role of the state. Government intrudes; government retreats; the state meddles with morality, then washes its hands and withdraws. The Gilded Age gave way to the muscular governmental incursions of the Age of Reform...
...Meese's Commission on Pornography and a series of restrictive Supreme Court decisions that, among other things, allowed states to outlaw homosexual sodomy. Though significant, neither the report's findings nor the court's rulings were, on their own, momentous. Taken together, however, they seemed emblematic of a new moral militancy evident in communities around the country and of a willingness of government officials, from federal to local levels, to help enforce traditional values. In addition to the pornography report and the sodomy ruling, consider...
...clean-living capital of the antipornography crusade might be Cincinnati, where Charles Keating Jr. began a moral crusade in the 1950s that residents have carried on ever since. Arthur Ney, the county prosecutor, says, "There is not one X-rated movie house or bookstore in the county today. They know if they bring them in here, we're going to enforce the law." The Meese commission report, says Steve Hallman, director of Citizens Concerned for Community Values of Greater Cincinnati, "will give momentum nationwide to obscenity-law enforcement...
...Republicans, the moral revival has been a distinct political blessing. But it could turn into a risky one. "Morality is a very dangerous issue for the Republican Party," says William Schneider, a political analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "Religion is to Republicans what race is to Democrats. Religion could tear the G.O.P. apart in the next election." Tony Podesta, executive director of People for the American Way, which was formed as a foil to Falwell's Moral Majority, says that Republicans are in danger of becoming dominated by a narrow segment of the ideologi- cal spectrum. "In many...