The Right, Rights and the Culture Wars in the United States, 1981-1989
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The right, rights and the culture wars in the United States, 1981-1989 William Henry Riddington Hughes Hall University of Cambridge March 17 2017 This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Abstract The right, rights and the culture wars in the United States, 1981-1989 This thesis explores how the American right fought the culture wars of the 1980s in the context of the rights revolution and the regulatory state. It does so by examining divisions over anti-abortion measures in Congress, controversies surrounding allegations of discriminatory withholding of medical care from disabled newborns, debates over the extent to which Title IX and other federal anti-discrimination regulations bound Christian colleges that rejected direct federal funding, and the interplay between rights and education during the AIDS crisis. In doing so, it contributes to the still-growing historiography on both American conservatism and the culture wars. Firstly, it adds shades of nuance to the literature on the American right, which has, until recently, posited the election of Ronald Reagan as the beginning of an era of untrammelled conservative ascendancy. However, these case studies reveal that despite Reagan’s resounding electoral success and the refiguring of the Republican party along conservative lines, the 1980s right was forced to fight many of its battles on terrain that remained structured by the liberal legacy. This finding also contributes to recent trends in the historiography of the culture wars, which have added a great depth of historical understanding to America’s interminable conflicts over abortion, evolution, equal marriage and other social issues. By examining how the right conceived of and reacted to the enduring influence of the rights revolution and the regulatory state in the culture wars of the 1980s, the centrality of the right to privacy becomes clear. Acknowledging the importance of this right leads to the conclusion that the fundamental restructuring of relations between the federal government and the states that had taken place during the 1960s gave rise to the culture wars of the 1980s. - Will Riddington Acknowledgements It is difficult to imagine a better intellectual environment than Cambridge University for those interested in the history of America, and many of its staff and students have had a hand in this thesis. I would first like to thank to my supervisor Andrew Preston for his sage and positive input throughout the writing process. My thanks also to Tony Badger, who expertly shepherded the early stages of this thesis before his well-earned retirement. I would like to extend a special thanks to Stephen Mawdsley, Katharina Rietzler and Seth Archer. In addition to providing detailed feedback on every chapter in this thesis, their work in organising the weekly postgraduate workshop has helped a built a thriving and supportive community of young scholars. Especial thanks to Charlie Jeffries, Tom Arnold-Forster, Merve Fejzula and Kate and David Ballantyne among them for their friendship over the years, as well as my other friends from Hughes Hall and the University of Leeds. Special thanks also go to Simon Hall. Without his decision take a punt on me over ten years ago, none of this would be possible. I would also like to thank Bruce Schulman and the history faculty and students at Boston University, who warmly welcomed me for a semester as I made my first forays into the archives. I am also indebted to the staff at the Library of Congress' Kluge Center who were incredibly helpful and knowledgeable during my fellowship in Washington, as well as to the Arts and Humanities Research Council for the funding both my time there and the PhD itself. Many months were spent toiling away in various archives over the course of this PhD. The help of the staff at Catholic Univeristy, Bob Jones University, the National Library of Medicine, the Library of Congress, the National Archives and Ronald Reagan Presidential Library was of immeasurable importance. My thanks to them. Last but by no means least, I would like to thank my family for their unwavering love, support and proofreading skills. Table of contents Introduction 1-28 1 - Fetal rights versus states' rights: pursuing anti-abortion goals 29-65 in the 97th Congress, 1981-1982 2 - ‘A basic attitude about life’: Baby Doe, the Reagan 66-100 administration and the anti-abortion movement, 1982-1986 3 – ‘A blueprint for total federal control’: the right, Grove City College 101-137 v Bell and the Civil Rights Restoration Act, 1984-1988 4 – ‘The right to contaminate others’: AIDS, rights 138-179 and social conservatism, 1986-1988 Conclusion 180-183 Bibliography 184-200 1 Introduction ‘Under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, no State shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”. The fundamental liberties protected by this Clause include most of the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights…In addition these liberties extend to certain personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy, including intimate choices that define personal identity and beliefs…The nature of injustice is that we not always see it in o ur own times. The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning’ Obergefell v Hodges (2015) 1 ‘ Obergefell is the culmination, beginning with Griswold in 1965, of 50 years of judicial usurpation of the right of the people to govern themselves, and, in particular, of t he states to protect from attack “the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing fro m the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony ” ’ Roy S Moore, Chief Justice, Alabama Supreme Court (March, 2015) 2 On Sept ember 30 2016, in the midst of a presidential election of unprecedented rancour and division, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore was removed from his post for his repeated refusal to comply with the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v Hodges , which had legalised same - sex marriage across America. Striking down a previous circuit court ruling that had upheld states’ rights to restrict marriage to heterosexual couples, the Supreme C ourt found that the constitutional right to privacy guaranteed same - sex couples the right to marry. In so doing, they both granted a central tenet of the gay rights moveme n t ’ s long march towards social equality an d confirmed social conservative s ’ lon g - held fears regarding the movem ent’s growing power in American politics, soci ety and culture. Moore’s stubborn stand against Obergefell was the culmination of his long and very public engagements on the frontlines of America’s culture wars. Born in 1947 in Gadsden, 1 Opinion of the court, Obergefell v Hodges (2015), available at htt ps://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/576/14 - 556/opinion3.html 2 Moore quoted in: ‘(In re Alan L. King in his official capacity as Judge of Probate for Jefferson, et al.) ’ , March 4 2016, available at http://caselaw.findlaw.com/al - supreme - court/1728248.h tml 2 Alabama to a solidly working class family, he split his childhood between Texas and Pennsylvania before returning to his home state whilst his father work ed for the Tennessee Valley Authority. After graduating from public school, Moore attended West Po int and then deployed to Vietnam . He swiftly earn e d a reputation as a disciplinarian so strict that the conscripts under his command mockingly dubbed him ‘Captain America’ ; Moore soon took to sleeping on a bed of sandbags so that soldi ers who chafed under his leadership could not roll a grenade under it as he slept. 3 After t he war, Moore obtained a law degree from the University of Alabama . Following a brief period as a professional kickboxer, he eventually leveraged his education into an appointment as a circuit court judge in Etowah County in 1992. He immediately set about merging his conservative Baptist faith with his judicial position , erecting a wooden plaque of the Ten Commandments on th e walls of his courtr oom and beginning court sessions with public prayers for divine guidance. S peaking in the cadences of the Christi an right that had become a powerful political force in the preceding years, Moore claimed that these actions were designed to publicly ‘establish the moral foundation of our law’. 4 Soon enough, his opponents in the culture wars voiced their response. The A merican Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) , which had been fighting for secularism in the South since the Scopes trial in the 1920s, threatened a l awsuit. Although Moore decried the ACLU’s ‘act of intimidation’ , he adroitly positioned his candidacy for re - electi on in the fires of the culture wars and used the suit to fan the flames. 5 However, his resul ting landslide victory moved the ACLU to make good on its threat and file a suit in April 1995 , which held that Moore’s Ten Commandments plaque and courtroom prayer s were a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Although the suit was dism issed on technical grounds rather than the failure of its own merits , it had clearly showed the depth of Moore’s support: the state of Alabama rallied behind him, w ith Republican Governor Fob James filing suit in support and public opinion polls showing that eighty - eight percent of locals backed his stance. 6 In 2000, two years after the ACLU suit was eventually dismissed, Moore set his sights higher.