Confessions of a Moral Terrorist

I had always suspected that I was powerful. As a child, I used to dream of being a superhero. Depending on my mood, I vacillated between wanting super strength, invisibility, super speed and x-ray vision. I was always a composite of my favorite comic book characters. Wonder Woman was an all time favorite, as was Bat Man. I liked his dark brooding nature. I admired the bionic woman too, though I did always wonder why she had to move her hair in order for the ear to work.

As an adult moving toward my 40s, my suspicions are now confirmed. I have morphed into something I never imagined myself to become. Mine is not a tale of a bite from a radioactive spider or anything so glamorous. By simply living my life in the ordinary ways that I do, I have been endowed with a terrible power. In the eyes of many voting Americans, I am a moral terrorist.

I am a woman who could legally have an abortion just before walking down the aisle with my female partner. I confess: I am a lesbian still in my child-bearing years. According to exit polls and the subsequent election results, I pose a threat to the safety and well-being of the United States that is greater than threats posed by Al-Qaeda and by a president who has gotten us into a misguided and ill-conceived war in Iraq while giving huge tax cuts to the wealthy, overseeing an economy hemorrhaging jobs resulting in even more people lacking health insurance, underfunding education, and attempting to privatize Social Security combined. That others perceive me as a moral terrorist is the only way that I can make sense of the fact that more than two out of ten people were willing to put all these other concerns to the side and vote on what was successfully packaged as “moral issues.”

In what can only be described as a stunning bait and switch, the Republican party and its neoconservative fundamentalist elements made war and poverty into nonmoral issues. This was the decisive move in the conjuring trick. Once a significant percentage of the population accepted this way of framing the issues, which was inevitable given the way that the media covered the election, the game was over.

So, having been identified as a moral terrorist, what am I to do? Use my powers for good, of course. My mission: I will continue to act as moral agent who recognizes and respects the dignity of others. I will act as someone who has responsibilities and commitments to my family and friends and especially to those with whom I have strong disagreement but with whom I share a community. That is perhaps the rub in all of this. While it might be tempting write off those who did vote only or primarily on the “moral issues,” as hopelessly sexist or heterosexist and therefore not worthy of our attention, this is perhaps exactly what the Neocons want. By marginalizing ourselves and withdrawing from communal life, we make it easier for the Neocons to continue to colonize the “mainstream,” directing the flow further and further to the right.

By no means am I advocating what I consider to be a dangerous and conservative assimilationist approach of trying to get people to accept me because they think I am like them. I know that I am not like them and they are not like me in some very significant ways. I am calling for something more radical and potentially far more powerful: expanding the moral domain through respectful connection to and engagement with others. This would be a moral revolution.