The Return of the Hot-Button Issues

In the good old days of the last century, the years before the collapse of the economy and the World Trade Center towers, political discourse in the U.S. was, too often, rutted in issues that didn't affect the lives of most people. They were important moral and symbolic issues, to be sure. And they were difficult issues, although their subtleties were obscured by extremists, who tended to dominate the debate. Still, the people directly affected by the so-called social issues — abortion, gay marriage, racial preferences — pale in comparison with the tens of millions who have lost their jobs and fortunes in the past year and with the global, life-and-death impact of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Consequently, social issues weren't decisive in the elections of 2006 and 2008, or in the early days of the Obama Administration.

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At the end of May, those issues returned with a vengeance. A doctor who specialized in the most controversial sorts of abortions was murdered in Kansas. President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, which restarted a tired debate about affirmative action. And while the blowhards have taken up their battle stations — the leadership of the Republican Party, especially, seems to have shifted from politics to infotainment — the terrain on these issues has shifted subtly in the past few years. (Indeed, gay marriage — once the hottest of hot buttons — seems to be easing toward public acceptance, as state after state approves it.) (See pictures of the gay-rights movement.)

"George Tiller was a mass murderer," said the antiabortion extremist Randall Terry after the doctor was murdered in the lobby of his church. But Terry was an outlier. Most of the pro-life movement reacted with appropriate horror — and the talking heads who had exploited the Tiller situation, like Bill O'Reilly, were subdued for a change.

In truth, Tiller was practicing a form of medicine most Americans find abhorrent. Recent polls show a notable shift away from pro-choice sentiment — in early May, the Gallup Organization recorded a majority of Americans taking a pro-life position for the first time since it began asking the question in 1995. It's possible that abortion has become less acceptable because of the remarkable advances in sonogram technology. We now can see, in perfect detail, the exquisite humanity that exists within the womb, especially in the later stages of pregnancy. Late-term abortions — no more than a few percent of the total performed in the U.S. — were Tiller's specialty. These are usually hard cases, sometimes the result of rape or incest or the discovery of severe birth defects. But they are, without question, the taking of a life. At the same time, the pro‑life community should concede that sex education and the widespread availability of morning-after pills and condoms are necessary if we're going to prevent these tragedies. (See more about abortion.)

The Sotomayor debate has been polluted by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, who claim, ridiculously, that the judge is a racist. That sort of rant is so-o-o 20th century. Beneath the pollution, however, is a serious policy question that needs to be resolved: With an African-American President and a polychromatic society moving toward racial (if not economic) equity, why do we still need preferences enshrined in law? (See pictures of Sotomayor.)

Obama has suggested that Sotomayor might have chosen her words differently when, in a 2001 speech, she suggested that a Latina raised in a poor neighborhood had an advantage over a privileged white male in judging cases that involved impoverished minorities. Perhaps she should have — although we seem to have reached a quiet consensus that Sotomayor is right, that our national diversity is a splendid advantage in matters of justice and culture. You want to have powerful Latinas — and others, the full panoply of American types — helping make big decisions, not just on the Supreme Court, but in boardrooms, schools and editorial offices. That presence is what makes this society so much more vibrant than it used to be.

There is a bright line, though. And I would guess that Sotomayor crossed it when she agreed in 2008 to toss the results of a promotion exam for the New Haven, Conn., fire department because an insufficient number of minorities passed it. That seems inherently unfair to those who succeeded — including the dyslexic firefighter Frank Ricci, who hired tutors to help him pass and whose name adorns the case. The lack of minority success does not necessarily signify the presence of racial prejudice. The best way to rectify such a situation is to make sure the next test is truer. An appropriate 21st century standard should be proof of actual discrimination against specific individuals.

The point is, there are civilized compromises to be made — not always, but often — on even the toughest social issues. We are beset by wars and economic distress, and we no longer have the luxury of ceding these discussions to demagogues and fundraising interest groups. It's time to move on.

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