(This is the second time in a few weeks I’ve disagreed with Ferrick so let me just say that he’s one of the few writers on Philadelphia politics who is truly indispensable. He make me think hard when I disagree with him. If you don’t read Metropolis, you should.)

The end of The Deal

Ferrick argues that in moving to AVI, Philadelphia is about to undo what he calls “The Deal.” The Deal is the implicit bargain that the city has made with homeowners: we will pay a stiff wage tax which people don’t pay in the suburbs as well as an extra 2% in sales taxes. But in return our property taxes will be substantially lower than those found in the burbs.  Moving to AVI, Ferrick says, means breaking the deal: “Without any commensurate decrease in other taxes, the average homeowner/wage earner in the city is about to be screwed vis a vis their suburban counterparts.”

Understanding what is really changing

I’m going to argue that the numbers Ferrick uses to support this claim are faulty. But, before getting to the numbers I need to clear up some preliminary matters.

The first is that there is nothing about AVI itself that changes The Deal on average. Leaving aside the Mayor’s proposed $90 million increase in tax revenues to pay for schools—which is an increase in overall tax revenues of only 7%— AVI by itself doesn’t increase average real estate taxes. But what it does do is make our taxes fairer. For years the city fathers who set assessments have systematically over assessed, poor and working people and under assessed upper middle class and rich Philadelphians (and commercial property as well). We’ll see in a moment that this disparity plays an important role in understanding the problems with Ferrick’s numbers.

AVI however, does make it likely that our real estate taxes will go up eventually—fair tax assessments are going to rise with rising property views. But if that happens, one should note that the city has in fact begun to reduce other taxes. The wage tax was once 4.96 percent. It is now 3.39. (Some of that reduction is due to state gambling money, some is due to decisions by the city. But since we are comparing city and suburban taxes, and suburban property tax increases have been limited by the same gambling revenues, I’m going to ignore that complication.) So the truth is not so much that the city has broken The Deal but is renegotiating it. We shall see that whether a renegotiated Deal is a good one or not depends on how expensive your home is.

The third point to note is that this renegotiation was central to the plan put forward by the Tax Reform Commission (TRC) a plan that Tom Ferrick (and Brett Mandel and others who are calling AVI into question now) supported. The tax reform commission claimed that The Deal was bad for city because people can move but property can’t. Relying on wage and business taxes rather than property taxes drives people and especially highly paid people from the city. The TRC said we should make Philadelphia a city like all other cities. We should reduce wage and business taxes would lead more people and businesses to move to Philly. This would then lead to an increase in property values and property taxes. And those new tax revenues would enable the city to maintain services despite the reductions in the wage and business tax.

It would have been nice to see Ferrick and Mandel and others recognize that they have long supported this new Deal and that the other side of the renegotiated deal, the decline in wage and business taxes has already begun.

Ferrick’s example

With these preliminaries out of the way, now we come to the bizarre aspect of Ferrick’s article. He proposes to demonstrate how breaking The Deal hurts Philadelphians by comparing a hypothetical family with an income 75,000 located in two properties.

The first is a single family home in Havertown with a market value of $165,000. The second is a town house in Philadelphia with a market value of $485,000. Ferrick calculates that in the Havertown house the family would pay $6272 in property taxes and a $175 trash fee for a total of $6447 or 8.6% of their gross income in taxes. In the Philadelphia house this year, the family would pay a property tax of $3289, a wage tax of $2925 and additional sales tax for a total of $6214 or 8.29% of gross income. Thus, before AVI, The Deal seems to work: taxes are about the same whether you live in Philly or Havertown.

After the implementation of AVI, however, Ferrick estimates that the real estate taxes on the Philadelphia house will go up to $5100 and the total tax goes up to $8025 or 10.7%. The end of The Deal does seems to screw someone.

Something strange is going one

Or does it? Look again at this example and you will see there is something bizarre about it. Why is Ferrick comparing a couple who own a 165,000 home in Havertown with a $485,000 home in Bella Vista? Well, the initial tax comparison comes out even before AVI, but why would one choose to compare two homes that must be different not just in cost but in their size and amenities? And, by the way, how would a family earning $75,000 possibly afford the mortgage on a $485,000 home? (Ferrick said they had a lot of help from “Mom and Dad” but while little addition explains the oddity of the example, it doesn’t justify using it.)

Comparing $180,000 homes in Philly and Havertown

So let’s look at a few other sets of examples. (I’m going to follow Ferrick in assuming that our tax rate under AVI is going to be about 1.25% of market value. We don’t know that for sure, but it’s a figure that a lot of politicos have been using.)

Let’s start by comparing two homes at about a price of $180,000.

The first is a twin with 1248 sq. ft. 19 Mill Road in Havertown on a .07 acre lot that is listed for 179,000. It has 3 baths and 1 bathroom. I don’t know the neighborhood it is in although the description says that it is in the heart of Havertown and within walking distance to a library, schools, restaurants and transportation. For our purposes, let’s also stipulate that the public schools are fine and that it one can get to all the other amenities typically found at those lovely suburban strip malls with a short drive.

http://www.weichert.com/42388467/?cityid=22509&ptypeid=32&minpr=150&maxpr=200&view=gallery

The second is a row house with 1194 sq. ft at 7125 Bryan Street in West Mt. Airy that is listed for $185,000. It’s also a 3 bedroom one bath home but on a .03 acre lot. I know this lovely residential street well. It is a block from the central business section of Mt. Airy on Germantown Avenue. You can find a few good restaurants on that block as well as a bar with one of the best beer lists in Philadelphia, McMenamin’s. Bryan Street is part of one of the best neighborhood associations in the city run by my friend Steve Stroiman. The house is about four blocks from the Houston School, which is considered a pretty good elementary school—it is certainly one that draws kids from outside its catchment area. There is also has a beautiful five or six year old community / school playground built with the support of West Mt. Airy Neighbors.

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/7125-Bryan-St_Philadelphia_PA_19119_M48342-15664

I’ve calculated taxes for three years: 2005 and 2012 before AVI and 2013 after AVI., adjusting income according to the CPI. (I had to make a rough estimate of property taxes in Havertown for 2005 but I think it is reasonably accurate).

What does this show us? Total taxes were a little higher in Philly than Havertown in 2005. Because our wage tax has been going down, by this year the taxes are roughly the same. After the institution of AVI, however, the gap widens again. But it remains relatively small. Once the recession ends, and we are able to start reducing the wage tax again, the difference will drop again.

So for people living in comparable $180,000 homes, it doesn’t look like renegotiating The Deal is going to be such a big deal after all.

Comparing $450,000 homes in Philly and Havertown

Now let’s look at another comparison, at a higher economic bracket. We’ll compare the 485,000 house that Ferrick looked at in his piece with a $459,000 house in Havertown.

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/28-Llandillo-Rd_Havertown_PA_19083_M32239-37321

To make this comparison sensible, I’ve assumed that the families have an income of 180,000 which would enable them to carry a mortgage on this property. (No Mom and Dads ex machina in this example.) And since people in income bracket typically itemize deductions, I’ve credited them with federal tax benefit of 25% of their wage and real estate tax.

At upper incomes, folks in Philadelphia now pay about $1300 or .75% of their gross income more in combined taxes than similarly situated people in Havertown. So The Deal has never been as good for those with more expensive homes than those in the middle. After AVI that difference will increase to $2600 or 1.5% of income. The next round of wage tax cuts is likely to reduce the difference to where is now before AVI.

Is the difference between taxes in Havertown and Philadelphia at this higher economic level too great? Well, if you had an income of 180,000 would it be worth it for you to pay an additional $2600 to live in Bella Vista rather than Havertown? Note that we’re assuming you work in Havertown. If you commute to Philly, the commuting costs most likely eliminate the tax difference. (And I haven’t taken into account that most two-adult families in the burbs need two cars but that is not true in Bella Vista.)

Well, I don’t know about you for $2600 a year, I’d never have a second though about living in one of the great neighborhoods of our city instead of Havertown.

Looking downscale

And finally, let’s just take a quick look downscale. Keep in mind that the average selling price for homes in Philly this year is about $115,000. So, precisely because it makes assessments fairer, AVI will reduce taxes for those with homes valued at a little above the median and downward from there.

Here is one example, a 3 bedroom, 2 bath home in SW Philly on Belmar Terrace. It is listed for sale at 65,000. Its current taxes are now $889. If it sells for 65,000, its taxes under AVI will likely go down to $812 or $625 if you include the 15,000 homestead exemption the administration has proposed. (I haven’t taken into account the homestead exemption in the other examples since the impact of the exemption would be minimal and we don’t know how adoption of it will affect the overall tax rate.)

http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/5502-Belmar-Ter_Philadelphia_PA_19143_M33956-69300

What went wrong in Ferrick’s analysis?

Once we compare like properties, it becomes clear how and why Ferrick’s examples have gone wrong and mislead him. He wanted to compare people paying similar taxes now. But that led him to use as one point of comparison a $485,000 Philadelphia home, a prime example of a property that has benefitted from the upper class bias in assessment. (He could have found many others.) The property taxes there are only 64% what they would be under a fair assessment.

At a house valued at $185,000, however, the current property tax is 78% of what it would be under a fair assessment. And the current taxes of a home valued at $65 are 40% above what they should be.

So, yes, once we start talking about home worth $480,000 and above, AVI is going to do exactly what it is supposed to do. It’s going to correct for unreasonably low taxes. And thus the end of The Deal is going to cause some hardship for people with houses worth that much money. We can debate about whether such people are being “screwed” or not—I would suggest they have the resources not only to handle the higher taxes but to really take advantage of Bella Vista. Thus that they are not going to be rushing to move to Havertown after AVI comes on-line. But whether this counts as being screwed or not, I would insist they are not representative of the “average homeowner/wage earner in the city.”

Once we look down the income scale to middle class homes, the end of The Deal does not look like it’s going to harm people very much. And if we can keep bringing down the wage tax, the small city / suburb tax gap that emerges with AVI will close again. Thus the end of The Deal is not a deal breaker for middle class folks.

And when we look at less expensive houses, the kind lived in by a majority of homeowners in the city, the end of The Deal looks like a good deal. AVI is going to provide real benefits for working people in the city.

Two final notes

The one qualm I have about AVI is that it is going to make life difficult for two groups of people. The first is those who will see increases in their taxes they had no reason to expect until a few years ago. Some of those folks live in houses worth $400,000 and above. There is some unfairness in this. But the answer is not to end AVI but, rather, to phase it in a bit more slowly.

The second group is people with middle incomes who have managed to hang on in gentrifying neighborhoods. They are going to see sharp increases in property taxes that they may not be able to pay. The answer is to allow them to defer the tax increases, with interest, until they sell their house. Long term interest rates are very low now. The city could float bonds to cover the lost tax revenue and thus allow people to defer higher tax payments at a relatively low interest rate. Someone whose property values have jumped will be able to stay in their homes.  They’ll leave a smaller estate to their kids. But anyone who has seen their property values rise enough for this program to make sense to them will still be able to hand their children a nice capital gain—on which they will pay no federal taxes.

These politicians are often criticized because they don’t have a lot of legislative achievements. They don’t have a long list of bills with their name on them. And so they are criticized—sometimes by other legislators and often by journalists—for being all talk and no action.

(Interestingly enough, legislators who are all action and no talk are also criticized, often because action requires not only compromises with other legislators but deals with special interests. Journalists, it seems, can always find some basis on which to criticize politicians.)

I want to point out, however, that do-nothing legislators are sometimes really critical to political and social progress.

Just how important they are came back to me the other day when I attended a press event put on by bunch of progressives in Philly. I wasn’t in on planning it and when I heard about it, I encouraged the planners to delay because I expected exactly what happened: the event got very little press. One reason they got so little press is that they had not managed to recruit any political leaders to speak. For one of things we advocates learn about getting press coverage is that we are likely to get a reporter in the room if we can find an office holder to attend our press event.

This can be a hard lesson to learn because, quite frankly, issue advocates often have a bigger impact on legislation that run of the mill legislators. I know a political director for a major union who has rebuffed requests to run for state representative because he “didn’t want to give up a lot of influence just for a title.” I learned this lesson early in my career as an issue advocate when a few community leaders and I organized an effort to save two historic building on Johnson Street and the Inky reporter gave our state representative—who basically showed up for the picture taking—all the credit. I asked the reporter what was going on and he just said, “I know you did all the work, but the public cares about where political officials stand.”

(During the health care campaign, a reporter told me he didn’t like to cover “artificial”  events. What he meant, though, was that our artificial events were not exciting enough.  I once got world wide press for an event in Philly I organized with Action United and PUP. We broke a half dozen laws and took over Aetna’s annual meeting at a Philly hotel. That was as artificial event  as I’ve ever done. But the reporter who criticized us for other events couldn’t get enough of it.)

So legislators who are willing to push the envelope on public policy—and who have little influence in the legislature—help us get attention for our causes with the press. That’s not our choice—it’s how the press works. They also help issue advocates in so many other ways. They get people to come to our rallies and marches and conferences. They bring out people to our fundraising events. And the price they charge for all this is pretty low: they get to give a speech—and most of them are pretty good speakers—and sometimes they get to take home a plaque.

Does all this do-nothing work really amount to anything? It sure does precisely because very little good happens in our legislatures if we issue advocates can’t get the attention of the press, which creates the discussions that move public opinion.  Little good happens in legislatures if we issue advocates can’t mobilize people to lobby legislators or march or rally. And we can’t get press attention or mobilize people if we can’t pay our staff or phone bill or internet services. Do nothing legislators are really helpful to us. And thus they are to the public as well.

Do nothing legislators also help elect other legislators who share their views—or who can led to share their views by encouraging voters and campaign contributors  to support them.

If you’ve read this far, you may realize that this piece is inspired by a recent criticism of Babette Josephs written by my friend Chris Satullo. But I don’t really mean to defend Babette or again take sides in the recent election. For my guess—indeed my greatest hope—is that Brian Sims is going to be a really great do-nothing legislator. Just by virtue of his being an out gay man, he already is. He’s well on his way to being an effective speaker who will draw people to events and raise money and otherwise help progressive activists push the envelope. If we are all lucky, someday he’ll have a chance to be legislator who actually does play a role in enacting legislation. But one way or the other, he’s going to have a great impact on our politics. And if he never advances beyond do-nothing legislator, I hope that, when the press and his constituents get tired of him, he will go out with the kind of class Babette is showing now.

It shouldn’t surprise us that a lot of journalists don’t know what do nothing legislators do. Great journalists are great story tellers who like heroes and villains. But great stories tend to oversimplify. The same story telling instinct that leads journalists to give legislators good at the inside game too much credit for legislative success and to minimize the impact of issue advocates, large political trends, and impersonal historical forces gets in the way of their understanding what do nothing legislators do. If you want to tell a good story about how the Civil Rights Bill of 1965 and Medicare were passed, you start and end with Lyndon Johnson’s legislative legerdemain overcoming Senator Richard Russell’s conservative coalition. If you want to tell the real story,  you start by talking about the role of unions, the civil rights movement, and the huge Democratic majority. And you can’t leave out the role of do-nothing legislators like Hubert Humphrey who talked about civil rights when no one in Congress was listening to them. It’s a lot longer, messier story.

But that’s OK. Journalists have their job, political scientists have their job, and we organizers have our own. Still it’s important for legislators, organizers, and most of all citizens who might be motivated to become activists just how important the work they do is, and how important do nothing legislators are to that work.

Throughout the health care campaign, I would tell our activists that, some day in the future their kids of grand kids would come home from school and say that Barack Obama passed health care reform in 2010. I told them they would know the truth: they passed health care reform with the help of Barack Obama. I would add now, also with the help of a bunch of do nothing legislators who, for years, helped keep not only the dream of health care reform, but the organizations that  worked for it, alive.

They Mayor tells us we have no choice (and by the way, support my property tax proposal.) And so far, not one politician in this city, not one member of Council, not one State Representative or State Senator has made a public statement about this devastating news.

Why not?

Five years ago the theme of my campaign for City Council was “Politics in Philadelphia is broken.” I put forward a simple explanation of how and why it was broken. With few exceptions, politicians in Philadelphia are members of one or another of five or six factions. Each of those five or six factions is focused primarily on squabbles with the others over contracts and patronage. What they rake off from contracts and patronage gives them the resources they need to stay in office and help their friends get into office. That enables them to survive and perhaps take a little more from another faction.

A politics of factional struggle leaves little room for thinking about the common good. It leaves little time for looking at what cities are doing in parts of the country and the world to reinvigorate themselves. And since most public policies that would benefit the whole city over the long term create some burdens on one or another powerful interest or neighborhood, which could harm the interests of one or more of the factions, our political officials are unwilling to consider any of them.

So what do they do when a crisis like this one arises? They figure out how to benefit from it. Right now the leaders of the various factions are figuring out how to get control over one or another of “achievement networks,” so that they can direct hiring and contracts in the network.

To speak out now against the whole plan—to do what I fancifully suggested the Mayor should do and lead a statewide campaign to restore funding in Harrisburg—would jeopardize their pursuit of their piece of what remains of the school system.

So they are quiet.

And left holding the bag will be teachers and students.

Breaking the teachers union not only saves money that can be turned to other purposes but enables politicians to hire the teachers they want.

And students especially those from poor neighborhood? They don’t have any resources so no faction benefits from helping them. Thee new structure of the “public schools” give them larger class sizes and schools that are ever more in the hands of local politicians who care about contracts and patronage not education.

That’s the broken politics of education in the city

But today the SRC announced that the School District in Philadelphia is going to be drastically downsized. Many schools will be closed. More students will attend charter schools. In a school system that has already suffered devastating cutbacks, even if some of these changes make for a more efficient use of resources, the overall consequences for our kids cannot be good. None of the suggested administrative changes deal with the fundamental problem–we don’t have the resources to provide our kids with the minimal requirements of a decent education. We don’t have money for enough quality teachers, teacher training, school books, and counselors.

And the financial problem we face comes from Harrisburg and Governor Corbett’s relentless attack on school funding. That has me wondering if Michael Nutter has forgotten his top priority or is simply unwilling to do what it takes to address the funding problem schools face at its source, that is, in Harrisburg.

How they do it in New York

And I’ve been struck one more time about how different politics in this city and state is from that which I grew up with in the Catskills, about 90 miles Northwest of the New York City. Because we were liberals, lived in a resort area that catered to folks from the city, and got New York City TV, we tended to look at the state politics from the city’s point of view.

And pretty much every year, in late February or early March, we were treated to a political extravaganza, when the Mayor of New York bitterly attacked the State Legislature for being insufficiently generous to the city. (New York State must pass a budget by April 30, so budget season is compressed.) The issue changed from year to year. Sometimes the dispute was over aid to public schools. Sometimes it was over funding for the transit system, the MTA. Sometimes it was over aid to that extraordinary institution at which I’m proud to say I once taught, the City University. Sometimes it was over an increase in the City’s commuter tax or the state’s share of pensions. Sometimes it was on a number of these issues at once.

Sometimes the Mayor traveled up the river to Albany, flanked by other state and city politicians, civic leaders, labor leaders and others. Sometimes the Mayor launched his campaign from City Hall. Much of the time he was flanked by political leaders from other jurisdictions which also were seeking more state aid from Albany.

It didn’t matter whether which party controlled held the office of Mayor or Governor. Democratic Mayor Robert Wagner and Republican Mayor John Lindsay both took on Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Democratic Mayor Abe Beame took on Democratic Governor Hugh Carey while Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani complained bitterly about Republican Governor George Pataki.

And much of the time, the city successfully used public pressure to get much more money out of the state.

Can’t we do it here?

Someone who grew up looking at this history, can’t help but wondering why Mayor Nutter is not leading a statewide charge against Governor Corbett’s horrendous budgets, which have cut state funding for our schools by an enormous amount, as well as cutting health care and social services.

Of course, Philadelphia does not carry the weight in Pennsylvania that New York City does in the State of  New York. But Governor Corbett’s budget cuts are not just hurting us in Philadelphia. Cities and towns all over the state are suffering. Many of those cities are governed by Democrats, and every County with a commissioner form of government has at least one Democratic member. And, in Pennsylvania, like New York, state support for local government, and especially for schools, is not necessarily a partisan matter. Republicans as well as Democratic school districts care about quality education and are reluctant to  raise taxes to deal with budget shortfalls. Don’t forget, too, that Mayor Nutter is extremely popular in the Philadelphia suburbs among Republicans as well as Democrats.

There are some really strong advocacy groups for the school. And there are the teachers unions. They are extremely active on the issue and could play an important role in an even more vigorous campaign. But they don’t have the capacity to gain the attention of the media or to bring along elected officials that Mayor Nutter does. Nor do they have his capacity to raise enough money to support a major grassroots effort.

With the Mayor taking the lead, however, we could quickly build a powerful campaign for blocking the Corbett school funding cuts and perhaps even to use some of the state budget surplus to restore last year’s drastic reductions.

The risks

I know, I know what the Mayor’s advisors will say to this suggestion. “That’s not how we do things in Pennsylvania.” “The Mayor can’t afford to piss off the Governor and General Assembly because he needs them to support his property tax homestead exemption or some other legislation.” “Mayor Street tried this on gun control and got nowhere.” “If we lobby quietly, we’ll get more out of the General Assembly.” “The Republicans are so far to the right they won’t ever vote for new state support for schools.”

Those are valid points. And they might be right. But, folks, the schools in this city are on life support. Playing by the inside rules is not likely to get them out of intensive care especially since we don’t have powerful insiders like Vince Fumo or Dwight Evans in a position to do inside deals.  If there was ever a time to try to the outside game it is when we are bound to be clobbered in the inside game.

And the fact is that school funding is something for which there is bi-partisan support in parts of the state. It is something that is especially important to Republicans in Southeast PA. And we do have a massive Democratic voter advantage in our state. If there is an issue on which Tom Corbett and his radical right wing supporters can be stopped, it is on education funding.

There is no alternative to the Mayor’s leadership.

So the issue, I believe, is not whether this strategy makes sense. What the school district told us today is that we really don’t have a choice.

The question is whether Michael Nutter is willing to be the kind of politician who puts himself on the line for something he purports to care deeply about. The Nutter administration has done a lot of good. And it has punted on a lot of tough issues. The question everyone in politics in this city keeps asking is whether the Mayor cares deeply enough about anything to take a real risk and put his weight behind it.

It’s time for the Mayor to show us the answer. He can be the Mayor who led a statewide effort to stand up against a right wing movement that aims to destroy public education. Or he can go down in history as the Mayor who presided over that destruction.

This group played the funky polyrhythmic music Coleman has long been known for. But the music in other respects was far different from the long and often complicated composed lines I heard the last time Coleman was in Philly. The “tunes” were based on stripped down, short elements or riffs chanted by Coleman and / or Finlayson. Damion Reid would pick up the rhythm and Okazaki would play a vamp line and off they would go. My impression—which might be mistaken—at least some or perhaps most of the riffs that started each section were improvised on the spot.  Coleman and Finlayson would play longer improvisations that often began with variations on the short melodic / rhythmic elements but got more involved. They were two musicians who listened closely to one another as well as knowing knew each other’s tendencies and moves. Sometimes one would continue to play variants of the elements as accompaniment to other. Sometimes that would both play longer more contrapuntal lines. And sometimes that play more or less in unison. My sense was that these contrapuntal or unison lines was the only composed music I heard—although perhaps they communicate even better than I recognized. But they seemed to be playing heads they knew—if you can call something played in the middle of a tune a head.

While Reid and Okazaki usually started with the initial riff, they moved from them quickly, especially in the first half other long hour and a half set. Okazaki worked mostly in the lower register playing what were basically bass line, especially in the second half of the set. There were moments where the band was making incredibly funky music with a very strong pulse yet no one was playing the pulse at all—unless you count some vigorous toe tapping in the front line. It was really incredible to hear this vigorous funky music plaid is odd and changing time signatures without so much as anyone playing either back beat or on the one. Reid, in particular was incredibly inventive in playing around the beat and my favorite parts of the performance were when he seemed to be engaging Coleman and Finlayson in dialogues.

Coleman played a sort of ballad that seemed totally improvised with subtle accompaniment by the rest of the group. There were echoes of Ellington and Hodges throughout it (although Coleman’s sound is very far that of Johnny Hodges). I thought I heard very short phrases—three or four notes—from Prelude to a Kiss and other Ellington tunes. It could have been my imagination, but let’s just say the emotional resonance with Ellington’s ballads was there.

There were moments listening to Coleman and Finlayson when I thought “this must be what it felt like to see Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry playing live together.” Indeed, I kept thinking of the other Coleman during the performance as the music had the polyrhythmic excitement of Ornette Coleman’s late work together with the melodic and rhythmic invention of his earlier work.

The result was thrilling music with all the excitement of group improvisation at its most wonderful.  Coleman has gone further than any contemporary musician I’ve seen recently in taking up Miles Davis’s  (in the late 70s) and Ornette Coleman’s (somewhat later) efforts to move jazz in the direction of a non-Western, African inspired music in which the distinctions between foreground and background and melody and rhythm are constantly shifting and, much of the time, simply just fade away. This is music that is changes all the time,  with melodies and rhythms emerging and then receding. Riffs that are initially put forward to accompany a soloist come to take over the piece becoming the basis for the next solo. And all the while—except in the ballad—there is a strong pulse that could almost be the basis for a kind of trance music. But it’s trance music for a collective whose trances are product of the most intense effort to listen and respond to one another that one can imagine.

Once could say this is music for the body and the soul. But is more true—and not the least bit pedantic in talking about a musician whose broad learning is evident in everything he does—to say that this music that comes out of, and serves the aspiration of overcoming the body / soul dichotomy that has for so long been central to Western civilization.

Two last comments: First about Finlayson since I’m a former trumpet player. He has the most original conception on trumpet I’ve heard in years. He plays mostly in the middle and lower register with very little ornamentation, kind of like early Miles, but with a much more forceful, though not brassy, sound. At a time when trumpet players like Dave Douglas seem to be seeking originality by moving as fast as they can away from the kind of bold, warm, brassy, sound of, say, a Clifford Brown, Finlayson is finding a different route and is developing a sound that is intrinsically more attractive on the horn.

And a more personal note: Coleman was wearing a black t-shirt with a white picture of Sam Rivers on it. On the way my wife complimented him on both the music and t-shirt. She told Coleman that she had met Rivers when my brother-in-law took lessons with him. Coleman said “Thanks, You were the only one who noticed the shirt. I never took lessons with Sam but I played with him when I first came to New York.” My wife said, “He was a sweet man.” Coleman nodded,  smiled again and seemed to tear up a bit.

The only clue to the vote of Babette’s that Brian is criticizing is a citation of a 2006 Daily News article which does not mention any legislation at all. Instead, it quotes Lynn Abraham attacking Babette for such a vote while endorsing her opponent in the Democratic primary that year.

So it is entirely unclear from the flier what vote the Sims campaign is criticizing and so far, I haven’t been able track down the exact vote. But I’ve learned enough to point the following about the policy issue:

1. If Babette Josephs voted against some law requiring the registration of sex offenders, she most likely did it for a civil libertarian reasons, and had good company. The ACLU generally opposes such laws because they are both ineffective and dubious from the stand point of our civil liberties.

They are ineffective for a few reasons. The vast majority of sex offenders are not strangers to the kids they harm. And sex offenders are the least likely of those who commit a crime to do so again. So even if parents check the sex offender registries—which few do—that won’t help them very much in protecting their kids.

Moreover, sex offender laws give parents who do check the registries a false sense of security by encouraging them to think that looking carefully at those who are registered is all they need to do to protect them, as opposed to maintaining a generally high level of vigilance.

2. One would think that someone running for office in no small part on the basis of the importance of electing out members of the LGBTQ community—something I agree is important—would have second, and then third, thoughts about criticizing a legislator for opposing laws that have been used to harass gays. In the nineties, gays, and especially gay men, who have been convicted of engaging in homosexual acts, were forced to register under these laws. And those who were, and still are, forced to register under the laws, including gay men, have sometimes been harassed by their neighbors. Under the most stringent of those laws, they have been denied the right to live in certain places, such as near schools.

3. These laws violate the civil liberties of people who are of little danger to the community by placing them under unending the control of the state after they have served their sentence.

4. At a time when probation and parole services are stretched to the breaking point by a lack of funding, sex registration laws place greater demands on these services to monitor people who are unlikely to become recidivists.

As for the politics of this issue, let me point out:

1. Brian Sims is standing with Lynne Abraham rather than the ACLU on sex registration laws. Does anyone in the Sims camp really think that this is going to help him in the 182^nd State House district? If there is a district that is more supportive of civil liberties in this state I can’t think of one. And I live in Mt. Airy.

2. As Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg has pointed out, Babette Joseph’s vote was taken—and was criticized by Lynne Abraham—before Brian served as her campaign treasure in the 2008 election. One would think that if Brian thought this was a reason to vote against Babette now, he wouldn’t have served in her campaign two years ago.

So, this flier really is a low blow. It is absurd to say that a mother of 2 and grandmother of 6, who has been endorsed about both teachers unions and the State FOP, doesn’t care about the safety of our kids. And Babette should be praised for standing up with the ACLU against popular hysteria about the danger of sexual deviants—the very same hysteria that once condemned all members of the LGBTQ community. She shouldn’t be condemned by someone who speaks for that community and claims to be a progressive.

This is one more reason, beyond those I’ve given here and here to support Babette Josephs in this race. I like Brian Sims a great deal and expect him to have a substantial career in political office. But this flier shows that he’s not ready to replace Babette Josephs in January.

It is obviously important to the 17^th District to have a member of Congress who actually support their interests, not those of the corporate rich. And it’s important to the Democratic Party and the country as a whole to rid ourselves of members of Congress who fail to do the minimal in standing up for the ideals of our party. Defeating such members will send a critical message throughout the Democratic Caucus: Democratic members of Congress are accountable to us.

And, as I explain below, defeating Tim Holden will remove from office a whining, gutless, dishonest example of the American politician at his worst.

Let me be clear: I’m not a wild eyed leftist. I’m a slightly left of center Democrat. I’m not naïve about political strategy either. In endorsing Allyson Schwartz, I pointed out that members of Congress sometimes have to stand apart from progressive ideals in order to be reelected. And I said that they have a “moral responsibility” to do that because control of the House is important for the party and the country—so long as they don’t vote the wrong way when progressive legislation is at stake and their vote is absolutely necessary.

But Tim Holden’s opponent, Matt Cartwright, is not only a much more progressive Democrat than Holden, he is someone who can definitely win and hold the 17^th Congressional District this year and in years to come.

Moreover, Tim Holden is not just a member of Congress who votes with Republicans now and then in order to preserve his seat. He votes with Republicans much of the time, and what’s worse, and on the issues that are most important to us, without making any attempt to persuade his district, and when his voted is definitely needed. And, on top of that he repeats Republican lies to justify his vote.

I’m talking, of course, about the Affordable Care Act. I met with Congressman Holden a few times, and until they cut us off, talked to his staff many times when I ran Health Care for America Now in our state. In all those conversations, I never once heard Congressman Holden show any serious concern about the tens of thousands of uninsured and underinsured in his district or the even larger group of people whose health insurance were going up far faster than their wages. Instead he whined about how health care reform (and cap and trade) were creating political problems for him.

Even his chief health care staff person was disappointing. She repeated blue dog talking points o me whenever I met with her.

 And let me point out that even the old 17^th district had a Democratic majority and supported Obama, unlike a lot of other districts held by Democratic members of Congress who voted for the ACA.

When members of Congress like Kathy Dahlkemper and Chris Carey were out in their districts, facing the tea party, and working with citizen and labor activists to defend what became the ACA, Tim Holden was hiding under his desk. He only came out to attend a private event hosted by an insurance company.

And, after the vote and since, Holden defended his stance by repeating the totally false Republican claim that the ACA cuts Medicare and Medicaid benefits. I called him on that two years ago in the Patriot-News. His constituents need to call him on it now.

What kind of Democratic member of Congress not only votes against his party on the most important legislation in his career but undermines the other members of Congress from his own party as well as a Democratic President by repeating Republican lies?

I hope that on Tuesday the answer will be Democratic Congressman who goes down to a well-deserved defeat in a Democratic primary.

I had my say about the 182^nd State House race a few weeks so ago and hadn’t planned on writing anything else. But the recent controversy over a mailer sent out by the Josephs campaign—and even more a piece written in response to it by

There really isn’t much to say about the controversy over the flier except that everyone ought to lighten up. The Sims camp says that it is unfair because it accuses Brian of holding right wing views he does not hold. But anyone familiar with the issues, or rather non-issues, of the campaign, and who has any sense of humor at all would recognize that the flier is put forward tongue in cheek.

Everyone knows that there are no real issue differences between Babette and Brian. The flier is meant to criticize Brian’s claim that he could be a more “effective” legislator than Babette because he would build “work across the aisle” and “collaborate” with Republicans. Babette’s flier points out that the idea of building cross-party coalitions with the right wing Republicans is either ridiculous or dangerous.

It is ridiculous if you notice that Republicans, with an overwhelming advantage in both Houses of the General Assembly and no need for Democratic votes to pass anything, have no motivation to compromise with Democrats to enact terrible legislation, including bills that drastically cutting education at all levels, Medicaid and other health care programs, and other social services while at the same time cutting taxes for the very rich and corporations.

And it could be dangerous if you recognize that to get something you have to give something. What kinds of deals should Babette make? Suppose she wanted to get more funding for public transit—which Babette has supported for many years. What should she do to get it? Give Republicans some cover for their support of trans-vaginal ultrasounds for women who want to get an abortion?

At this point in the debate, enter Tom Ferrick stage center. Like most great reporters who become columnists, Tom has drunk deeply from the well of ancient wisdom that says the truth is somewhere in the middle. As a good Aristotelian myself, I share that perspective much of the time. I used to joke with Tom’s former colleague Chris Satullo that we were the only two “radical centrists” in SEPA. But read Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics closely and you will see that he says there are times when one attains moderation by aiming towards one extreme or another.

That’s more or less where we are now. The Republicans in Harrisburg and Washington have gone off the deep end. They are pushing for legislation that enacts a radical right wing agenda on both economic and sexual issues. Moderate Republicans in both cities are utterly distressed. (There is a Republican State House leader on transportation issues who would love to draft a compromise bill that funds both roads and public transit with a small gas tax increase. He can find Democrats but not enough Republicans to support this idea.)

We are politically in this country where we were in 1860, 1896, and 1936. Our parties have embraced competing ideologies and one has moved far from the old center. In these moments, there is no solution except the victory of one side or another. And hopefully, the victory will come without civil war.

That doesn’t mean that our side should move to the left. It does mean we need to stay where we are and win elections by mobilizing people around the slightly left of center policies we have supported in Pennsylvania and the nation as a whole. And that means we should not seek compromise and moderation. Rather, we need to show moderates and centrists, with reason and passion, just how awful are the consequences of continued right wing Republican rule.

So, no Tom, we don’t need “effective” legislators right now. (And, by the way, passing bills with your name on them is not how we political scientists measure “effectiveness.”) We need people who are going to stand up and tell the truth about politics in Harrisburg again and again so as to secure the support of the people in the middle.

I love meeting Babette on the streets of her district, with her backpack full of signs and lit. But I wish that the woman who many people think is too old for the job were out in Delaware, Bucks and Montgomery counties, telling other old women and men—and middle aged and young ones, too—what’s going on in Harrisburg and why they need to rise up against it. 

That’s what a State Representative in the 182nd district (and in Mark Cohen’s 202nd district, too) ought to be doing right now. And I can’t think of anyone whose lifetime of work—and her age and gender—make them better suited to this task than Babette Josephs.

How do you choose between candidates who have no differences on issues?

There are few if any differences on policy between the incumbents and the challengers. Babette and Mark simply have the best voting records in Harrisburg. (When I ran my own race as a challenger and was looking to find questionable votes taken by my opponent, Rosita Youngblood, I quickly compared her votes to those of Cohen and Josephs. There were many differences and, in each case, Cohen and Josephs had taken the progressive view.)

So when there are no issue differences, how do you make up your mind in a race like this?

Well, you could simply choose the candidate to whom you are personally closest. In that case, I would definitely endorse Brian Sims in the 182^nd. We were colleagues at CPL and I really like and admire him. He is smart and energetic and will be a great political leader someday. I don’t know Numa St. Louis as well but I like what I’ve seen of him.

And there have been times when I’ve gotten into conflicts with both Babette Josephs and Mark Cohen. When I spoke for Mark at an ADA meeting a week or so ago, his sister Sherrie reminded me that Mark and I once got into a very loud public disagreement. And Babette and I have not seen eye to eye at times either. (In particular, I very much wanted her support when I ran for City Council and did not get it.)

Reaching out to the grassroots

But reasons for those disagreements are telling. In Mark Cohen’s case, we were having a heated disagreement about strategy for the campaign to raise minimum wage. That disagreement only arose because Mark was coming month after month to meetings at PUP with those of us who were building pressure for the minimum wage. We progressives always say that we can be most effective when we can combine our outside grassroots politics with the inside game of legislative leaders. Some in Harrisburg agree with us. As I wrote at the end of the Minimum Wage Campaign, Mark Cohen is one of the very few who follows up.

In Babette Joseph’s case, we’ve had some disagreements because she asks to speak at pretty much every rally I hold in Center City whether it is for health care reform or progressive budgeting in Harrisburg or women’s health care. Sometimes, the speaker’s list is a little too long and everyone knows where she stands, anway. But, again, we progressives always say that we want political leaders who will speak up and help us build an outside grassroots movement. Some in Harrisburg agree with us. But Babette is one of the few who follows up.

Loyalty Counts

Brian and Numa might follow the same path. But here is something important about politics: loyalty counts. We activists are always asking politicians to be aggressive in supporting our causes, to come out and speak and to help us build grassroots campaigns. We also ask them to do the hard slogging legislative work very few people see. When they do all that, especially when they do that on issues where they are pushing up hill or against the majority—as Cohen and Josephs have both done many times, most recently on gay rights—we owe them our support. If we trade them in for newer, shinier models we will lose all credibility among legislators. How can we possibly expect politicians in Harrisburg and Washington to work closely with us if we don’t offer loyal electoral support in return?

Seniority Counts

And seniority counts, too. Right now, with Democrats in the minority, it doesn’t matter much. But Democrats are not far from the majority and if they retake the House, Babette Josephs will again take over the State Government where she single handedly bottled up one awful bill after another including a number of nasty pieces of anti-gay legislation. And Mark Cohen will become the leader of the Human Services Committee and the Health Care subcommittee of the Health Committee, where he has consistently fought for critical social services and an expansion of health care for all Pennsylvanians.

The usual charges

Supporter of Sims and St. Louis have been making the usual charges challengers always make against incumbent, blaming the terrible state of the world or State Government or Philadelphia on Cohen and Josephs failures. But frankly, those arguments are entire specious. You can’t blame incumbents who hold one out of 203 seats for what’s wrong in the world. Nor does it make sense to call for “cross-party coalitions” in the General Assembly if you understand that the current Republican leadership makes the guy we used to call the worst legislator in Harrisburg, John Perzel, look like a moderate Democrat.

Supporters of Sims and St. Louis also make the usual charge that Cohen and Josephs have lost touch with their districts. Anyone who has seen Josephs in the streets of Center City knows that this is not true. And I personally know the connection Mark Cohen has to his constituents. The 198^th district in 2004 had some divisions in the 49^th ward that had recently been moved from the 202^nd district. When I knocked on doors in those divisions, people were very disappointed to hear that Mark Cohen was no longer their state representative.

The whiff of identity politics

At any rate, the “losing touch with the district” claim has become a way of bringing a whiff of identity politics into both races. And that I find very disappointing. There is no question that it would be great to have an openly gay state legislator. And many of Mark Cohen’s constituents don’t look like him. But here is where loyalty counts. No one in the House of Representatives has been more aggressively supportive of LGBT issues than Babette Josephs (Mark Cohen is a close second.) No one has been more aggressively supportive of the issues critical to African Americans more than Mark Cohen. (Babette Josephs is a close second.) If identity politics trumps the record of legislators, how are members of the LGBT community and African Americans going to convince legislators who don’t share their identity—and they will remain the majority of legislators for a long time—not just to vote their way but to do the hard legislative work that Babette and Mark have done?

If we are going to play identity politics, I presume I don’t need to point out that there are very few women in Harrisburg and that all of them, and all of the women who have moved into important leadership positions in the advocacy community are standing on Babette Josephs’ shoulders.

So, while I look forward to seeing their challengers in office someday, I’m urging my friends in these two districts to vote for Babette Josephs and Mark Cohen.

How you can help

If you want to contribute to Rep. Josephs Campaign, send a check made out to Elect Babette Josephs and send it to out Attn: Amanda Koprowski, 1528 Walnut Street, Suite 515, Philadelphia, PA 19102. Or click on the following link to NGP, which is also available via reelectbabette.com.

If you want to canvass for Rep. Josephs, call Amanda a 610-213-7177 or e-mail her at relectbabette@gmail.com They are canvassing Saturdays: 2pm – 5pm, Sundays: 3pm – 5pm, and Mondays to  Fridays from  4pm – 7pm.  On weekdays, canvassers meet at the office at 1528 Walnut Street. It is next door to the state rep’s office in Suite 515 (the office of Muldoon and Shields). Saturdays and Sundays canvassers meet at the place to be canvassed so call Amanda for details.

Anyone who wants to contribute to Representative Cohen should send a check to Pennsylvanians for Representative Cohen, 105 Cliffwood Road, Philadelphia, PA 19115.

Anyone who wants to volunteer for Representative Cohen should email markcohenphilly@comcast.net, or call 215-375-4307, or drop in at the campaign headquarters at 6009 N. 5th Street.

Meeting Stacie Ritter

I met Stacie almost by chance in early September 2009. She was scheduled to speak in support of health care reform in Carlisle, Pennsylvania at an event organized by the premier labor and progressive radio talk show host in the state, Rick Smith. The Associate Director of the HCAN campaign in Pennsylvania, Gregg Potter was supposed to speak at the event as well.  But, at almost the last minute, Gregg called to tell me that something else had come up and he couldn’t make it. So I decided to do the two hour drive from Philadelphia to Carlisle and take his place.

I decided to go in part because that’s the kind of thing we were all doing in the most heated part of the campaign, when we were fighting back against the Tea Party attack on health care reform. The Tea Party got all the attention. But we at HCAN had mobilized thousands of Pennsylvania activists to show their support for health care reform. At 39 of 43 Congressional Town Halls around the state we had substantially outnumbered the Tea Party activists. We burst the bubble of the tea party in Pennsylvania by showing them, and members of Congress, that a majority of Pennsylvania demanded reform.

Now we were planning to fight back, taking the attack directly to the insurance companies. One of the largest insurance companies in the country, CIGNA, was based in Philadelphia and was the target of a major “Big Insurance: Sick of It” rally we had planned for late September. I had spent much of the day looking for a CIGNA policy holder who had been harmed by the company and who could speak at the rally. My problem, however, was that as big as CIGNA was nationwide, it did little insurance business in Pennsylvania because the Blues had bottled up the market. So another reason I got in my car at 5:00 pm was that I was glad to get out of my office after a frustrating day looking for someone with horror story about CIGNA to speak at our rally.

I got to Carlisle a little bit before I was supposed to speak in one of those old, formerly grand, movie theaters that still survive in small cities all over the country. After taking questions, I sat down in the second row and listened to the next speaker, a young woman named Stacie Ritter. Stacie told a multi-generational tale of health care problems and insurance company abuse. It was moving in parts. But between all the details of Stacie’s story and my exhaustion after the long day and drive, I started to nod out. And then as she got to the end of her long story, I heard Stacie say the word “CIGNA” and I shot up, wide awke.

I had missed some of Stacie’s speech. But I grabbed Stacie after the event and we talked about her story. And she quickly understood me when I said it was a powerful story but that she needed to focus on certain key parts of it if it was going to effective in moving people to support health care reform.

We talked a few days after and Stacie edited her long story into the moving tale she has since told to rallies and Congressional hearings in both Pennsylvania and Washington, DC.

Stacie’s Story

At the age of 4, Stacie’s twin daughters Hannah and Madeline, were diagnosed with leukemia. Long and difficult treatments, including stem cell transplants, saved their lives, but at great cost to Stacie’s family. Her husband Ben had good insurance at work but had to take family leave to care for his family. The premiums and co-pays under COBRA were so high that they wound up with $30,000 in medical debt and were forced to file for bankruptcy in 2003.

Madeline and Hannah survived, but the glands controlling their growth were damaged by the treatment. Their doctor, the author of a pediatric textbook and one of the leading pediatric endocrinologists in the country, recommended that the twins receive daily growth-hormone injections. But Ben’s company had switched to CIGNA for health insurance, and CIGNA refused to cover the hormone shots, calling them experimental. Eli Lilly was willing to give Hannah and Madeline their growth hormone drug free. CIGNA only relented after when Stacie became a spokesperson for health care reform and spoke publicly about their failure to provide the care my kids needed. So now they pay CIGNA $140 for a 3 month supply of the medication.

How Obamacare would have helped the Ritter Family

Had the Affordable Care Act been in place when Hannah and Madeline were stricken, Ben and Stacie would have been able to purchase affordable health care with good benefits and low co-pays after Ben went on leave to take care of his family. Had the ACA been in effect when CIGNA denied Madeline and Hannah human growth hormone, they would have been able to appeal that decision. And, most likely, they would have won that appeal. A provision in the law prohibits insurance companies from limiting or denying coverage to individuals participating in clinical trials.

Why the Ritter Family Still Need Obamacare

The ACA may have been too late to help the Ritter family deal with these problems. But it addresses many of Stacie’s biggest fears for the future:

Given their medical history and pre-existing conditions, before the ACA was enacted, Hannah and Madeline would have always found it difficult to secure affordable health insurance. Obamacare eliminates that worry.

Cancer survivors like Hannah and Madeline need expensive preventative and follow up medical care. Obamaca requires health insurance plans to provide these services without copayments, deductibles, or coinsurance.

And if Hannah and Madeline were to face a a recurrence of cancer, the treatments could be so expensive that they would run up against annual and lifetime limits on care.  Obamcare ACA eliminates those limits.

Hannah and Madeline Ritter will lose all of these benefits if Obamacare is declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Learning to fight and win

The I remain confident that this is not how the Supreme Court will rule. But, even if it does overturn the Affordable Care Act, it will not undermine the movement for health care reform. The ACA gave people like Stacie security and hope that they never had before. But it also changed them. It taught Stacie and thousands of others what a long, hard political struggle looks like. It taught them to fight and to win.

Stacie was involved with that struggle long before I met her. In the fall of 2008, she read the part of Barack Obama’s health care proposal about cancer patients and research to Hannah and Madeline. One began to cry and said, “Mom, Barak Obama really understands. He is really going to help us”.

Stacie started speaking out then. And after we met, she became a critical part of the HCAN campaign both in Pennsylvania and in the country as a whole.

On September 22, 2009 she spoke at that rally in front of CIGNA insurance that I was so worried about the day I met her. A week or so later I visited Stacie, Hannah and Madeline and we made a video about her situation and her threat to visit CIGNA CEO Ed Hanaway at his home. Soon after we Hanaway a visit and made another video that was seen around the country. Then in October, Stacie spoke at a rally in front of CIGNA where five of us were arrested as we blocked the door to the company’s headquarters.

She didn’t stop there. She took her story to Democracy Now and to Dylan Ratigan’s Show. Stacie testified before members of Congress before the ACA was enacted and on the first anniversary of its passage. And last week she stood on the steps of the Supreme Court to tell her story once again.

The fight for health care reform has made Stacie not only an accomplished speaker but a leading political activist in Pennsylvania. And she is not alone. Stacie one of thousands of activists in Pennsylvania who worked week after week for 18 months to see the Affordable Care Act through Congress. She’s also not the only one who, after suffering at the hands of insurance companies, has stood up to say that she is determined that no one else ever suffer as her family did. People like Maureen Kurtek, who was hours from death before insurance company relented and allowed her to have a new treatment for lupus, and Georgeanne Koehler, whose brother Billy died because he did not have insurance to cover the replacement of a battery for his pacemaker, and many others have done so as well.

But no one has put more effort into the fight the Stacie or inspired me and other activists in Pennsylvania and Washington more with her energy and fight.

And Stacie did one other thing for me, help me deal with my own unease about using stories like hers in a political struggle. We were meeting one day when I got a call from one of our staff members about another woman who had suffered horribly at the hands of an insurance company. I got off the phone and told the story to Stacie who said, “That’s a great story. We can use that one.” I start laughing and said, “All these months I’ve felt a little guilty about exploiting the suffering of your family for a political struggle and now you go and say that.”

Stacie laughed for a minute and then turned serious and said, “Don’t you know that this struggle to reform health care in America is the only thing that made Hannah and Madeline’s suffering seem like it had a point? Never be afraid to ask me or anyone else who has suffered to speak out on behalf of those who will suffer as we did if we don’t reform health care now.”

Defenders of the mandate have been so concerned to show that it is justifiable under the Commerce and Necessary and Proper clauses—and there the argument seems quite straightforward—that we have not been focused enough on making sure that we don’t prove too much. And that’s partly because we tend to be political progressives and are not as worried as conservatives about limiting federal power over our economic lives. We are not libertarians, after all. While we progressive are adamant about defending civil liberties, we generally don’t believe that there is a general right to economic liberty. And thus, unless government forces us to make purchases that reflect particular ideals or conceptions of how we should live our lives, we are not going to get too exercised about government directives in our economic lives.

Why progressives should worry about federal power

For two reasons, however, we should be worried about that making sure the defense of the mandate doesn’t go too far. One is that, as we saw in the Supreme Court hearing today, the conservative members of the Court are worried about this issue. That worry is not just a conservative bug-a-boo but, rather, has a genuine basis in the fundamental structure of the Constitution and that should concern everyone. The federal government is granted enumerated powers under the Constitution. Even if our view of those enumerated powers is far broader than that of conservatives, we still must recognize and respect the fundamental understanding of the federal government that is embedded in the Constitution.

A second reason is that at some point, restrictions on economic life do have consequences for the liberty and freedom we progressive cherish. If the federal government were to have so many individual mandate on us that, say, 90% of our income were necessary to meet them, we would rightly worry about whether this restriction on our disposable income were interfering with our right to choose how to live our lives.

So we need to understand why the health insurance mandate does not justify a federal command that we purchase any other possible good. In other words, we need to explain why this mandate is different from all other mandates.

The simple argument and why it proves too much

The difficulty in making our case is that we are inclined to rest on a simple argument—that the reiterated economic decisions of individuals have a profound effects on interstate commerce. The argument in the health care realm goes like this: individuals who don’t have health insurance still get health care because under the law—and given our widely share moral beliefs—they are entitled to it. The result is that hospitals provide $40 billion dollars of uncompensated care each year and some of that money passed on to insurance companies that, in turn, shift the costs to their policy holders. The average cost of a family health insurance policy is thus $1000 higher than it otherwise would be. Thus we are justified in requiring people to purchase insurance in order to stop them from being free riders on the health care system. The mandate, in other words, is a requirement that people be responsible for their health care by paying some share of the cost of health insurance. For those who can’t afford health insurance, government will pick up the costs under Medicaid or though subsidizing the private insurance.

Clunker, Broccoli, and Cell Phone Mandates

This argument does justify federal government action under the Commerce Clause because it shows that the mandate does have broad, interstate consequences on the economy. But as some conservatives have pointed out, it seems to go too far. For the effects of what I have called reiterated economic decisions are many. If people stop buying cars, unemployment in the auto industry goes up and as recession can ensue. That’s why the “cash for clunkers” program was instituted. But instead of giving an incentive to trade in late model cars, could the government have simply mandated in 2010 that people with cars ten years old or more buy a new car, perhaps with a subsidy for low income car buyers?

Or take the famous broccoli example. Mandating people to buy broccoli would improve the incomes of broccoli farmers. Is that justified under the commerce clause?

Here’s a third example, raised by Justice Roberts today: government today goes to great trouble to protect us in times of emergency. Would the federal government thus be justified in requiring everyone to own a cell phone so as to receive emergency notifications?

And a fourth example raised by Justice Aito, asks whether the government can require everyone to have burial insurance in order to prevent taxpayers from absorbing the costs of burying the indigent.

The federal government would not, I believe, have the right to institute a clunker, broccoli, or cell phone mandate even though the insurance mandate under the ACA is constitutional There are at least four reasons why the insurance mandate is different from these other mandates.

1. People who don’t purchase health insurance are still making decisions about how to pay for their health care. There is no such thing as inactivity when it comes to health care. We will all need it at some point and all of us always run the risk of needing a great deal of it.  Indeed, given the impact of the decision not to purchase health insurance on the costs of others we are all in the health insurance market.

We are not in a similar way in the market for cars or even for transportation. Or for cell phones. We are all in the market for food in an even more constant way—although not necessarily for broccoli— and the market for burial services is closer to that of health care although the potential costs are far less. We will see, however, that the broccoli and burial service mandates don’t meet other criteria that are met by the health insurance mandate.

2. The health insurance mandate is necessary because of the regulations that already protect the uninsured. The impact of the reiterated decision not to purchase insurance on the broader economy is not just a product of every day economic activity. It is made substantially worse by the requirement that health care be provided to those without insurance. And a consequence of that requirement is that the decision to go without insurance places costs on others far beyond the normal workings of a competitive market. Indeed it creates what economists call an externality: a shifting of the cost of one’s activity from one group to another. The requirement that the uninsured receive emergency health care is not only a legal requirement but a moral necessity. Even in the absence of legislation, many hospitals and doctors would provide care to the extremely sick and dying. At any rate, the legal requirement is entirely legitimate under the Commerce Clause. That the legal requirement to provide emergency care changes the nature of the health care market and makes the mandate necessary to avoid externalities does not vitiate the Constitutional basis for the mandate. The federal government, under the necessary and proper clause has the right to address problems that result from the legitimate exercise of its power.

The other mandates can’t be justified in this way. People who don’t purchase broccoli or cell phones or new cars do not place burdens on their fellow citizens. People who don’t buy burial insurance might do so, but the burden is very small. And, we will see that burial insurance doesn’t meet other limits on federal power.

3.  The health insurance mandates is justified as part of a larger regulatory plan to provide affordable health insurance to all. The health insurance mandate is not only justified  because of the impact of the requirement on doctors and hospitals to provide free emergency health care. Itt also is justified because the regulatory scheme for health insurance under the ACA will fall apart without the mandate. The ACA has two rules designed to make insurance accessible and affordable to all: the guaranteed issue rule which requires that insurance companies insure everyone regardless of their medical condition and the community rating rule which sets limits on how much more insurance companies can charge seniors or people with medical conditions. If we know we can get affordable insurance at any time, then we will have an incentive to put off the purchase of insurance until we get sick. But as more people drop insurance, the cost of insurance rises substantially. And that means that more people drop insurance until the only ones who have it are those who are already sick. At that point either most sick people won’t be able to afford insurance or the government subsidies that make insurance possible will be exorbitant.

The mandate, in other words, is not justified under the Commerce Clause on its own but, rather, as a necessary part of an insurance regulatory scheme that is itself legitimate under the Commerce Clause. The other mandates for clunker replacements, broccoli, cell phones, and burial insurance standing alone apart from any larger regulatory scheme, would not be justified in this way.

4. The health care mandate is the least intrusive way of attaining the legitimate government ends of providing health care for all. There are, of course, other ways government could reform the health insurance market. It could create a national health service or a single payer system. Those choices would clearly be constitutional under the power to tax and spend and thus would not raise Commerce Clause issues. However, they would be a much more intrusive way of insuring everyone than the ACA’s scheme of regulation, mandate, and subsidy. That would not be the case with regard to the clunker, broccoli and cell phone mandates. Cash for clunkers, subsidies for broccoli farmers, and some combination of emergency broadcast system and fire house sirens are far less intrusive than those mandates.

5. And regulation of the health insurance industry along with the insurance mandate clearly addresses a national problem. Health insurance is a national issue that the states cannot deal with for a number of reasons. Given how many of travel frequently from state to state or live and work in different states, people get sick in states other than their own. So if one state decides to address the problems of uncompensated care or of the uninsured, the citizens of that state will be placing burdens on other states if they fall ill while traveling out of state. Even worse, a state the guarantees affordable insurance for all will likely find people who are ill moving to it, which will drive up the cost of insurance in that state while lowering it in other states. And, finally, the economic well being of this country as a whole rests to some extent on our single labor market, which enables people to move from state to state in search of jobs that better fit their skills and abilities. But difficulties in the health insurance market often lock people into jobs that are less well suited to them.

The cell phone mandate doesn’t address a national issue since the first responders in emergency situations are state and local governments. Federal government emergency warnings are carried out mainly by those governments.

There national problem with taxpayer paid burials is also minimal. The funeral home market is clearly a local one. Some people die out of their home state, burying them where they die or shipping their bodies back to their home states is a relatively small burden. So if anyone needs to deal with this issue it is state not local governments.

The insurance mandate really is a special case, then, because the health insurance industry is a special case. There might be other mandates to purchase some good that might be justified under these special conditions. But the argument for the insurance mandate does not justify a general right on the part of the federal government to require us to purchase any particular good or goods.

The other limits on federal powr

And, of course, there are three further limits on any federal government mandate, limits are actually more important than those that arise from a consideration of the Commerce and Necessary and Proper clauses.

First, previous Supreme Court rulings have limited the power of the federal government to regulate with non-economic activity. Accepting the insurance mandate does not change those limits.  

Second, no government can require us to do anything in violation of our civil rights and liberties as defined by the 1^st, 5^th, and 14^th amendments. State governments may have the right to force us to buy broccoli. But no government has the right to violate our fundamental liberties by forcing us to eat broccoli. Justice Kennedy’s worry that the health insurance mandate fundamentally changes the relationship between individuals and government is misplaced, then. That relationship is defined by rights and liberties that remain intact and sacrosanct.

And third and most importantly, the fundamental limit on federal intrusion on both states and individuals is the Republican Government. We sometimes forget that the founders placed more faith in the structure of our government, that is on both the checks and balances—which involves far more than judicial review—and the ultimate accountability and the President and Congress to the people than they did on the paper barriers of the Constitution. So the Justices who so incessantly sought a “limiting principle” to the Commerce Clause were, to some extent, looking in the wrong place. The limits I’ve talked about here are important. But the ultimate barrier to legislation that is dumb and / or tyrannical is that it won’t be enacted by President and Congress.

Or to put the point another way, if you really want to know why the federal government will never force us to buy broccoli it is that the American people really don’t like broccoli.

Later this month the Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). There is a narrow question concerning the Commerce Clause and the individual mandate. Most lawyers who have thought about the issue or read the decision of conservative judge Laurence Silberman understand that the mandate is constitutional.

There is also a larger debate about not just the ACA but much else the government does. Contemporary right wingers say that the Federal government has gone far beyond its constitutional limits in regulating, taxing and subsidizing economic activity. Libertarians such as Ron Paul argue that the Founders wanted to create a “limited government” that protects our “liberty.” They suppose that by “limited government” the Founders meant what libertarians mean today, a government that does little more protect “liberty,” that is economic activity.

This claim, however, fail a basic tenet of history: to understand words in the context of their time and place. The libertarian right to property—the right not to be taxed or regulated for any reason but the defense of property—had not been invented in 1789. John Locke had invented the notion of a right to property. But his goal was not to say how an economy should work, let alone to set limits on the government’s role in the economy, but rather to say how government should work. His argument was not that it was illegitimate for government to tax or regulate economy activity but rather, that it was illegitimate for Kings to do so without the consent of the representatives of property holders.

Locke never held that there were any substantive limits on what government could do in the economic sphere if it had the consent of the representatives of the people. Look at Locke’s extensive writing on economics and poverty and you will find that they abound in arguments for government taxing, subsidizing and regulating economic activity in order to increase prosperity and to relieve the poor. Rather than being supportive of laissez-faire and free markets, Locke was almost a mercantilist.

It’s not until Adam Smith in the late 18^th century that anyone argues that the regulation of free markets undermines economic growth. And it’s not until the middle of the 19^th century that Locke starts being reinterpreted by libertarian theorists who, wrongly, see in his work their own notion of economic liberty.

The problems the Founding Fathers sought to solve were much closer to Locke’s problems than the ones libertarians care about. They were trying to design a government strong enough to hold a large continental country together without creating a monarchy or aristocracy. To that time, there were no examples of large republican (that is non-monarchical) governments. The accepted wisdom—which goes back to ancient Rome—was that republics were only possible in small countries. The Founders tried to devise republican form of government for the country as whole that was neither too weak to be effective nor too strong to diminish the independent authority of the states.

The Founders were not concerned about limiting the role of either federal or state governments in the sphere of economic affairs. They lived under state governments that taxed, regulated and subsidized economic activity as much or more than governments do today. (For example, in 1789 there were no general incorporation laws. Corporations were created by state law that regulated them and often granted them a monopoly.) We know they were supportive of the Federal government taking action in regulating economic affairs that affected the whole country because they met in Philadelphia to address the inability of the Congress to deal with problems of tariffs, western land, and revolutionary war debt.

To the extent that the deliberations in Philadelphia were focused at all on economic issues it was to insure that the federal government would not be too supportive of Northern manufacturing or Southern agriculture. Debates in the Washington Administration about the policies of Hamilton were not discussed in terms of the rights of property but, again, in terms of sectional economies.

So contemporary libertarians who look to the Founders for support are simply inventing a history that justifies their present day concerns

There is no way to know what the Founders would think of the ACA because they never considered issues much like it. This is what we do know, however:

1. They wouldn’t have been shocked by the idea of mandating health insurance, since the first Congress implemented a similar policy for seamen.
2. They would have not been shocked at the level of regulation in the ACA because they lived in economies that were as highly regulated.
3. They would not have talked about the ACA interfering with our economic rights because the notion of economic rights had not been invented at the time.
4. They would have asked whether health insurance is an economic issue that transcends the ability of states to address effectively.

The Supreme Court said yes to question 3 in 1944 for insurance generally. Since then the Federal role in health care has grown substantially in hospital construction, medical research and training; and insurance with the creation of Medicare and Medicaid.

Give this history—and the reality that individual states have only a limited capacity to guarantee affordable health insurance for all or hold down health care costs—there is no reason to think that the principles that underlie our Constitution are in conflict with the ACA.

In the last fifty years, we have seen a dramatic transformation in both relationships between the sexes and our relationship to sexuality. No one thinks that there is any likelihood that we will return to traditional practices and beliefs. But in the last few months Republican candidates have tried to reignite the culture war that has accompanied these transformations.

One reason that traditionalists continue to call the changes of the last fifty years into question is that of those of us who have turned away from traditionalist ideas don’t give as deep a defense of the new world we have made as we could. We defend sexual freedom, feminism, and the acceptance of homosexuality mostly by talking about the ideals of freedom, individuality and autonomy. The traditionalists answer that those modern ideals are empty and low, a mere excuse for doing whatever we want to do. And they claim that the changes in our lives are deeply in conflict with the ideals of love, marriage, and the care of children. Of course we, too, seek love, marriage and the care of children. But we haven’t asserted as strongly as we should or could that our ideals are not only fully compatible with but enhance our prospects for love, marriage and the care of our children.

Why haven’t we done this? I think there are for two reasons.

One is that at the back of our minds many of us have some doubts about whether the ideals of freedom, individuality, and autonomy are truly compatible with love, marriage and the care of children. Those of us who are baby boomers, and even some of those raised in the next generation, grew up in a very different world than the one we have created. How could we strike out on a very different path from our parents and grandparents without wondering if we were not heading into dangerous territory? Every time we see a single friend who would rather be married or hear of a marriage breaking up or learn of a friend’s child who has run into serious problems, it’s hard for us not to wonder whether the traditional path would have led to a better outcome.

A second reason for our reticence about defending our post-sexual revolution, post-feminist, post-gay liberation way of life in terms that respond to the traditionalist critique is that we fear that to even offer such a response is to betray the ideals of freedom, individuality and autonomy. Nobody, we think, should ever have to answer to anyone else’s views of when, how and with whom they should have sex or when, how and who they should marry, or when, how and with whom they should raise their children.

While I want to insist that the claim to our own freedom, individuality and autonomy ultimately does trump any view, whether traditionalist or not, about how we should live our lives, the truth of the matter is that the way of life we have created in the last fifty years does actually rest on more than the formal ideals we use to defend ourselves against traditionalist criticisms. Whether we recognize it or not, the baby boom and subsequent generations have been creating new practices of sex, family life, marriage, child rearing and work that have aims that go far beyond just freedom, self-determination and autonomy.

Or, to put the point a little differently, by self-determination and autonomy we mean more than just doing whatever we want to do. We have tried to create a world that answers to deeper ideals about what is valuable in life.

We aim to find work and relationships that fulfill us by enabling us to grow while also serving our fellow human beings. We want to expand our skills and abilities and deepen our knowledge of and connections to the world around us and the people with whom we live. We seek challenges and novelty. But at the same time we seek the stability, commitment and comfort that not only enables us to move forward into the unknown with confidence but that also creates the security our children need. We seek mutual respect and equality in our partnerships and marriages while recognizing that some difference in roles sometimes makes sense. We struggle with the balance between exercising the necessary authority over our children while also encouraging them to be self-directing and creative.

We worry and talk endlessly with our friends about what to do with our freedom, individuality and autonomy. We obsess about all our choices: who to date, who to sleep with and who to marry; what school to attend or to send our kids; what job to take; how many kids to have;  what to eat and drink; where to live and even where to go on vacation. Our self-absorption is, rightly, the stuff of comedy. But what is funny from the outside is often tension provoking from within.

That we are self-obsessed comes in no small part from the reality that we are blazing new trails without a map. It comes because the pursuit of autonomy and individuality requires a new kind of reflection and self-awareness. And it also comes because our ideals are a lot deeper, thicker, and fuller than the formal ideals of freedom, autonomy and individuality. We would not be satisfied if we or our children used the hard won freedom of our time and place to live a life of random sexual encounters that were never mixed with love. We do not think that autonomy is well used if it leads people to fritter away their talents and abilities in work that is not challenging or does not contribute to others.  We may not have as many children as our parents and grandparents, and some of us may have none at all. But we look aghast at people whose individuality is expressed in a complete and utter disinterest in the future of our country, our species and our earth. We may tell our children, as my parents told me, that we will love them no matter what they choose to do with their lives and even “if they choose to pick up the garbage.” But while we may mean, and our children may appreciate, these expressions of unconditional love, they know in their souls, as we did, that our aspirations for them are far higher.

So our unwillingness to articulate our deeper and thicker ideals, those that go beyond the formal goals of freedom, individuality, and autonomy, makes it hard for us to respond to traditionalists when they claim the high moral ground, when they assert or insinuate that those of us who reject traditional sexual mores and the traditional family don’t appreciate the deeper and more lasting goods of love, marriage, and children and instead are weak-willed slaves to our lower desires. And that is a shame, not only because we put ourselves at a rhetorical disadvantage among those for whom love, marriage and children are central to a good human life, but because we let the theoretical understanding of human nature that underlies traditional views go unchallenged.

That theoretical view, however, should be challenged not just because it can undermine confidence in our contemporary path in question but because, for all its antiquity, it is a mistaken, destructive, and ultimately demeaning picture of human life.

The Traditional View of Sexuality

Before presenting, in the next section of this essay, an alternative that makes better sense of our lives, I need to set out the traditional view of sexuality in a more detailed, if still compressed, fashion than it is presented by defenders of tradition. Too much of the time, those of us who oppose the traditional view take it as a series of moral or religious requirements that aren’t backed by reasons of any kind. We do that because today very few defenders of traditional sexuality can actually articulate the conception of human nature that underlies it—and others who can articulate it are reluctant to do so because they are troubled or even embarrassed by it. But the traditional conception does rest on a serious philosophical perspective that, for all its very deep flaws, has dominated ideas of human nature for roughly 1500 years. We won’t be able to identify the flaws unless we are prepared to engage the traditional view in some depth.

The traditional view of human nature, in some ways goes back to middle Platonism —and on some interpretations to Plato himself. But it was given a new twist by the early Church Fathers who see human beings as composite creatures, with a soul that is infused in us by God and a body that comes from the earth. If we see ourselves in such a light, we face a fundamental choice, to live our lives in pursuit of the fleshy pleasures of this world or in pursuit of the soulful pleasures of heaven. That choice, however, is constrained by the fall of man in the Garden of Eden which has crippled our free will and put us in thrall to bodily desires for sex, food, comfort.

On the traditional view, sexual desire is the most difficult one for us to overcome because it is both deeply powerful and anarchic in nature. Sexual desire in its natural, bodily form is lust. It comes from somewhere deep within us—from our bodies not our souls. We can do our best to avoid, restrain or repress sexual desire but when it arrives and how it affects us is not something we can ever entirely control.

Sexual desire is also, in the phrase of Freud, polymorphously perverse. It can leads us to pursue every possible kind of stimulation on the way to orgasm and then, once we are momentarily satisfied, to do so again. Sexual desire does not naturally lead men and women to commit themselves to the romantic love of another person. Nor does it lead us to embrace family life. Indeed, the family and the care of children cannot survive the untrammeled lust that would, if not tamed and channeled, lead us to have sex with whoever is available or perhaps as dangerously to obsessively pursue an unfit potential partner who for reasons we never fully understand has caught our eye. Unless it is restrained and directed, lust leads us to actions that at best create jealousy and tensions within our family and at worst create broken homes and abandoned children.

Not only is the arrival and aim of sexual desire out of our control, lust is also overpowering in nature. Lust is extremely difficult to restrain and restraint is always painful. Indeed sexual desire can be heightened by both satisfying it and by restraining so that we the more we deny ourselves, the more we crave sexual satisfaction.

Restraining our lower nature, and especially sexual desire, is difficult and, on some versions of Christianity, totally impossible without God’s grace. The right kinds of education and institutions however, can help us repress and control our bodily desires so that at the very least, marriage and family life is possible.

To get off to a good start we need an upbringing that discourages the florid growth of sexual desire and trains us in self-denial. We need to be taught to fear and even have disgust for lust and the body from which it arises. We need to become deeply aware of the dangers of our sexual nature. And of course we must be kept from materials that are designed to stimulate our desires. Without such an education—or worse, with an education that simulates and heightens our lower desires—we may find ourselves living desperate lives in endless search of relief from the pain of unsatisfied desire.

Education must be supplemented by institutions that channel our sexual desires in the right direction. Human beings—and especially men whose sexual desires are particularly unruly—must be denied sexual gratification outside of marriage. The only way to keep families together is to hold male sexual satisfaction hostage to the willingness of men to support their spouses and children.

Implicit in the traditional view is the notion that male sexuality is more difficult to control than female sexuality. Thus, in two different ways, the traditional view places most of the responsibility for controlling sexuality on women. On the one hand, the traditional approach holds women responsible for enflaming male lust. This notion is deeply embedded in Christian interpretations of the story of the Garden of Eden which blame Eve for enticing Adam to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Other stories in the Bible, such as those of Delilah and Jezebel, are also reinterpreted as demonstrating that the sexual appeal of women gives them power over men. Women must thus act and dress modestly so as to avoid stimulating the desires of men.

On the other hand, sexual restraint on the part of women—who deny men sex outside of marriage—is what makes it possible for the sexuality of men to be channeled in directions that preserves the family.

That women can exert power over men both by means of elucidating sexual desire and by denying men sexual satisfaction suggests that women have control over their sexual desires in a way that men do not. Thus the control of male sexuality falls on them. There is, however, another theme in traditional understandings of female sexuality that suggests that once it is loosened from restraint, the sexuality of women is potentially far greater than that of men and, indeed, something to be feared because it can destroy a family. That is why it is especially important for the sexuality of women who enter marriage to be so tightly controlled.

On the traditional view, women who cannot control their sexual desires do have some uses for the community. By becoming prostitutes they provide the least dangerous sexual outlet for men who have trouble restraining their desires within marriage. But prostitution, however necessary it may be at times and for some men, is not the ideal solution to the problem of human sexuality. The ideal is for sexual pleasure to be found only in in marriage and for it to be restrained even there.

Thus the traditional view of sexuality is deeply critical of any view that seeks to liberate sex from the constraints of marriage. It is critical of birth control and legal abortion because both offer human beings the possibility of sexual pleasure without the fear of pregnancy. That possibility encourages the very sexual freedom, both before and after marriage, that intense moral training and the constraint of marriage are meant to control. The threat of pregnancy and the difficulties of raising children on one’s own is the strongest reason for women to restrain their sexual desires. End the threat of pregnancy, however, and women will seek sex nearly as much and as wildly as men do. The most important force that can civilize male desire—limiting sex to marriage—will thereby be undermined.

For a number of reasons homosexuality is also deeply problematic on the traditional view. One is that homosexual sex is detached from procreation and, traditionalists assume it must therefore be detached from the formation of families as well. Of course, given that many homosexuals today seek to marry, one would think that traditionalist might be more open to it. But homosexuality operates outside of the fear of pregnancy that traditionalists believe is necessary to make marriage work and so it is likely to be freer than heterosexual sex. Thus it can encourage a similar freedom among heterosexuals and thereby undermine all marriages.

While the fundamental reason traditionalists seek to restrain sexuality is to protect the family, there is a second reason as well. Sex may be the most dangerous bodily desires but our desires, for food and comfort, can be problematic as well. And in our efforts to satisfy all of our bodily we seek power and wealth and that brings us into conflict with others. This claim is more plausible in a pre-modern world, in which there is never enough good things to go around and the only way to get more is take them from someone else. But even in the modern world of material richness and economic growth, human conflict is often the result of the desire to dominate others in order to secure economic and political power that in turn satisfy our bodily desires.

We can deal with this difficulty in only two ways. Both require sexual restraint. We can work hard, and dramatically increase economic growth. But while this path gives us the resources to satisfy some of our bodily desires, it forces us to give our work the time and energy we might spend in pursuing sexual and other delights. Freud was entirely working within traditional ideas when he said that hard work requires restraint of our sexual desires. Or we can rely on government to restrain our demands for the goods we need to satisfy our bodily desires. Traditionalists today look to economic growth to take the rough edges off our political and social life. But they also claim that economic growth cannot provide enough for everyone if only because our desires expand to meet our capacity to produce. Economic growth must be backed up by moral and political restraints to keep us in line, as well as the long training in self-discipline that leads us to accept a limited satisfaction of our bodily and material desires. (That, of course, is an argument most often made by upper classes seeking to resist the demand of lower classes for a redistribution of income and wealth. Somehow it is rarely applied to the upper classes themselves.) Peace and civility, then, depend, in one of these two ways, upon the sacrifice of our sexual and other pleasures.

To this point, I have focused almost entirely on the necessity of restraint on our desires in order to avoid the terrible consequences of untamed sexuality. But, to be fair, traditionalist offer positive arguments for sexual restraint as well. Sex, they suggest, has two natural purposes, which in the Catholic tradition are called procreative and unitive. Procreation is, of course, a good for most of us and, to the extent that the traditional argument for sexual restrain seems necessary in order to sustain families that can properly raise children, we can see how sexual restraint serves that natural end.

The unitive purpose of sexuality is to express and heighten the love that ideally brings men and women together in marriage. To their credit, traditionalists do understand that a sexual relationship in which the two partners seek to give one another pleasure is a prime way in which that love is expressed, realized, strengthened and sustained. Indeed Christians point out that the love between a man and woman is not only intended by God but that the love we express in marriage is modeled after the selfless love of Jesus for us. While sexuality comes from the body, on the traditional religious model, it is transformed when it is part of relationship between two souls. It is given a higher purpose than mere selfish physical pleasure because love leads us beyond ourselves to love of another and ultimately to the love God.

Sexual restraint is necessary to this unitive purpose for two reasons. One is that sexual fidelity is impossible without a great deal of sexual restraint. Without fidelity, love between men and women is bound to collapse. The other is that, even within a monogamous marriage, men and women can come to look on their spouses not as loving partners whose ends have become their own but as a means to sexual pleasure. Given the ever present danger that lust will lead us to a pursue sex in a selfish and self-absorbed manner, we must restrain our sexual desires so that we can we fully embrace our partners in a higher form of sexual life. That is why Christians teach that chastity is important not just before but within marriage.

Thus sexual restraint is, from a traditionalist perspective, not a total rejection of sexual desires and the body but an elevation of it. To think of sexual desire as primarily a source of pleasure is to treat one’s body an instrument, that is, as a means of receiving or giving pleasure. But to restrain sexual desires is to see our body as the seat of the soul; to use our body to realize the aims of the soul in this and the next world, and thus in this life to make the composite body / soul into a fully integrated whole.

Most traditionalists today reject Catholic arguments against contraception, although as we have seen, traditionalists worry that because contraception makes pre-martial and extra-marital sex more likely it undermines the necessary restraint of our sexual desires. But it might be helpful to understand the two further arguments the Catholic hierarchy today—and most Christians in the past—make against contraception since they reveal some important facets of the traditional view of sexuality.

First, they hold that both procreation and the unity of marriage partners is the intended purpose of sex as given by God and nature. Just as God’s love is expressed in his creation of the world and care for it and us, human love must aim at creating a unity between a man and woman that is always open to being fulfilled in the creation of a child. Sex that is not potentially procreative is not natural or consonant with God’s will. Second they argue that sex that is not potentially procreative cannot attain the unitive purpose of sex because a full unity between a man and a woman is expressed only in procreation.

Both of these arguments strike most non-Catholics—and many Catholics as well—as problematic since Catholic teaching does not discourage men and women not capable of procreation from having sex. Why the unitive purpose of sexuality can survive when there is no possibility of procreation in these cases, but is unsatisfactory when contraception is used, is difficult to understand.  One would have to argue that those of us who are capable of procreating distance ourselves from the ultimate fulfillment of sexuality in procreation when we use contraception.

The Catholic prohibition on contraception also rests on a peculiar understanding of natural law in which procreation is seen as the necessary end of a sexual act. In the Aristotelian tradition that is the source of natural law teaching, mere life was never been taken to be the highest end. Rather life was a thought of as a necessary means to our highest end, a life of happiness. In Thomas Aquinas’s Christian appropriation of the Aristotle, the highest end is a life in union and fellowship with God. So it is very difficult to understand how the Church’s natural law teaching leads to the conclusion that procreation is the highest end of sex. The creation of a life that aims at the highest end, happiness or union with god is for Christians the summum bonum, the greatest good. That kind of life is not the product of procreation but of a long process in which we educate our children into way of life that enables them to pursue the ideal ends of human beings. So it would seem that natural law leads us to conclude that contraception is justified if it enables men and women to live a life that enhances their capacity to create the right kind of family, that is, one which raises children who respect and pursue the proper end of human kind. One could make a good argument that in our time and place, raising those kind of children is easier when there are fewer of them and when their arrival is planned.

Ultimately, it seems that the Catholic opposition to contraception ultimately rests not on a confused understanding of natural law but on its insistence that sexual desire needs to be constrained. It is not so much that Catholic teaching encourages men and women to wholeheartedly pursue sexual relationships in which the unitive and procreative ends are combined but that it fears that too much of a good thing will undermine the sexual restraint without which marriages may collapse. It fears, in other words, that if men and women enjoy sex too much and too frequently, the pursuit of sexual pleasure will become an end in itself rather than a means to bringing husbands and wives together in love. Or, even worse, it will encourage such a florid development of sexual desire that men and women will seek sexual pleasure outside of marriage. What Catholics call “natural family planning,” the new name for the rhythm method, is thought of and taught not just as means by which husbands and wives can legitimately limit the number of children but a means by which they restrain their sexual desires. Or, in other words, the threat of unwanted pregnancy continues to be how chastity is sustained in marriage, just as it was before marriage.

An alternative to the traditional view

The fear of the power sexual desire is at the heart of the traditionalist understanding of sexuality. To develop a better understanding of sexuality, one that is both more true to our nature and experience and a better guide to practice in this day and age critically important. This is not the place for me to set out in detail the alternative to the traditional view of sexuality that I have been working on for some time. But I do want to point to a number of ways in which this new approach departs from the traditional understanding and how it makes better sense of our sexual experience than traditional views.

Sexual desire is not a force external to our souls

First, the new view breaks with the traditional assumption notion that sexual desire in its basic form—lust—is a desire that comes wholly from our body, that presses for satisfaction, and that is not fully under our control. On the alternative I defend, sexual desire, is not something that come from outside of ourselves but rather is something that a product of who we are, what we believe and how we have come to live our lives and understand ourselves.

It is true that whatever else it may aim at sexual desire aims at bodily pleasure. And it is also true that, especially when we are young, we find ourselves desiring sex in a way that seems to come from outside of ourselves. Sometimes, especially when it has been a long time since we’ve had sex, we feel pushed or made uncomfortable by sexual desire. But by and large this is not how most of us experience sexual desire, especially if sex is a regular part of our lives. Just as we usually decide to get something to eat long before we are hungry—and only become hungry when we smell delicious food being prepared for us—most often we choose when and where to become sexually aroused. We begin some kind of sexual activity or put ourselves in a situation where it is possible or likely before we have the characteristic feelings or focus that comes with sexual desire, that is, before we become sexually aroused.

Sexual feelings are largely under our control

Second, even in those circumstances in which sexual desires seems to happen to us, this occurs in large part because of what I’d like to call our stance to the world or to some particular person. Some of us are more ready to think about sex or react to others sexually than others. Drawing on the traditional thought about sexuality, we tend to assume that this difference is rooted in our bodies—in our hormones or some other physical source. Sometimes, when we are drawn to another person’s beauty (of soul or body), we are more likely to think about them sexually or come to desire them. Again, the traditional view holds that these people do something to us—that there is a physical or bodily connection that generates sexual desire.

The truth, however, is that sexual desire is a product of our rational souls not our non-rational bodies. In saying this, I don’t mean to deny that our souls are embodied or that there aren’t neurobiological processes underlie our desires and thoughts. I am saying, however, that what determines whether we desire sex at any particular moment is how we have learned to think about, look at, and act in the world and how the world and people in it look to us at a particular moment. It is a product of our basic desires and beliefs and of our stance to the world. It is a product of culture and thought, of the ideals and ideas we have to come to accept and the interaction of those ideals and ideas with our experience. We come to desire another person sexually not because of some irrational bodily processes that well up in and over power us but because of who we are as human beings and how we relate to another person.

And that means that sexual desire is far more under our control than the traditional view holds. Whether we will respond sexually in a particular circumstance is to a much larger extent than the traditional view holds, up to us if not in the short term than in the long term. Sexual desire sometimes rises up in us when sex is the furthest thing from our minds, just as hunger does when we are not the least bit concerned about food. But, a bodily desire for food that is unconnected to some higher level desiring or thinking about food or experiencing the smell of food or recognizing that it is dinner time is, most of the time, more common and more insistent than a desire for sex similarly disconnected from our higher level thoughts, desires, and experiences.

So, whether a man or woman looks at a subordinate primarily as a colleague or as a sexual object is up to them. And whether we engage with our partners and spouses in a sexual manner in a particular time and place is also up to us. Yes, sexual thoughts and reactions can do sometimes come to us at surprising or unwelcome times. But that is because we sometimes have divided minds. We can be attracted to people who we know we shouldn’t desire or act or act sexually at places and times that are inappropriate—and indeed knowing that we shouldn’t desire them or that the time and place is inappropriate sometimes heightens our desire. But that division is in us, in our souls. It is not a product of some conflict between our bodies and our souls. And most of the time we can turn our attention away from inappropriate sexual thoughts by focusing our minds elsewhere.

Whether we act sexually is up to us

Third, and more importantly, even when sexual desires come to us in an unwelcome way, whether we act sexually is up to us. We can choose whether to be sexual with others or not. And usually that doesn’t require any special exertion of will or effort to restraint our desires. It simply requires us to act with the same capacity for human choice that enables most of us to pass on dessert when we are trying to lose weight.

Sometimes we are tempted by sex the way we are by sweets. And sometimes we can’t resist the temptation. But we are also tempted to keep a wallet we find on the ground rather than return it to its owner just as we are tempted to keep quiet when our boss unfairly chews out a colleague rather than standing up for him. No one thinks that a lack of honesty or moral courage is the result of overpowering bodily desires. So why do we assume that it is overpower sexual desires that lead us to do something wrong in the realm of food or sex? We human beings can have divided souls. We can do thing we believe are wrong in every realm of life. And when we do, it is because of that division in our souls not because some overpowering bodily desire overcomes us.

Sexuality is embedded in and strengthened by other desires

Fourth, sexual desire is not something that stands apart from our other desires but is integrated and often made stronger by them. Psychologists do surveys that ask people why they have sex. This would strike us as odd if sexual desire were like other desires. Have you ever seen a survey that asks people why they eat? These surveys show that people have sex for at least 13 different reasons and that sexual desire is enhanced and made more powerful when it is a means of satisfying other desires beyond the desire for physical pleasure. Of course, the most powerful aphrodisiac is the desire for physical intimacy with the men or women we love. But sex is sought by both men and women for many other reasons as well, from pure physical pleasure to boosting self-esteem to toning up to relaxing.

We can dispute about whether those are good reasons or not. Some are highly questionable. Since the time of the Ancient Greeks and continuing to our day, sex has been a way in which men displayed their dominance over others. I call sex that stems from this motive “dominator sex.” On the Ancient Greek view sex was always something one took from another person. And, even today, many men see their sexual partners and pursue them either as conquests or as validators of their status. But whatever we think of the reasons that men and women pursue sex, there can be no doubt that sexual desire is embedded and made powerful by its place among other our desires, aims and purposes. Standing alone, sexual desire is much less powerful than we imagine.

The relational character of sexual desire

Fifth, the way sexuality is embedded in our lives points an important feature of sexuality that is overlooked by the traditional view, it’s fundamentally relational character. The traditional view holds that sexual desire comes from someplace within us and then is directed one way or the other, sometimes in ways that are under our control but most often in ways that are not. But the truth is much more complicated. Far more than other goods, acting sexually and enjoying sex is not a product of an already existing desire but involves stimulating that desire and becoming aroused. Becoming sexually aroused for human beings is very different from and far more complex for us than it is for animals, even those nearest to us. Women don’t become receptive to sexuality at a certain point every month which in turn elicits a male desire to initiate sex. Unlike all but a few primates, men and women are capable of becoming sexually aroused at any time. We do not have to wait for estrus to have sex. But, precisely because of that, sexual arousal not in any respect automatic for us, as it is with most animals.

Because we are self-conscious creatures we have far more complicated  likes and dislikes when it comes to who we have sex with than any other creatures. This is true even with regard to what we might think of lower preferences: we care in ways that animals apparently do not what our sexual partners look like: how tall or short, how heavy and thin they are and what color hair they have. We care about how they carry themselves, how they stand and talk, smile and laugh. We care in all sorts of complicated ways about their ethnicity and families. And, of course, we care about their intentions, about what a specific sexual encounters means or does not mean for what our relationship might be with them in the future.

And, of course, most immediately, we care about how we try to engage each other in sex, how we flirt and seek to arouse one another and then how we stimulate each other sexually. The critical difference between human and animal sex is not just that we intentionally seek to arouse one another—to some extent higher animals do that—but that we are aware of those mutual intentions, and even more, that at some point we put those intentions between us in a space that becomes ours. Our mutual intention to arouse one another and have sex becomes, as Charles Taylor puts, something that is entre nous. It is no longer that I know that you know that I am trying to arouse you while you know that I know that you are trying to arouse me.  It is that we mutually recognize that we are trying to arouse one another and that mutual recognition contributes to sexual arousal. Sex has become something we are doing together, in partnership with one another.

Much of the initial play of flirtation has to do with the subtle ways in which we implicitly suggest our interest in one another without fully making that interest explicit—without making it entre nous—so as to avoid the pain and embarrassment of expressing sexual interest in someone who does not return that interest. Much of our effort to further arouse one another has to do with the not so subtle ways in which sex becomes something we are doing together and in which we find our (not just your or my) way to express and encourage lust in and then satisfy one another. And then there are all the ways in which we conduct a sexual encounter, in which we implicitly and explicitly tell one other what we like, in which we take charge for a moment or longer or allow our partner to do so, in which we move from one sexual position or one set of movements to another, in which we find rhythms and patterns by which to stimulate and stroke one another, and all else we say and do—or don’t say and do, in the process.

Mutual sexual arousal—both the kind in which we make implicit suggestions and the kind in which we make our intentions something between us—continues from the beginning to the end of each sexual encounter. At any moment, a sexual encounter can go better or worse, can create an intense moment of passion or can totally collapse in a loss of interest or anger or even disgust. And between those alternatives are so many other possibilities. All of them, however, have to do with how we intentionally attempt, as individuals and as a partners in the process, to keep one another aroused and stimulated until we collapse in orgasm or decide that we have had enough and can go on no longer.

That mutual sexual arousal is so critical to human sexuality means that sex is in a fundamental way different for us than it is for other animals. Sex for other animals can be defined in terms of how they rub their bodies together. But that is not the case for human beings. The great confusion Freud created by noticing the incredible range of behavior that he rightfully saw as sexual—our capacity for being what he called polymorphously perverse—is resolved once we understand that what makes the desire for bodily pleasure a sexual desire  is not that it aims for the physical pleasure of rubbing our body against the body of another person, not that it is focused on certain erogenous zones, but rather that it aims to elicit arousal and desire from another person which, in turn, arouses ourselves. Indeed, it is the desire for mutual arousal that is critical in making a physical act sexual at all. We can be touched in exactly the same physical way and that touch can be deep massage in one instance and deeply sexual in another. The difference is in whether the person touching us intends to arouse us (and himself or herself) or not.

Sex, in other words, is not just a physical event. Rather it is an intrinsically intentional, relational phenomenon, one that involves not just the body but the soul of another person, and in which one hopes that one’s own desire and arousal is responded to in kind.

There are some obvious objections to this claim—and if I had more space I’d respond to them at greater length. Let me just mention two points with regard to the claim that masturbation is not relational in nature. First, it is relational in at least this:  when we masturbate we are trying to—indeed we sometimes go to some trouble to—arouse ourselves. And just as we can fail to be aroused in partnered sex, we can fail to be aroused when we masturbate. And it is also the case that we typically fantasize about other people when we masturbate in order to become aroused. Sex is very special in this respect. We don’t fantasize about eating with another person when we eat alone. Eating does have its relational elements in that we eat together as a way of forming and strengthening our relationships with others. But it is not intrinsically relational like sex because, Jewish mothers aside, our own desire to eat is not something that is oriented to encouraging others to eat. Nor is our desire to eat fundamentally shaped by the desires of others to eat. Our own sexual desires, on the other hand, do stimulate and are stimulated by the desires of our partner.

And to those who say that dominator sex is also an objection to my claim that sex is fundamentally relational let me point out that practice of the dominator sexuality implicitly recognizes the relational character of sexual desire albeit in perverse forms. Men (and some women today) who pursue dominator sex are not just seeking physical pleasure from the man or woman with whom they have sex. They want submission from them. Or, more precisely, just as sexual arousal and physical pleasure is enhanced in consensual sex by the sexual arousal of our partner, sexual arousal and physical pleasure in dominator sex is enhanced by dominating one’s partner. The expectation or hope of those who pursue dominator sex is that the dominator will elicit sexual arousal and physical pleasure from the person he dominates sexually not primarily as a reaction to his own lust but to his power and status. Sometimes this is a cruel fantasy.  But since submissive women and men can be as much caught up in this kind of sex as dominant men and women, it is sometimes the reality as well. To force another to take pleasure in his or her own submission is the ultimate form of domination. It is the final way in which the dominator demonstrates his control over the dominated.

How the traditional view misunderstands sexuality: the role of lust

Given these five important features of sexuality we can see how wrong the traditional view of sexuality goes even in its best moments, when it recognizes how important sexuality is to building a loving connection between two people. The traditional view misunderstands how sex does that. There is much talk in the tradition of men and women giving themselves or their bodies selflessly to one another. The contrast here is supposedly between a sexual encounter in which one uses another person’s body to satisfy one’s own desire and one in which one offers up one’s body to another out of love for them.

This way of thinking is problematic for two reasons. First, it is hard to escape the suspicion here that the traditional view is contrasting male and female or active and passive approaches to sexuality. Given that the traditional approach to sexuality is especially concerned about the dangers of female sexuality, it frequently seems to, at least implicitly, recommend that the passive, restrained female give her body selflessly to the aggressive lustful male without herself becoming too aroused let alone too focused on her own sexual pleasure. Her pleasure in sex is found in the gift she gives her husband not what she received from him. This is obviously not an understanding of sexuality that is likely to encourage sexual practices that give women pleasure or that encourage husbands to treat their wives with the respect due equals.[1]

Second, even if we understand it in a more egalitarian way, as requiring both men and women to love selflessly, it is difficult to reconcile the traditional view with the relational character of sexuality. It is impossible to give our partners sexual pleasure without seeking to arouse them. And part of what arouses our partners is that we are aroused by them. So to act sexually out of a self-less desire to give pleasure to another person without desiring pleasure for oneself is, quite simply, impossible. Even worse, the whole notion of giving oneself to another fails to understand that when sex goes well it transcend the whole self / other dichotomy. When we have good sex with our partner we are doing something together out of a desire that we share. Or to put the point another way, sex is more than just a mutual front rub not because it ends in intercourse—good sex doesn’t always end there—but because it starts in mutual arousal.

One would think that a tradition, such as the Catholic one, that focuses on the unitive end of sexuality would understand this. That it does not comes down to this: the traditional view of sexuality has a serious problem with lust. It sees lust as a low, bodily and degrading phenomenon. It would like human beings to have sex without lust, out of a higher desire to express our love for our partner and for God.

This is not a fanciful interpretation of the traditional view of sexuality. Fascination with and fear of lust is quite explicit in the work of Augustine. He held that one consequences of the Fall is that the sexual organs of our bodies no longer respond to our souls and in particular that men sometimes get erections when we don’t want them and sometimes don’t get them when we want them. In the Garden of Eden Adam’s penis was under the control of his will just like his arm or hand was. The bodies of Adam and Eve responded perfectly to their souls and they could become physically capable of sex—that is physically aroused—without the need to arouse one another and thus without lust.

The idea of sex without lust continues to be central to the traditional ideal of sexuality. But it is an ideal wholly out of keeping with the nature of human sexuality in the only world we know. And for anyone who does not accept the notion that human nature has been corrupted by the Fall, it is a pernicious doctrine. It is a doctrine designed to make us uncomfortable with our own bodies and our sexual nature. It is a doctrine that is guaranteed to generate intense guilt over our sexual feelings and sexual pleasure. And it can also generate a perverse preoccupation with lust in those who try to escape feelings of guilt by embracing sexual experience that they cannot experience as anything but transgressive.

How we know the traditional view is mistaken

How do we know that the traditional picture of sexuality is wrong and that the alternative I propose is right? That, of course, is a long story. But let me quickly point to four pieces of evidence.

First, the human animal is far more sexual than any other species, with the possible exception of the famed Bonobo chimps. It is a terrible slur to analogize men and women who are highly sexual or promiscuous to animals. But if one were a traditionalist, the slur would be on the animals not on the human beings. We are more sexual than other animals not because our bodies have power over our souls but precisely because we are free from the limits of the body. As I pointed out above, the vast majority of animal species have sex only at set times, when hormonal and other bodily changes stimulate sexual desire. We have sex anytime and frequently. We have sex and arouse one another to do so because we—not our bodies but we as a whole—desire it.

Second, human sexual desire is highly variable. The evidence is not always clear but there is good reason to think that how much sex human beings have has varied greatly from one time and place to another. And yet there is little evidence that in less sexual times and places human beings were sexually frustrated or that lack of sex was wholly a matter of religious scruples. Rather they were just pursuing other goods—or were too exhausted by the business of staying alive and caring for their children to worry about it. If sexual desire were as powerful and constraining as traditionalist thinks we wouldn’t see quite so much variety.

A reason to accept the notion that human sexuality is highly variable is our experience today. The best surveys of sexuality today show us that there is an enormous range of sexual behavior in the US and other advanced countries. (We know less about sexual behavior elsewhere in the world)

We also know about sexual variability from our own lives. Most of us have had stretches of time in which have had sex far more often than others. Again, the source of these differences is variability in the sexual opportunities available to us—both in terms of potential partners and free time—and our own psychological state.

Third, there is a huge pornography business. No one knows quite how large it is and this is one field where the size of everything is exaggerated. But the best estimates suggest that about $2.9 billion is spent on porn every year in just America.[2] It’s very difficult to understand why a huge industry whose main purposes is sexual arousal would exist if human were as prone to being overcome by lust as the traditional view claims.

And, fourth, I think we know that the traditional picture is mistaken just by looking at ourselves. The trick, however, is to look out selves as we really are, not as we think we must be given the traditional ideas about sexuality that are all around us. On those traditional ideas, the model of human sexuality is a 19 year old man. Indeed we often say that men are at their sexual peak when they are 19 by which we really mean that frustrated 19 year old men best exemplify our understanding of sexuality. Now I would agree that if we were like horny 19 year old men for all of our lives, the traditional view would be somewhat plausible. But half of us are never 19 year old men and the other half are 19 year old men for an extremely short period of time. Most of us are lucky enough not to live our lives as sexually frustrated as most 19 year olds. And, sexually experienced women know that they are very lucky not to have to spend their sexual lives with men with the limited sexual experience and knowledge of 19 year olds.

If we look at the role that sex really plays in the life of more or less well-adjusted and sexually active men and women, I suspect you will not find that your life is not torn by the almost unbearable pressures of bodily urges that are barely under your own control. Rather than standing apart from the rest of your life and exercising a malicious force on it, sexuality is an integrated part of who you are and how you relate to others. And, I also suspect that if men looked back at themselves at 19 honestly, they would understand that the picture we have of what life was like is far more shaped by traditional ideas than the reality of our lives at that age.

What follows from the new understanding of sexuality?

So, suppose we accept this alternative to the traditional understanding of sexuality, what concrete recommendations about our lives follows from it?

Giving up unnecessary restraints

The first recommendations are negative ones, to give up some of the absurd restraints on sexuality that follow from traditional views.

First, on the new understanding of sexual desire I’m presenting here, sexuality is not something to be unnecessarily constrained out of fear that sexual pleasure will so corrupt us that we will no longer be able to control ourselves. Thinking and talking about sexuality and even sexual experimentation will not lead to a wild expansion of our sexual desires. It will not lead us down the path to ruin.

Second, once we break with the traditional understanding of sex, it should be clear that women don’t have any greater responsibility for the proper use of sexuality than men. The future of marriage and family does not depend on women denying their own sexuality.

Third, under the new view we can broaden our notion of what marriage means and how married people should act. Contraception is not something that is dangerous because it removes the threat of pregnancy that forces women to limit sex. Nor is sexuality unthinkable outside of marriage because marriage is necessary to constrain the power force of lust. Nor will marriage be threatened if it is extended to homosexual couples.

Fourth, we can give up the whole misbegotten idea of chastity in marriage, the idea that married sexuality is best if it is limited, if it avoids stimulating lust, and if it is wholly oriented to the physical act by which, either through natural or miraculous means, children are conceived.

And even if one believes, as I do, that sexuality best contributes not just to human pleasure but to human wellbeing when it is carried on by people in a loving committed relationship, that does not mean that this is the only circumstances in which sexuality can contribute to our good.

Indeed, once we turn from eliminating restraints on sexuality to thinking about positive recommendations for our sexual lives, it seems clear that, at least in our time and place, other kinds of sexual relationships often make sense.

Learning about sexuality and ourselves

Human sexual desire is not a natural force that is the product of our animal, lower nature. It is a human desire shaped by our ideals, our hopes, our desires, our very stance towards the world. And it is highly variable in nature. Thus sexuality is something that, like every other human practice, needs nurturing through education and experience. Traditionalists tell us that pre-marital sex is the product of a self-indulgent and sinful inability to control our lower desires. But it is far closer to the truth to say that in our time and place pre-marital sex is an essential part of our education, our attempt to learn who we are and what it means to be an embodied being. It is sexual experience and reflection on that experience that teaches us how to become comfortable with our bodies, how to enjoy ourselves sexually in a way that respects our own nature and inclinations. That same experience can help teach us the proper role of sexuality and other bodily desires in life and love. It can help us develop both the creativity and discipline necessary not just to have good sex but to forming committed, enduring relationships and families.

A time of experimentation and reflection is especially necessary in a world in which most men and women put off marriage until their late twenties or later; in which they take on the responsibility for finding their own path of work and love in life; and in which equality is central to our ideal of relationships and marriage. A time to learn who we are is critical given the freedom, individuality and autonomy that define life lives today, and the other goals we so cherish—finding work and relationships that challenge and excite us, that enable us to develop and grow, that enable us to contribute to the world around us, and that give us a secure place in which to raise our children. And given that we often change directions in life—taking on different tasks and roles and sometimes different partners—periods of experimentation and reflection may be necessary later in our lives as well.

It is not just a new attitude towards sexuality and the new emphasis on freedom, individuality and autonomy that has made sexual freedom a part of the education of so many young people these days. Feminism played as great or greater role in making this possible, in two ways.

First, feminism has had a dramatic impact on sexual relationship among young people. At their best—which unfortunately is not all the time—they no longer consist in aggressive men pursuing reticent women who put off any sexual relationship until presented with an engagement ring or wedding band. Instead, young men and women engage in sexual relationships while learning how to become not just romantic partners but friends with one another. This transformation is not yet complete and one often sees unfortunate instance of back sliding in which women suffer at the hands of men who still embrace dominator sexuality. But much has changed. And many of the practices of young people—such as what critics call the “hook-up culture”—that look worrying and exploitative from traditional point of view are better seen as young people finding ways to explore their sexuality while also learning how to develop friendships of various kinds. That young people put romance and love off for a time is not any more worrying than that they extend their education while putting off decisions about careers. Rather all of these changes are best seen as the result of new opportunities that enable young people to shape lives that realize aspirations that are truly their own.

Those freedoms and opportunities were especially hard won for women—and that is the second way feminism has dramatically changed our lives. Women who have the same economic opportunities and career aspirations as men have, like men, economic reasons to have sex responsibly and to postpone childbearing until their careers were on the way.  And just like men, women not need time to get their careers underway but to discover who they are and what they want in a partner.

Sex and love

I’ve argued that on the new understanding of sexuality I’m pointing to, we should give up many of the restraints on sexuality that characterized traditional views and encourage people to experiment with sexual and romantic lives in order to discover who they are and want to become.

But finally, I want to argue that the traditional view was right about something, sex is ultimately best when it is wrapped up in a committed relationship between two people who are deeply in love and married.

I’m not going to belabor this point here. In a piece, Gay Marriage and Polygamy, that defends marriage for members of the LGBT community while showing why that does not lead to the conclusion that we should accept polygamous marriage, I’ve explained how companionate marriage has become even more important in the contemporary world than it was in the past because it is central to the pursuit of individuality and autonomy. And in another essay I will be posting soon, Why I Don’t Cheat on My Wife, I explain why sexual pleasure and love mutual support one another.

While my view shares the ideal of sex within marriage with traditional ideas of sexuality, I’m not, of course, defending traditional marriage. Egalitarian, feminist marriage, in which a man and a woman or two men or two women define the roles both in and out of bed that make sense to them, is my ideal. And I would argue that it is even better if, though the partners in a sexual relationship and marriage find that different roles fit them most of the time, they are both open to exploring each other’s ways of being. (More on that on another occasion.)

As long our form of political and social life survives, I suspect that most human beings will pair up and pursue sexual pleasure in long term monogamous relationships and marriage. As I explain elsewhere marriage is a central good in our lives, not least because sexual pleasure is often greatest when sexual partners know each other well and are deeply in love. That is likely to be become more rather than less true if, under the influence of feminism, dominator sexuality plays a lesser role in our lives. But the difficulty of finding or sustaining all-encompassing love makes monogamy impossible or difficult for some people. And others will find that experimentation with sexuality is always a part of their lives, perhaps alongside or in conjunction with a long term committed relationship or marriage. Once we give up the traditionalist notion that the heavens, or at least the our political community, will fall if sexuality is not limited to marriage, there is less reason for us to be concerned about people finding their way to sexual relationships that make sense in their own lives. Marriage, with its unique combination of partners committed to one another and, most often, their children will survive, and perhaps will even prosper in a way it has not in the past, when it is a path that we choose to embrace rather than assume we will follow.

The new world works

The traditional response to the new world

Those who believe in the traditional understanding of sexuality and the rules for life that rest on it are horrified by the transformations of the last fifty years. And they quickly point to a variety of social ills to justify their horror—rising rates of teen age pregnancy, single motherhood, and divorce.

The trouble with this traditional response is that most of these ills are far more serious among people raised to hold traditional views than among those who are part of the new world I’ve described. That’s not to say that that people who really hold and live by traditional views don’t live fine, happy lives. I would imagine that many of them do.

The trouble is that the majority of people who are raised to believe traditional views don’t live up to them. How could they? To begin with, for all the reasons we have seen, in a world in which more and more education is need to attain a middle class life, and young men and women are trying to forge their own place in the world, traditional restrains on sexuality don’t make much sense.

Even if one accepts those traditional understanding of restraints and tries to live up to them, the external supports for a traditional life have collapsed. The traditional understanding may be fundamentally mistaken. But the traditionalists are at least right in this: in the contemporary world, it is very difficult for young men and women educated in traditional ideals to live up to them. And that’s especially true because our mass culture has been transformed much more by the sexual revolution than by feminism. New ideas about sexuality that are not moderated by feminism encourage young men to be more sexually aggressive than ever. And young women are more inclined to acknowledge their own sexual desires. The older reasons for women to avoid sex have more or less collapsed because contraception is available and pregnant, single women are less likely to be shunned and condemned. But the new reasons for women to avoid pregnancy—the hope for continued education and a career —have not taken hold, especially in areas where traditional ideas dominate and feminism is a dirty word. At the same time traditional ideas discourage honest reflection and communication among and between young men and women about sexuality. When young men and women are fully accepting of becoming sexual and plan for it together, they are more likely to plan for contraception. When, on the other hand, sex is the product of young men pushing young women to do something they both desire and don’t want to acknowledge desiring, it is more likely to occur without contraception.

The result is that the social ills associated with sexual freedom occur at far higher rates in the most traditional parts of the country, that is, in the Southern and Southwestern red states that overwhelmingly vote for conservatives, than they do in the East, Midwest, and Western blue states that vote for liberals The red states are those in which teen pregnancy rates are highest (32.38 per thousand white women between the ages of 15-19 in red states and 19.27 in blue states). They are the states with both the highest rates of single motherhood and in which men and women get married at a younger age (for women the average age of first marriage is 24.07 in red states and 25.86 in blue states.) There may be less shame at pre-marital sex and unmarried pregnancy but the shotgun behind the door still generates a fair number of marriages in the red states. And, in large part because people do marry younger, before they have had a chance to figure out who they are and what they want out of life, divorce rates are higher in these states as well (3.88 per 1000 in red states and 2.50 per thousand in blue states.)

Other social pathologies are found at higher rates in blue states as well. The murder rate is 4.42 per thousand in red states and 3.88 in blue states. The rate of forcible rape is 33.91 per thousand in red states and 27.02 in blue states.

Conservatives are keen to point out that one also finds a higher rate of abortion in the blue states (20.3 per thousand women) than red states (13.07 per thousand). This is true. It seems that the abortion rate is lower in red states for a number of reasons: abortion providers are often harder to find because there are more regulations and less public or private funding; more people are morally opposed to abortion; and early marriage is more likely to be accepted, or in some cases, demanded by the families of young pregnant women. It is not clear to what extent these three reasons are most important.

But while none of us like to see high abortion rates, those of us who don’t believe that abortion is murder are inclined to think that it is often a lesser evil than teen age motherhood or shotgun marriages that lead rapidly to divorce. And at any rate, abortion is not the main way that young single women are able to be sexually active while putting off child bearing. Most such women use contraception and turn to abortion only when it fails. Abortion is much more common among young women who are poorer and less educated and less likely to use contraception to begin with. And sixty percent of women who have abortions are already mothers. Their aim is not to put off child bearing but to deal with the problem of having a second or third child they cannot afford.

At any rate, the abortion rate in America is declining, and is declining faster in blue states than red states even as sexual behavior among young unmarried men and women changes little. This decline is likely to be the result of newer ways of thinking about sexuality that encourage sexual openness and responsibility among young men and women.

I should point out that one possible reason for the differences between red state and blue states is disparity in their income and wealth. Red states remain poorer than blue states both in terms of income and wealth. And many of the social ills I have discussed are closely related to poverty. However the differences are not so great as to explain all the differences in rate of teenage pregnancy, early marriage or divorce. And, to some extent, the causation may actually runs in the other way. Blue states may have higher incomes and are wealthier precisely because they give greater opportunities to women, both for education and in the employment market.

Conclusion

In the last few months, the 2012 presidential election has brought to the fore culture war issues about sexuality that had been submerged in our politics during the years when economic issues and the wars in Afghanistan and Iran dominated our national debates. For once, however, this wedge issue is working in favor of Democrats than Republicans. Partly that is because, due to questions concerning implementation of the Affordable Care Act and Rick Santorum’s unusually blunt defense of traditional ideas, we are debating contraception rather than abortion. But sexual issues are also working in our favor because of generational change. The majority of voters today were born during the baby boom or since. We baby boomers, and those who have come after us, have created a different world than the one our parents grew up in—a world of greater sexual freedom and, even more importantly, greater equality for women. Most of us have been living in this new world for all of our adult lives. And not only do we have no desire to go back to the future, we know that the present works. We know that our lives are enhanced by sexual freedom and the equality of women. And our experience teaches us that the autonomy, freedom, and self-determination we believe in are not only compatible with the traditional ideals of marriage, family and children, they actually support those ideals.

What I think would finally put the culture wars to an end is if we were even more straightforward in defending the new world we have created. We have stop being defensive about sexual freedom. We have to stop worrying about whether egalitarian marriage is problematic for our children. The only reason we worry about those things is that we haven’t quite gotten over the impact of the traditional picture of human nature and traditional ideas about sexuality. At some level we can’t escape the feeling that there is danger in giving up the old time religion with regard to sexuality.

But there is no danger in doing that. The old time religion is a false idol. Its picture of human nature and sexuality is not only deeply wrong but dangerous. To believe it is to accept a picture of humanity that has led men and women to become deeply alienated, not only from their own bodies but from the aspirations to freedom, wholeness and a connection to others which animate great love and great lives. To believe the old time religion is to accept the need for external restraints on our desires that are backstopped by religious and political authority rather than to accept responsibility for shaping our own lives.

The true religion teaches us that we are made in God’s image. And being made in God’s image we have the capacity to frame our own lives in accord with the deepest inclinations that God has given us—to sexual pleasure, to the equality between man and woman that sustains love, to providing the best to our children, and to making the world a better place for us all.

There is a just a little bit of truth in the criticism. But most of it is really just hogwash.

In an ideal world, as the city switched to the new system of setting property values that moved them up to reflect market values, the tax rate would simultaneously be adjusted downwards so that the total take from the real estate tax from one year to the next would be roughly the same. Since the new system is supposed to, and most likely will, give us fairer assessments, some people would pay more and other less. But the overall real estate taxes take in by the city would remain about the same.

But we don’t live in an ideal world. Because the property assessment system has been totally broken, the values placed on property for the purposes of the real estate tax have not gone up as the actual market values of those properties have gone up. There has been no city wide reassessment since 2004 and in response to protests other upwards reassessments have been rolled back.

This failure to capture rising real estate market values, along with the recession’s effect on overall tax returns, is why the city had to enact two temporary increases in the property tax rate in the last two years.

The result is that any new, fair assessment will capture some of those increases market values. One could argue that transparency and fairness demand the city should cut tax rates to the point that the total take from the real estate tax does not increase, either relative to last year, or to a few years ago before the temporary tax increases. But one could just as plausibly argue that if we had a more transparent and fairer system of assessment in the last ten years, the real estate tax would be bringing in a lot more money today without any tax rate increases.

Given the mess the Nutter administration was handed, determining the right answer in this case is, frankly, pretty arbitrary. Arguments from fairness or transparency cut in both directions. But in a city that is still suffering badly not just from the recession but from the right wing lunacy of Governor Corbett’s budgets, the Nutter administration’s decision to seek some additional tax revenues from the real estate tax makes a great deal of sense. Given the need in our schools, I’d actually go further than they have in seeking higher revenues from the real estate tax.

However one comes out on that issue, it would be nice if the critics of the Nutter administration were transparent as well. Some of those critics—Brett Mandel comes to mind—were great supporters of wage tax and business tax “reform,” that is reductions to the wage tax and especially to the gross receipts portion of the business tax. If you look back at the reports written to defend these cuts, you will see that the reformers kept saying that Philadelphia should look more like other cities and take in more money from taxes on immovable objects—land and buildings—and less from taxes on moveable objects—people and businesses. And they predicted that reductions in the wage and business tax would lead to higher property values and thus higher real estate tax receipts.

Given that back in the day these folks called for higher real estate tax receipts base on higher real estate values, it is somewhat disingenuous for them to be criticizing Michael Nutter for carrying out the policy they supported.

The process in getting to that policy has been a lot messier than anyone would have wanted. And because it is messy it’s not as transparent as most of us would like. But the Nutter administration is doing what the critics called for ten years ago. And especially since the critics haven’t put forward any other ideas for funding city services and our schools, the lack of transparency in the critics is, to my mind, far worse than the lack of transparency in the budget.

This is what I tell them: Two hundred years from now, when the historians write about the time of my life, the first, second, and third things they will discuss is the impact of feminism on ending three millennia of oppression of women. Compared to the changes on our lives wrought by feminism, the rise and fall of communism and the travails of social democracy are historical blips. I care deeply about economic inequality. But the central moral issue of our time is the status of women.

And that is what makes issues like abortion or even contraception hard. Some politicians who are otherwise progressive supporters of the rights of women are not with us on issues like contraception and abortion because of their commitment to the teachings of their church. Especially when it comes to abortion, some of them seem genuinely torn by competing religious and moral ideals.

But what we need to understand about these moral ideals is that the central issue on both sides of the abortion debate is the status of women. The religious opposition to abortion and contraception is not some free standing moral commitment disconnected from the moral status of women. Rather that religious opposition rests on opposition to equality for women.

The Catholic Church’s opposition to abortion and contraception doesn’t really rest on its claims about when life begins or about the nature of human sexuality. The Church seeks to embed its positions in the language of natural law. But its claims are not only unsound but inconsistent with the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas. The arguments of the Church—and other religious groups—and the appeal of those arguments both to religious leaders and to the men (and some women) who accept them is, whether they recognize it or not, based on and rooted in their fundamental opposition to equality for women.

So if there is moral conflict on issues like abortion and contraception, the reason is that feminism is still a live issue. Fifty years after the revival of feminism, many of us are still struggling with fully accepting women a truly equal to men and all that it means for our lives and public policy.

No one should be surprised by this. No one should expect three millennia of oppression to end easily or without a major struggle. We’re closer to the beginning than the end of that struggle. And while we are at this point, opponents of equality for women will continue to find ways to use dispute about many different as a means of delaying further progress or reversing the progress we’ve already made.

But that is why those who claim to be political or moral leaders have a responsibility to address the real issues that stand behind our disputes on abortion and contraception and not duck behind hand wringing about conflicting moral and religious ideals.

Equality for women is the fundamental moral issue of our time. And it takes moral courage to stand for it in every respect, especially when it means standing up to religious teachings and teachers who, at base, still reject it.

When we look back at this time, those who stood up for women will, like those who stood against slavery in the 19^th century, be seen as champions of enlightenment and human progress.

And those who found reasons to temporize, backslide, and compromise will be seen as people who couldn’t free themselves from limitations of their own time in order to point the way to the future

The Blunt Amendment allows employers and insurance companies to refuse to cover any health care service required under the new health care law if they object to it on the grounds of their “religious beliefs or moral convictions.” Under this amendment a business or insurance company could

•  Refuse to cover HIV / AIDS screening or counseling on the ground that the disease is the product of immoral activity, whether gay sex or intravenous drug use.
  
• Refuse to cover any illnesses that are the result of or have been exacerbated by smoking or drinking on the ground that these behaviors are contrary to their moral or religious beliefs.
  
• Refuse to cover maternity care for unmarried women on the grounds that sex is permissible only for married couples.
  
• Refuse to cover mental health care on the grounds that its religion teaches that psychiatric problems should be treated with prayer or other religious practices.

• Refuse to cover transfusions on the grounds that this medical procedure is prohibited by God.

There are, of course, people who, out of moral or religious conviction, hold all of these views.

The Blunt Amendment is so broadly written that if a businessman concludes that that the Affordable Care Act itself violates his conscience, he would be entitled to an exemption from all of its provisions.

As I’ve written before, the religious objections to the HHS requirement that insurance companies required to contraceptives as part of its package of free preventive care, is based on a false understanding of the First Amendment guarantee of the religious freedom.

The Blunt Amendment is also based on this false theory. But goes so far in offering exemptions to the Affordable Car Act that it’s true purpose is clear: not to protect our freedom but to kill health care reform and especially health care that serves women.

So let’s get clear about the dispute over the administration’s decision that contraception should be covered free of charge by all employer provided health insurance plans.

This issue is not about freedom of religion. It is about providing all women with access to effective and safest contraception. That is important to the health of women and their children, to insuring equality for women, and to the family.

The rule is good for the health of women, which is why it was called for by the non-partisan medical organization that advised the administration. When pregnancies are unplanned, women are less likely to get prenatal care and they and their children are less healthy. Women and children are also healthier when pregnancies are spaced out.

There rule is good for the equality of women, which is undermined when women are not in control of their fertility.

The rule is good for our families. Unplanned pregnancy is a leading cause of divorce.

And the rule is good for reducing the half of unplanned pregnancies that are aborted.

The Catholic Church has claimed, however, that it violates our freedom of religion if any business or organization—not just a Catholic one—is required to offer health insurance that covers abortion and has a moral objection to such insurance.

But stop and think and you will see that this claim makes no sense.

What does rule require? It doesn’t require that any one to use contraception or encourage others to do so. It doesn’t require anyone to pay for contraception. It doesn’t really require institutions or businesses to pay for health insurance that covers contraception, since health insurance is a form of employee compensation that ultimately is paid for by the employees. It doesn’t require anyone to pay more for health insurance since the cost of contraception is much less than that of pre-natal care, delivery, and care for newborns.

It just requires businesses and other organizations to arrange for contraception to be included in the health care plans offered by their insurance company. Yes, that did mean that, under the initial rule, institutions or people morally object to contraception will have to ask their insurance company to cover it. Under the new rule proposed on Friday, the government will require insurance companies to cover contraception. This minor change is possible because contraception reduces health care costs.

The new rule—which is really just an accounting change—has satisfied some Catholic leaders. It may not assuage the Bishops. But their claim was not in keeping with the reality of the world we live in , in which we often make arrangement or pay a small amount to support some policy to which we have religious objection.

If you have a religious objection to a war, you still have to pay taxes that support it. If you have a moral objection to imprisoning people for possessing marijuana, you still have to pay taxes to support that.

The US, unlike most other countries, provides health insurance through employers. Thus the only way for us to democratically decide that all women should have access to contraception is to regulate what those employers or insurers do. Indeed, employer based insurance receives a tax subsidy, so all of us have already been contributing a small amount every health insurance plan that now covers contraception.

Freedom of religion means we have a right to practice our religion. It does not mean that any individual who has a religious objection to some government policy has the right to refuse to pay taxes or take part in it. That is anarchy not freedom.

No church has ever condemned an individual for paying taxes that support government actions it thinks are wrong or for providing insurance that covers contraception.

Indeed, the President’s policy has mostly been in place since 2000 under an EEOC rule. Twenty eight states have a broader rule. Under these rules Catholic hospitals and universities such as the Jesuit University of Scranton offer health insurance plans that cover contraception. Neither the Catholic Church nor Republicans ever objected to them.

And that means that this dispute is really about two issues. It is about guaranteeing the availability of safe and effective contraception to all women. And it is about politics.

This dispute arose because the Bishops of a Church that opposed health care reform are using it to punish the Obama administration. And it is staying alive because cynical and dishonest Republicans are exploiting it

Last weekend I appeared on a panel at the PA Progressive Summit called Don’t Stop Believing: Managing Activism Fatigue. The panel was created by three psychologists who thought that it would helpful for activists to get some advice about managing the stress, anxiety, and  exhaustion that often leads to burnout. I was asked to comment on their advice, based on my experience as an organizer. My remarks were well received so I’ve decided to write up my notes. I won’t try to present the ideas of my fellow panelists. They were very good but I don’t think I could do them justice. Instead will present the concrete recommendations I gave activists based on my own experience.

I was drafted to be on the panel in part under false pretense. After ten years as an political activist, organizer and sometime candidate—the first six of which I did as a volunteer while holding a teaching position at Temple—I decided to take some time off in July. I did this not because I was burned out, but because I had some ideas for books which I had put off writing for a number of years and the ending of one job seemed like a good time to get them done.

But since one of the books I’m writing is on my work on the HCAN and campaigns, I was eager to have this opportunity to reflect on the personal side of political activism and share some of my experiences—some of which go back to work I did forty years ago in my teens and twenties (especially that which I talk about at the end of this piece).

Learning what hard work is: the HCAN and other campaigns

Most of what I write here is based on my experience in the Health Care for American Now campaign—which was supposed to last about nine months to a year but which continued for 21 months. It went on so much longer than expected that we called it the Campaign That Would Never End and borrowed Shari Lewis’s tune to sing about it.

The HCAN campaign was the most intense work I’ve ever done. It was harder than writing a doctoral dissertation, partly because I spent a very long time completing a long thesis and partly because I can’t write more than five or six hours a day before my brain turns to mush. However I can do organizing work twelve to fifteen hours a day before collapsing because it comes in bursts of changing and mostly very short term activity—writing a memo or email or making phone call, etc.

The HCAN campaign was even more intense than the two primary campaigns I had run in, for State Representative in 2004 and City Council in 2007. Those were exhausting efforts. In both of them, I worked long hours seven days a week and with very little sleep. But they were each about four and half months long. The HCAN campaign was even harder because it was so much longer and because we never knew when it would be over.

And the intensity kept getting ratcheted up. I recall talking about this over lunch with our national field director Margarida Jorge in Washington in late October 2009. We had just come off a period in which we were doing major events every two weeks around Pennsylvania. At one of them, I had been arrested with four other members of HCAN for blocking the door to CIGNA Insurance. We joked about how much harder we were working at that point than earlier in the year when, in comparison, it felt like were slacking off. Of course, earlier in the year HCAN held a major national rally to which I had helped bring 2000 Pennsylvanians. The day of that event I had worked from 3 am when the first bus left Pennsylvania to 9 pm when we finally found the disabled man who had wandered away from his group and missed the bus home. I made or received 309 phone calls that exhilarating day. But looking back it seemed like an easy day compared to what we were doing in October.

What enabled all of us in Washington and Pennsylvania to work as hard as we did during the HCAN campaign was the enormous responsibility we felt to our goal, the pressure we were under to keep pace with the fast moving legislative action in Washington, and the adrenalin that the excitement of the moment and the daily deadlines for action generated within us.

All that pressure, responsibility, excitement, and adrenalin, however, created the potential for burnout. Some of us on the campaign did get burned out. There were a few times when I asked and then ordered staff members or volunteers to take some time off. But while I was exhausted often, I never came close to close to being burned out. In fact, one morning, my wife looked at me at breakfast and seeing how energized I was and said, “You really like the stress, don’t you.”

The truth was that I usually did like it. The HCAN campaign was a difficult but exciting time for me. So what I want to talk about is how I avoided burnout during it (and during the other high intensity political work I’ve done). Because I’m older than many activists and have a wife and daughter—and since families share in the burden of campaigns—I also want to talk about how I managed to keep my family together during these intense times.

Most of what I write below is not just advice about how to sustain oneself emotionally as an organizer and activist but also about how to be better at what you do. That’s not a coincidence. You can’t do a good job as an organizer when you are a burned out emotional wrecks, after all. And if you are more effective at your work, the less ess stressful and exhausting you will find it.

You need to talk

Activists and campaigners need time to talk. A lot of time. We need to go over the events of the day and process them both emotionally and intellectually. We have to express and get validation for the anger and frustration we have. We need to share the joys of the work we do. We test our ideas and our reactions to what others are doing against the advice of others. Sometimes we just need support. More often, we need constructive criticism.

Your family can help with this. But there is a limit to what they can do. For one thing your spouse or partner may not know enough about what you do to be really helpful. Or he or she may be so supportive that you can’t get the critical advice you need.

Or, even worse, your spouse or partner may have become cynical about politics and activism, in part from hearing you talk about all the terrible stuff you see every day. You are probably inured to all that awfulness. But your spouse or partner won’t be both because he or she wants to protect you and because you are more likely to share the misery rather than the joy of organizing with them.

And, at any rate, your family has other, more important things to talk to you about, especially if you have been working very hard and have not been with them as much as usual. They need to talk with you about problems at school and leaky faucets; about what to make for dinner tomorrow and who is going to pick up the groceries; about how to celebrate some event and where to take a summer vacation. You’ve been missing some of those discussions and it’s going to take a lot of energy to catch up. So you don’t want to interrupt them by focusing just on your campaign.

So what you really need to do is spend some downtime with your co-workers. Of course, you need to get home, too. But you’ll be more a part of your family if have some social time with your co-workers to talk about what you need to talk about to stay sane and be effective in your campaign.

When you are running a state wide campaign, like I was in HCAN, that’s hard to do. Here are two suggestions: First, not every moment of every conference call has to be focused on getting things done.  Take some time at the beginning and end to let off steam. And second, get out in the field and spend some time with your organizers. You need to do that any way, because you need to see them in action, you need to see the territory they work in, and you need to meet with their volunteers and coalition partners. Doing this will also give you the social time you need with your staff and associates. And it will help build up a reserve of understanding and trust for when times get tough.

Get some perspective

When you are talking about the campaign with both your staff and family, try to remember this important adage: The campaign is never going as well as you think it is going when it is going well and it is never going as badly as you think it is when it is going badly.

Most campaigns, both in electoral and issue advocacy work, are roller coasters. If you allow yourself to take an emotional ride up and down every time you have a minor victory or loss, you will wear yourself out.

You will also lose the perspective that you need to do your job well. If you are blissed out by success, you won’t see the next dangerous curve ahead. If you are depressed by failure, you won’t have the optimism or energy to take advantage of the opportunities that appear before you.

Appreciate and love what you are doing

One way to stay on an even keel is to focus not on the whole campaign all the time, but to focus on the details. Loving your work is, anyway, all about loving each and every task you do. As Nabokov said, we have to caress the details in order to find joy in what we read, think, or do.

My wife was right that I liked the stress. But that was not because I love being nervous and worried but because I love the energy I have when I’m trying to meet the challenges that come every day. I try to find some pleasure in each every momentary success. And I try to find the challenge in each and every momentary failure. (I’ve written about this before in Escaping Gravity.)

There is a story of Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Treasurer, Henry Morgenthau wandering into the Oval Office from a side door as FDR was saying goodbye to some politicians he had just successfully engaged in some project. Morgenthau saw a broad but momentary grin of delight come over Roosevelt’s face as he took some pleasure in that interaction. Then, as FDR saw Morgenthau, he covered it up.

FDR was enjoying his own success at, let’s be frank, manipulating a particular situation to his own advantage. There’s nothing wrong with taking a little pleasure in making something happen that otherwise wouldn’t have happened without your work. In fact it’s necessary to finding joy in your work.

The other way to love what you are doing is to remind yourself of the larger purpose of your work. Organizers always talk about how we are motivated by the sufferings we are trying to eradicate and the justice we are trying to bring to the world. That had better be true if you are going to survive long in this work. Engage with the people you are trying to help and organize. Learn their stories and feel their pain. Remind yourself of them. And take a moment or two every day to keep in mind the connection between what you do and the needs and justice you try to serve as well as the broader currents that we are riding as we try create a better world.

I’ve written before about how politics can be a spiritual quest. I think it must be if we are to have the energy to do this difficult work. And you find the spiritual element in advocacy in both places I’ve mentioned: in the large purposes to which we are connected and in the details of our action. Cherish them both.

Don’t stress about what you can’t control

It’s very hard to focus on the details that are exciting or interesting to us or to think about our place in the movement for justice if we are worrying all the time about things we can’t control. There is no joy to be found in trying to solve unsolvable problems or in fretting about our inability to do so.

So figure out what you can and can’t control and focus on the former. Don’t worry about the latter.

Often times we think we can control some of the things closest to us when, in fact, we can’t. We think we should be able to get our coalition partners to take on the share of the work to which they have agreed. Or we think that our staff members should be able to carry out the tasks we give them just as we had we would have done. And we are disappointed when things don’t work out they way we would like.

Sometimes we focus on the failures of our partners or staff members because they are so close to us that we think we should be able to get them to do what we want. The politicians that are more distant are, of course, even harder to control. But it is our frustration with the those politicians, and our sense of being out of control, that leads us to focus obsessively on keeping control of those nearby.

It’s important to remember that organizations and people are limited. Organizations, for reasons of their own, sometimes can’t carry out every task that a coalition wants them to do. And individuals are better at some things than others. It’s important to help your organizational partners to play the most effective role they can in a campaign. And it’s also important to get staff members and volunteers to do the best and most important work they are capable of doing. Much of the work of organizing is in coalition building and in training, motivating and holding staff members accountable.

But there are limits to what you can do. Some things won’t get done as you want them done. So you are most likely to be effective and happy with your coalition partners and your staff and volunteers if you ask them to do what they want to do and are what they are good at doing. Let organizations and staff / volunteers contribute to your broader work in a way that suits them.

Having realistic expectations of coalition partners and staff and loosening our control over them will help you keep your frustrations in check. It will help you get more and better work out of them. And it may even lead them to take on more responsibility and work with more creativity and passion.

If, on the other hand, an organization or staff member or volunteer creates too many problems and disappoints you too often, don’t try to change them. Just move on without them.

An HCAN coalition partner had a volunteer who drove me and everyone else crazy. The less he knew, the more he talked and the more insistent he became. In two or three weeks of working with this person on events it was clear that our relationship was not going to work out. But I couldn’t just fire him because he was a volunteer working with a national activist group. (That’s always the big problem with volunteers: you can’t fire them.)

So I went to a DC staff member of the activist group and said please, find me someone else. He understood the problem and the annoying person was not on the next conference call. No one said anything on line but a few people called me after the call and said, “Is he gone? Are you sure?” They were very grateful that I pulled the plug on him.

Recognize that sometimes you are working with the wrong people, not necessarily because they are not good and effective organizers but because they can’t or won’t do what you need someone to do in the place you have them. Or maybe they just don’t click with you and others. Maybe it’s your own limitations that cause the problem. But if you are running a campaign you can’t fire yourself. So don’t be afraid to sever those relationships. And don’t wait until you are boiling in anger before you sever them or do so in a way that expresses hostility. Try to address the issue honestly, listen to what they have to say, and then if you can’t fix the problem, move on without them.

Riding the movement

The last two points—not stressing about what you can’t control and loving what you are doing by seeing its place in a larger movement for justice, come together for me in this way: sometimes we just have to ride the movement we are on.

I’ve written about this at length elsewhere and won’t belabor the point here. But I do want to say that sometimes activists have to be a little more receptive or passive. When we are in the midst of an ongoing campaign, especially one in which we have mobilized large numbers of activists and volunteers, we just have to give up some control and the let the passion and energy we have helped create take its course.

That doesn’t mean you stop trying to plan events and actions that make the most sense to you. But you have to acknowledge—and be grateful for—a movement and energy that you can’t wholly control. Movements of this kind are rare—think of the Occupy Movement— sometime happen at the least expected times and with little planning. They can be encouraged and directed but can’t be controlled. If you try to control them, you may kill them. So just ride them and be glad if they are pointing to a better world.

Prepare for the down times Or take time off

The hardest moments I have as an organizer are the mornings when I don’t have an immediate task in front of me. Often they are on the days after a major event which has been absorbing all my energy for a few days or a week or two.

I often look forward to those days because they will give me a chance to catch up on all the tasks I’ve had to put aside while focused on the immediate tasks before me.

But, when I actually get to them, I’m usually exhausted. And without the adrenalin rush of a deadline to get me going, I simply get anxious because I don’t know what to do first.

Of course, the first think I might do is some planning about priorities. The trouble, however, is that planning is among the most anxiety producing parts of our work. Going over the list of things tiy wants to accomplish but hasn’t had time to do gives everyone, not just Jews, shpilkes. Planning is not what you want to do when you are exhausted.

There are two possible solutions.

The first is to make sure you make regular time for planning so that when you come to one of these days, you have something on your list to which you can attend.

The second is to take the day off. When else are you going to play hooky, when you have an event two days away? It’s far better to take the day off and have some fun, than it is to spend the day avoiding work because you don’t know what to do first and don’t really want to think about it. If you spend the day surfing the web you are guaranteed to feel awful at the end of it.

It took me about ten months before I learned this lesson on the HCAN campaign. When the light bulb went off I made a resolution. Whenever I had one of these days I’d pick up my kid from school and do something fun with her. I never felt guilty taking time off from work if I was with her.

By the way, it’s generally a good idea to take a day or part of a day off when work isn’t going well. Sometimes we just are not on our game. I have a friend who is a brilliant wood worker. He once told that when he is working on a difficult job, especially when it involves expensive veneers, he would get up in the morning and work on another project for an hour. He wanted to figure out if “I’m a wood worker or a klutz today.” And if he was a klutz, he took the day off. Doing advocacy work requires us to be closely attentive to the goals, interests and moods of others. Sometimes we are just not up to it. So, on days when I think I’m likely to be an interpersonal klutz, I do paperwork or planning instead of talking to people. Similarly on days when I find writing difficult, I hit the phones. And when nothing is going well, which happens from time to time, I just take the rest of the day off.

Setting priorities

Having mentioned that one way to deal with those days when you don’t have something that needs your immediate attention is to make time for planning and priority setting, let me say a bit more about how doing so contributes to your emotional well-being and effectiveness as an organizer.

There is always far more that we activists could be doing than we have time or energy to do. If you evaluate yourself in terms of how well you are doing by looking at your list of everything you would like to do, you will always be disappointed in yourself and your campaign. Having clear and realistic priorities enables you to sustain your energy and confidence by meeting the most important goals. And, of course, it also helps you be a more effective organizer by because you figure out how to sensibly spend your limited time and energy.

Priority setting also helps you avoid spending too much time on the tasks you like as opposed to those you need to do. Most activism and organizing involves work that focuses on moving some political program and work that focuses on maintaining the organization by which I mean administrative tasks like payroll and reporting, organizational maintenance tasks like recruiting and supporting board members and staff and, of course, fund raising. All of us like one set of tasks more than the others. And most of us dislike one of the most important tasks, fund raising.

So in the process of setting priorities, it is important to take three additional steps. One is to set measurable benchmarks that help you make sure you don’t let some of the critical tasks you don’t like slip by. For example, when I was responsible for fund raising for an organization, I had a minimum quota of fundraising calls I made every single day.

Second, if there are some tasks you don’t like or don’t enjoy, then find staff members who are especially good at them and delegate the work to them. I really hate filing reports—financial reports and work reports to the organizations that support my work. So when I ran an organization for which these reports were important I found a great, highly organized person to do them for me.

The third thing you can sometimes do is find creative ways to work around the need to do some of the work you hate. The national HCAN campaign required weekly reports and I’m a little embarrassed to say that I never filed one of them. To her credit, Margarida Jorge, the field manager at HCAN once told me that she just couldn’t hassle me about that because we were doing everything she wanted us to do and more.

But I also found a work around that enabled me to give Margarida what she absolutely needed from me. Those reports were, I realized, important for two reasons—to make sure that  HCAN contracted partners were doing the work were being paid to do and so that the national HCAN staff could report to their funders, board, coalition allies and, at time the Democratic leadership in Congress, about our work. Since a critical part of our plan to sustain our activists during the long campaign was to use blog posts and emails to show that they were part of a large and coordinated effort, I was pretty assiduous about documenting our work with text, photos, and video. So I simply sent those blog posts to Margarida and she had what she absolutely needed from us. (She certainly was never going to get a time sheet from me!)

Setting priorities can also help with another problem—limiting the demands of the national campaigns and other partners who support you. Sometimes those demands are unreasonable or conflicting. I’ve done work for national organizations that simply demanded far more out of me and my team than they deserved given the limited support they were giving us.

I’ve also worked for an organization that funded my work but also constantly made conflicting demands on me. It was an organization involved in a number of different issue campaign some in partnership with other groups and some that it had initiated itself. The organization had serious problems prioritizing its work and would constantly take up new projects and drop or modify others without much warning. That meant that it made conflicting and changing demands on me and my staff, demands that sometimes came from different people in the national organization. So my attempt to set priorities for myself was also a way to manage the conflicting demands of our funder. I shared my priorities with our funder in part to force them to get their own priorities in order. It worked for a time but when I found that the funder disorganization was leading them to ignore our agreements, I decided to disentangle myself from them.

Avoid anxiety transfer

Setting priorities, then, is critical to being a more effective activist and also a way to deal with the anxiety that arises from being overwhelmed by all that one might do.

While I’m on the subject of anxiety, let me warn you about a certain kind of person you meet too often in the activist world: someone who is so anxious that their anxiety is contagious. These people have two annoying habits.

One is to demand that other people rise to their level of anxiety. When there is a problem they get excited. They raise their voices and speak in a pressured way. And if other people around them aren’t as excited they think no one is taking them seriously. So they get even more excited.

This is a real problem for me, personally. When faced with a serious difficulty, my first inclination is the exact opposite. I get cooler and try to focus analytically not emotionally on the problem at hand. Of course, that drives the anxiety prone folks bonkers because they don’t think I’m taking them seriously.

The second thing these folks do is engage in anxiety transfer. They find a time to go through all the things that worry them so that they can relieve their own anxiety. In the process, though, they give it to someone else.

I once had a superior who would call me every Friday afternoon and talk to me for two hours. We’d go over everything on our list for that week. And I mean everything, from the high priority items to the low ones. Even if I had had a good week, and gotten all of the high priority items done, by the end of the conversation I was depressed about all low priority things I hadn’t gotten to and about all that remained undone.

This was a crazy exercise. What’s the point of setting priorities every week if we don’t evaluate the week in terms of those priorities? And what do we accomplish by making our subordinates feel bad at the end of every week. Well, my supervisor did accomplish one thing: She transferred her anxiety to me. She went off and had a nice Friday evening while I went home to my wife and daughter miserable and depressed.

When I realized that I couldn’t get this behavior to stop I decided that I needed to find the most graceful way out of this impossible position.

Delegating, to and from

I’ve already talked about how delegating is critical to dealing with the pressures of activism. But lots of us have trouble delegating. There are two different reasons for this. Some of us are control freaks. We simply don’t trust others to do a task as well as we can. Others of us have trouble asking people for help.

I’m not a control freak but if I were I’d try to get all the help I could in overcoming it. Advocacy and electoral campaigns will kill you if try to do everything yourself. My sense is that the inability of control freaks to trust other people is a deep rooted problem that affects their lives in all respects not just their work.

If you have control freak tendencies but not the full blown syndrome, then with a little self-awareness, it’s possible to overcome it. Sometimes this tendency is the result of short term thinking: It can take more time to teach someone how to do something than to do it yourself. But if you teach someone once, they’ll be able to take on that task and related ones in the future.  Learn how to delegate and trust other by spending some time to think through what you want them to do and by giving them explicit instructions. When they succeed, you’ll build up some trust in them. You will probably find you can give less explicit instructions, especially if you make yourself available to take their questions. And you will also find out that giving your subordinates greater leeway encourages them to do their work with more energy and creativity.

My problem in working with staff is that I don’t like asking people to do things. Knowing this, I try to remind myself to ask. And I compensate by finding people to work with who are self-motivated. Also I create situations in which they will volunteer to take on tasks. For example, rather than set out everything that needs to be done on a project I’ll leave this up to discussion and when people point out a critical task I’ll ask them if they can cover it.

What if the shoe is on the other foot? Working under someone who is a control freak or has such tendencies can be even more anxiety producing and dispiriting than being one yourself.

I once worked for someone who had control freak tendencies. I  was not happy at first because nothing I did seemed to satisfy her. I slowly figured out how to overcome her trust issues. When I took on a task for her I wrote out elaborate plans. I made sure to ask her a lot of questions. I tried to anticipate what she might worry about on a project and told her how I was dealing with it. I did good work. And I wrote long reports about what I did. Pretty soon she got tired of all my planning and reporting and just wanted me to do the work. She had gained confidence in me not just by my doing good work but my showing her that I could think about the projects she wanted me to do as she would do them.

And, of course, one by-product of this process was that, as I learned to anticipate her concerns and questions I became a much better organizer. The woman I worked for was very smart, very experienced, and extremely good at our work. So I took what might have been difficult relationship and made it a positive one.

Real human interaction

Let’s be honest, to a large extent activism involves treating other people instrumentally, that is, getting them to do things for the campaign you are on, which means for you. We spend our days inspiring, asking, cajoling, and demanding that people to do things. We are constantly looking for how we can influence others either directly or indirectly. Even when we think about people who are not our immediate concern, we may focus on how we can use them to get someone else to do something.

This is not the nicest way to treat other people. Indeed it can make us callous and uncaring about others. And that can lead us to neglect the importance of real human interaction to our lives and souls.

We can also treat ourselves instrumentally as well. I’ll never forget the first time I was comfortable enough in doing a campaign event or in making speech that I could almost step outside myself and observe the impact I was having on others. That’s not an entirely bad thing since self-observation can lead one to improve one’s performance and, as I pointed out above, there is some pleasure to be found in seeing ourselves do a good job. But if you look at yourself mostly as an instrument for accomplishing your purposes in a campaign, the emotion you bring to that activity will eventually be false. (Look at Mitt Romney if you want to see a good example of that!) Everyone will see that you are insincere. And you will lose your ability to find real joy in your activity or to respond to the emotions of the people with whom you are working.

So it is critical to make sure you don’t forget what real human interaction is, that is, what it is to simply share your time, ideas, and experiences with another human being for the sheer joy of that interaction and nothing else.

That’s why when I’m doing organizing work I try to make time each and every day for my family or with friends. I try never to miss dinner with my family and I try to spend some time doing fun things with them a few times a week—going out to dinner, taking a walk, visiting a museum or seeing a movie or play. (Movies are a bit of a problem. During the HCAN campaign I went out to dinner and saw a movie with my wife and daughter almost every Friday. But I slept through large parts of those movies.) Especially if you are absent a lot during an intense campaign, your family is going to use this time for domestic problem solving and planning. As I said above, you need to respect that. But you should also help your family understand that you need time just relax and be with them.

Work and family so dominate our lives these days that sometimes we forget friendship is central to a good life as well. We need people who are not involved in our projects, whether they are political or domestic, with whom we can talk about our lives in a more distanced way. So I try to find time every day or so to spend an hour or two with a friend, over a coffee or drink. Often they are political folk who are not on our campaign and with whom I can get a bit of a reality check about some of my concerns. But I try to steer our conversations away work and, instead, try to reflect with them about our lives and the world around us.

A note on campaign sex

Sex is one of the best ways we have of making real human contact with others and, especially. our romantic partners and spouses. And that’s one of at least three different reasons that intense political activism tends to make us hornier than we would otherwise be. A second reason is that sex is a great way to seek relief from the anxiety of campaigns because it is relaxing, pleasurable and thus a wonderful distraction from the problems of the day. Third, the high levels of adrenalin that comes with engagement in an intense campaign directly heightens sexual desire.

Sometimes the heightened sexual desire that comes from intense political activity is in conflict with the exhaustion that also comes with intense political activity. It doesn’t take much creativity, though, to figure out how to deal with it. Morning sex is a great way to start a day of political activity. And, if you and your partner can manage it, taking off in the middle of the afternoon is a good way of sustain your energy for a long day of organizing.

But, as good as sex can be for us, electoral and issue advocacy campaigns can have a strange or distorting effect on our sex lives. So it’s worth taking a moment to understand how that happens and how to deal with it.

One problem is that activism can leave us so hopped up that campaign sex is faster and more frenzied than non-campaign sex. That can make it intense and fun. But remember that if your spouse or partner is not on the campaign, he or she might not appreciate that kind of sex all the time. Instead he or she will see it as pressured and impersonal. Quickies have their place. But you and your partner will be more relaxed and have more fun if you remember to take your time, appreciate the moment, and draw it out.

Another, more serious issue, is that that horny people working closely together on campaigns are going to be attracted to each other. And, people who have been spending most of their time treating each other instrumentally can take that same attitude into their sexual relationships.

A mutual attraction is, by and large, a good thing if you don’t have another relationship and if you recognize that an attraction during a campaign may not last beyond it. But it can also lead us to engage in sexual relationships that are ultimately disappointing or that can undermine families or long term partnerships.

So if you are single, don’t let a fling generate expectations about a long term relationship. Sometimes that happens, but it is more likely to happen—and you are less likely to get hurt if it doesn’t—if you are honest with yourself and your partner about what has brought you together during a campaign.

If you are married or partnered, take your new found enthusiasm for sex home with you. It’s the least you can do for a partner who is probably suffering from your absence and inattention. That’s true even if you have an open relationship—a campaign that is taking up so much of your life is not the time or place to be exploring the boundaries of open relationships.

If you are single, don’t hit on married people unless you are sure that the person is in an open relationship and don’t do it at all if you are in the same city as your potential partner’s spouse!

And whether you are single, partnered or married, be aware that you are dealing with another human being not someone who is there to comfort you. Campaign sex is much better for your body and soul if it really is a human not an instrumental encounter.