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October 10, 2004
The results of the federal election have depressed me. The hegemony of social conservatism is going to continue for quite some time.
It is all about families. Traditional families. Christian families. Heterosexual families. Families standing on suburban lawns behind those famous white picket fences.
What about lefty non-Christian (secular) singles or couples? What happens to those living in the inner city in apartments?
They become exiles on main street says Chris Shiel over at Back Pages.
That takes us back to the 1970s, to rock'n roll, Cocksucker Blues and heavy drug use. The documentary by Robert Frank refers to anarchy, drug dealers, freaks and crazy people left over from the Sixties, all defiant and distorted; freaks hanging out in dark and hidden places on Route 66; the disenfranchised lonely people barely getting by, disconnected, and insecure; and the despair and loneliness of life on the road.
 The photo by Robert Frank for Exiles on Main Street is linked to the freaks looking for the American dream and the the film of the band on tour.
On Route 66 a sadness can be found in the forlorn looks of dime store waitresses, funeral attendees, and human faces rendered unrecognizable in the glare of jukeboxes in a landscape of people and places absent of hope and promise.
And not only on Route 66 as mapped by Robert Frank in The Americans in the 1950s. A more contemporary image.
Bruce Davidson, from the series Central Park
In contrast, the images of traditional families are everywhere these days and they are associated with a pro-family agenda. That agenda says that too many taboos were lifted in the 1960s. They need to be firmly reimposed.
What taboos needs to be firmly imposed by this moral politics? Try this image over at Creativity Machine.
Here is my stab. The taboos refer to the reimposition of anti-censorship laws. It is held that violence and "obscene material" in videos and the internet leads to child pornography. 'They' also addresses the breakdown in community values (caring, sharing and kindness) by including religious values in the political debate.
The big taboos are the sexual ones. The family is about marriage not sex with whoever you want when you. It means sexual abstinence (as a form of birth control and prevention of sexual diseases); no to condoms; and no to abortion if the families teenage daughter gets pregnant.
Another taboo is no drugs. Another is no to homosexuality and gay marriage. It is not family friendly you see.
What the taboos presuppose is a conservative nation: a society in which economic individualism thrives, we can make tons of money in the private sector plus the hegemony of old-fashioned social values and maintaining the nation's traditional heritage. A conservative nation is one in which religious values say it is good to make lots of money.
Of course, making a lot of money in a free market implies a consumer society with a visual culture of sexual advertising to move the product. That market culture undermines the conservative anti-sex values and Judaic Christian traditions.
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Random post by f@cked non lib voter
Fuck you and the horse you rode in on!