Originally appeared November 28, 2001, in the Chicago Free Press.
In the December Atlantic Monthly, social critic David Brooks explores the similarities and differences between "blue" and "red" America - differences between the liberal, cosmopolitan, coastal areas that typically voted for Al Gore in the 2000 election and the more conservative, community-values oriented "heartland" regions that mostly voted for George Bush.
Brooks not only failed to find any deep cultural divide between the two regions, he also manages to counter a number of common stereotypes about people in the "red," Bush areas held by people who live in the "blue" areas - where most Atlantic Monthly readers live.
For all its emphasis on religious observance and the value of community, Brooks notes that the towns he visited have a lot of tattoo parlors as well as churches. Softball players go to bars to drink after a game. Divorce is tolerated more than it used to be. Teenagers drive recklessly, young women hang around pool halls and Prozac use is common.
Nor is that all. No doubt recalling sociologist Alan Wolfe's claim a couple of years ago that Americans were becoming more accepting of personal differences except for homosexuality, Brooks made specific inquiries about that.
"The local college has a gay-and-lesbian group," Brooks writes. "One conservative clergyman I spoke with estimated that 10 percent of his congregants are gay. He believes that church is the place where one should be able to leave the controversy surrounding this sort of issue behind. Another described how his congregation united behind a young man who was dying of AIDS."
A Pentecostal minister Brooks interviewed said his father, also a minister, routinely preached against television, smoking, provocative dress, and divorce. "But now," Brooks relates, the minister says he himself "would never dream of telling people how to live."
"For one thing, his congregants wouldn't defer. And he is in no rush to condemn others. 'I don't think preaching against homosexuality is what you should do,' he told me. 'A positive message works better.'"
The key to understanding what is different about life in smaller communities is to see it as reflecting not an "ideological" conservatism but a "temperamental" conservatism: "People place tremendous value on being agreeable, civil, and kind. ... They are hesitant to stir one another's passions. ... They work hard to reinforce community bonds."
One important reason is that people do not want to offend other people they will inevitably be running into and dealing with in the future. The editor of one newspaper told Brooks, "We would never take a stance on gun control or abortion." Regarding abortion, another editor said, "It would simply be uncivil to thrust such a raw disagreement in people's faces."
This is a different stance toward living than most of us are accustomed to. In large cities, where the gay movement has its primary locus, people know one another far less, have less reason to trust one another and so fall back on trying to gain acceptance or victory by passing laws.
So much of our participation in public life has involved holding marches and demonstrations, complaining about grievances. Call it "the politics of yelling." At some point it all begins to feel a bit uncivil but there seems little alternative.
In smaller towns where social linkages are far more numerous and robust, difference seemed to be, if not quite accepted, at least accommodated, so long as no one makes a big deal about them. You may well be treated equally so long as you do not demand to be treated equally. These things are managed instead by personal contacts and social pressure.
Bob and Phil who move from the city to run a bed and breakfast, will in due course be accepted as neighbors so long as they mow their yard, go to church together, play softball with the volunteer fire department, make plum cakes for the Christmas bake sale, play horseshoes at the annual Kiwanis "Family Day" picnic. You become part of the community by participating amiably and usefully.
But it is worth keeping in mind that the quietly tolerant attitudes Brooks found do represent a change. Gay men or lesbians are not regularly harassed or as they might have been in the past. And doubtless this is due largely to the aggressive gay visibility in large cities which in turn influenced the mass media: television programs with gay characters, news coverage about gays and AIDS, and so forth.
The "red" areas still have obvious disadvantages. They do not sound like easy places to "come out" or achieve a healthy gay self-understanding, nor likely places to find a partner. Hostility and misunderstanding probably linger especially among younger males. For many of us, such a subdued, small town, near communitarian environment would feel repressive, stultifying.
But tastes differ. As the recent census figures suggest, some couples, especially lesbian couples, who no longer need or want the "meet market" of the big cities, seem to prefer the slower, more subdued pace of suburban, rural, or small-town life. It is gratifying to learn that those areas can offer a qualified acceptance and support.