It’s a question or an observation I seem to get on a regular basis these days: wow, Catherine, ever since you went back to actively practicing Catholicism, you’ve really moved to the political right. Why the change? Is it because of your religion?
My answer is simple: no, it’s not because of my religion, because there hasn’t been a change in my political stances. They’ve always been informed by my religious beliefs, even when my practice of that religion had fallen dormant.
There has, however, been a significant change in the political landscape.
Image: Know Your Meme
I’ll begin by using abortion as an example. To be clear: I’ve always insisted that abortion was the deliberate killing of a genetically distinct human organism, because of the clear evidence that comes from the fields of biology and embryology. A fertilized human egg can never be anything other than a human cell; and once the processes of meiosis and mitosis are complete, the cell in question is genetically distinct from both of its parents.
When I was a teenager, however, I felt like the definition of human life was so individual that it meant that abortion was a matter for the individual human conscience. But around 1999 or 2000, someone finally challenged me: if the deliberate killing of a human organism isn’t the ending of a human life — i.e., murder — then what is it? And if it is murder, then why is it legal just because the human in question hasn’t been born yet?
My inability to answer the first question to my satisfaction led me to the second, and the second is what led me to start endorsing the pro-life position. Note, though, that this happened around the year 2000, and that I have consistently opposed abortion since then. This isn’t anything new to me, and in fact, I didn’t go back to practicing my Catholic faith until 2001.
At that point, the political left did not use abortion as a litmus test for membership, so I simply began identifying my political leanings as “pro-life liberal” and left it at that. Today, though, support of abortion on demand for any reason is used that way, not just by the Democratic Party, but by most of the entire left side of the spectrum. Reuters dates this shift as finalizing somewhere between 2016 and 2020, which is consistent with my experience.
So, I haven’t moved “right” on abortion; rather, liberal politicians have moved “left.” They’re the ones who changed to exclude centrists on the matter, not me.
The same can be said for several other political issues:
- For example, I’ve never believed that a marriage before God could happen between two men or two women. But I used to simply be content with letting others support civil marriage for same-sex spouses (since changing the definition of civil marriage didn’t change the definition of a Sacramental marriage). Today, though, that’s no longer good enough. I’m called homophobic simply for not believing that a same-sex marriage isn’t a union before God — regardless of the fact that I am careful to ensure that I never treat marriages differently when operating in a solely civil or legal context while on my job. In fact, I actually welcomed Obergefell because it solved a sticky problem with Section 125 benefits.
- Likewise, I’ve always subscribed to the idea that gender is a social construct; as such, “feminine” is whatever a woman says it, while “masculine” is whatever a man says it is. (This was what I was taught in my introductory sociology classes, after all.) I grew up knowing several boys and men who were comfortable in dresses, but it never meant they weren’t male; likewise, the women and girls who hated wearing them were still female. Today, though, that’s considered transphobic — even though I still believe both men and women can dress in whatever they find most comfortable!
- I have also always been fiscally conservative. This is based on the simple belief that the government should not spend more money than it receives. That walks hand-in-hand with my stance of subsidiarity (that issues should be addressed at the lowest possible level of governance). These opinions haven’t varied since I thought through these issues as a teenager and young adult. However, today I’m considered right-wing simply because I oppose raising taxes without the raises being tied to specific, short-term goals and having automatic sunset provisions built in.
I can make similar statements about a number of other debated issues. In fact, I still consider myself liberal because I support positions such as single-payer healthcare coverage, the end of the death penalty, and easy pathways to citizenship (or legal residency) for otherwise non-criminal undocumented immigrants.
I do not, however, consider myself to have anything in common with the Democratic Party anymore. I currently live in Georgia which does not capture political party affiliations on its voter registrations; however, in North Carolina, where I previously lived, I had initially registered as a Democrat when I turned eighteen. Several years before I left, though, I changed my registration to unaffiliated. I’ll use the same category if I ever move back, even though that will continue to lock me out of voting in primaries.
In addition, I still consider myself a feminist simply because I support the right of women to choose their pathways in life for themselves, no matter what that pathway might be. For many or even most, that involves a career, but I fully understand that that isn’t true of all women. Some might very well choose to be stay-at-home wives and mothers. As far as I’m concerned, that’s as legitimate a choice as anything else. Today, though, “feminist” often means female supremacy, and in my mind, that’s as bad as the male supremacy we’re supposedly trying to overcome.
The bottom line, though, is that I haven’t moved to the right. If it looks like I have on a particular issue, chances are good that I’ve always been there. I just may not have been as vocal about it as I have become these days. But even a change in how loudly I say things doesn’t mean I’m saying anything different.
I haven’t moved to the right. The liberals have moved to the left, and in doing so, they’ve left me behind, along with many other centrists and moderates.