Hateredy in the Commons: The Church of Family Values

Well, I'd like to start this blog with a quote. It's a lengthy one, so bear with me, but it sets the stage for my godless little rant. In class we read Fast Families, Virtual Children by Ben Agger and Beth Anne Shelton. One of the concepts that really struck me was familization of the public sphere, which is described as follows;

“Arlie Hoschild (1997) argues that as women enter the paid labor force and life accelerates, an inversion occurs: the workplace becomes like a family, and the household becomes a chore, becomes work like. This is precisely our argument, although we take he issue a step further as we discuss the process of what we term 吐amilization,by which we mean that social relations outside of the household take on certain positive qualities often associated with some idyllic, if mythic, families.(55)

One fantastic example of this projection of idyllic, mythical family values on society at large came the other day when the street corner, sin-obsessed preachers came to our campus. The guys were the epitome of Christian values they incited a screaming mob and then called the cops on it. But they also were there with a purpose: to lambast anyone and everyone in hearing for every sin they've ever committed.

Watching the differences between what they practiced and what they preached was like a brand new episode of the Fox prime time comedy block... we all know what's coming and why, but the situation's somehow still funny. In this case, it's because these guys went to a center of liberal thought and broadcast an absolute, inflexible concept of right and wrong that specifically deals with hot-button social issues. They went looking for a fight over beliefs that reject fighting: a projection of an alternate authority to the norm of the environment and an assumed common definition of right and wrong. Hilarious.

But the even more interesting thing is the well-defined sense of rights within a public sphere, as they discussed a social platform that instinctively negated those rights. In other words, they incited a riot and then stepped back and acted like it was all some little bird's fault, because we are considered within our rights to speak our minds in public. However, their attempt to regain authority and control of the situation by calling in the police when the situation arguably didn't merit it as a way of quieting down the noisy children so the “parents” or whatever could speak again, inherently undermined the same rights that protected their presence where it wasn't wanted in the first place. In other words, they practiced what I interpreted as a familial expectation of respect and authoritative, parental rule enforcement in a manner consistent with certain lower-class, religiously based philosophies (respect thy father/speak when spoken to and corporal punishment for rule violations).

Finally, the college-age daughter of the speaker was among the crowd, meaning this was a combination of public and private spheres for this family. I learned about this when I said something derogatory about her father to a friend of mine standing next to her, and she got incredibly frustrated and stormed off. I thought her presence was very strange here. She was actively entering an area where her father was going to be ridiculed, but didn't have the same, for lack of a better word, thick skin that her father did. This really basically set her up for shouting matches until she went hoarse while she tried to defend her family. Does this guy not realize what he's doing to his daughter? Does he not realize the fundamental differences between him and her, and see what this negativity is doing to her? This is an example of the idea that this blurring of the line between family and public goes both ways: she is expected to be an adult and master her feelings in public, when she is obviously not ready to do so in this context. But the assumption that she is able to do this put considerable pressure on her to maintain a behavior set that she plainly could not do. It was a real shame... That kind of pressure on a young person isn't healthy. But it's the expectation: she's old enough to be used as support for a political platform without regard to her own feelings or emotional development.

For a church that emphasizes family values so much, I must say that that isn't how I was taught to love and nurture my offspring, regardless of age. The fact that she is so young just further reinforces the extent to which this trend has occurred.