Democracy Is What We Do
People who believe in bodily autonomy, in the right to read what you want and love who you want and be who you want, we had a very good week last week. For an odd election year, Democrats did very well, fully taking over the Virginia state legislature, winning a key state Supreme Court race in Pennsylvania, constitutionally enshrined abortion rights in Ohio, and the governor’s race in Kentucky. Everywhere there was a chance to protect abortion rights, abortion rights won. Andy Beshear, the Democrat running for reelection in the Kentucky governor’s race, had recently vetoed anti-trans legislation sent to him by the state legislature. And notorious advocacy organization for banning books and “critical race theory” (aka teaching actual history and acknowledging diversity exists), Moms for Liberty, lost in races everywhere from Iowa to Virginia to Pennsylvania.
These victories highlight a pretty sharp contrast with Republicans, who finally got themselves a Speaker of the House in Congress a few weeks ago. Representative Mike Johnson from Louisiana is now the highest ranked Republican in the country and second in line for the presidency. Republicans chose as their leader someone who believes that gay marriage would lead to people marrying their pets, who wants to sentence abortion doctors to hard labor, and thinks people should be forced to carry pregnancies to term for the economy. He was also a key architect of the plan to overturn the 2020 election. And those aren’t even some of his weirdest beliefs.
Mike Johnson also doesn’t believe in no-fault divorce, which allows either person in a marriage to file for divorce without having to prove any wrongdoing. He and his wife have a covenant marriage, which means they both signed a binding contract that forbids either party from filing for a no-fault divorce, and asserts that any divorce proceedings must not only prove wrongdoing, but also must include counseling before a judge makes a decision on whether or not to grant the divorce. Mike Johnson would like the rest of us to get covenant marriages too - according to him, no-fault divorces and the amoral society they helped build are partly the cause of school shootings.
Still, that is still not the strangest of Mike Johnson’s practices or beliefs. No, that title belongs to the app, Covenant Eyes. Covenant Eyes advertises itself on its website as an app for people who are trying to quit porn, and essentially is used to prevent its users from looking at porn by setting them up with “accountability partners” who get a report on what you’ve looked at on your phone, or a more urgent immediate notification if your partner looks at something “objectionable.” Mike Johnson’s accountability partner, according to an interview he gave last year, was his 17 year old son.
That’s right - the leader of the party that calls queer people and teachers who dare to acknowledge the existence of queer people “groomers,” that bans books that even suggest that teenagers might know what sex is, that has waged a decades long war against the kind of sex education that allows teenagers to understand their bodies and their feelings, the leader of that party has his underage son monitoring his porn usage.
Though I suspect that Republicans will come to regret elevating Mike Johnson to their highest ranked elected position, he really is the perfect avatar for the modern Republican party. The trajectory of social movements in recent decades has been for more freedom and more autonomy. Abortion rights allow people the right of self-determination, to choose their own futures, to decide what their families will look like, what their bodies will endure, what they can afford, how they want to live. No-fault divorce supports domestic abuse victims, most often women, by allowing them freedom from abusive spouses without having to rely on a judge, without needing the agreement of their abuser, without having to prove abuse which is so often explained away. No-fault divorce also allows anyone to leave a marriage for the only reason you never need - you don’t want to be in it anymore. Queer rights allow people to live as their fullest selves, to be themselves and love others in the ways that fulfill and affirm them, regardless of the beliefs of others.
For Mike Johnson and his conservative Christian nationalist brethren, the state has a vested interest in undoing all of this. They believe that the country is stronger when we all line up in neat, orderly rows, when every family looks like theirs, when there are authority figures who can make decisions about our lives and our futures, when they can be sure that we are all in heterosexual relationships producing babies who will join the workforce and deferring to their authority on our happiness, on our purpose, on our bodies, on our futures. The system that gave them this decision making power for so long also gave them wealth, control, and certainty. They are afraid of the world where we get to make those decisions for ourselves, when we get to decide whether or not we get married, whether or not we stay married, whether or not we have children. They are afraid of the world where we tell our stories, where our stories help our fellows, where our communities find strength in bonds more expansive and deeper because we chose them.
I had planned to write about Mike Johnson last week, to highlight his dangerous absurdity and show how he represents what Republicans will enforce if they regain power. And all of that is still important, and still true. But it’s been hard to find much to say about domestic politics these days, when every hour there is new, horrifying news out of Palestine. More than 11,000 people dead, more than four thousand of them children, NICU babies wrapped in blankets on the floor of a hospital that has run out of fuel. Every day Israel drops more bombs, more buildings collapse, more people are forced from their homes, buried in the rubble. Meanwhile, politicians across the aisle are finally united in ignoring the thousands of calls for a ceasefire they are receiving every day.
Democratic Senator Brian Schatz once said, “democracy is not what we have, it’s what we do.” Democracy is in the millions of voters who showed up this election, to protect and advance abortion rights, to protect queer rights, to push back on economic policy that favors the super wealthy over the rest of us. But democracy is also in the thousands of people showing up at demonstrations around the country, protesting our government’s plan to fund violence against innocent people. Democracy demands that members of Congress stop hiding from their constituents and answer their phones. And democracy is in the people all over the country who will keep calling and writing and speaking until we are heard.
Mike Johnson and his Republican party do not believe in democracy. They believe in power, and holding onto it. They believe in wealth, and holding onto it. They believe in their right to force the rest of us to live by their religion and their rules. In the next year we will once again face an election with existential consequences - people who want to solve problems vs. people who don’t; people who want to protect our rights vs. people who want to take them away; people who believe in the peaceful transfer of power and people who overturn elections. But we cannot fight a party that does not believe in democracy if we do not embrace democracy with our whole hearts.
Democracy is not what we have, it’s what we do. What will we do?
Love it.