logs are going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight the big picture battles over marriage equality and birth control are more and more and they're part of a larger movement that has golf washington for the past forty years also president obama games of diplomatic victory and taxes big oil discussion of these topics and more insights big picture rumble and his nice really take how we should be taking a page out of a classic children's soft to help improve our economy. for

threads. for tonight's conversations with for tonight's conversations of great minds i'm joined by dr nancy alcoa dr cohen is a historian author and a contributor to the huffington post her writing has appeared in los angeles times the chicago times and a variety of other publications she received her ph d. from columbia university and held positions as a visiting scholar at u.c.l.a. and a visiting proof professor of history at binghamton university dr cohen previously worked as a senior policy analyst for lane and advocacy organization dedicated to rebuilding the middle class dr cohen is also the author of the groundbreaking book delirium how the sexual counter revolution is polarizing america a groundbreaking investigation into a shadow movement deep within both political parties that's responsible in part for america's broken politics cohen thanks for joining us tonight. hi tom thanks for

having me very very happy to have you with us what what initially interested you in what became this book delirium well american politics has gone crazy it's gone off the deep end so i started looking over the last couple years to try to figure out how this happened why this happened and it led me back to the sexual revolution and the reaction against it and so delirium tells a story of how a small group of reactionaries who frankly want to control sex have hijacked american politics how does it help explain america's political history since the one nine hundred sixty s. that's pretty much where you started the book right off with the birth control pill coming out. right well there were really profound changes that happened with the invention in the marketing the birth control pill and then the social movements

they came out of the sexual revolution and all the sixty's and events particularly feminism and gay rights and that up ended family relationships gender relationships completely changed the workplace and what i saw was that although most americans really embrace those changes a small group of people surprisingly women got politically active to turn back the clock and they first mobilized against the equal rights amendment to defeat it and they succeeded and then they went after federally funded childcare and they succeeded and defeated in defeating that and after that they went after case civil rights and basic seeded in defeating that and after that they started working on the local level of the republican party to move the republican party to the right and so the sht. the far right movement of the republican party that we see today

in the presidential election that we see congress is holding hearings on birth control can be traced to this early sexual revolution sexual counterrevolution among these women and the religious voters that they mobilize through these movements you refer to it as a counter revolution and these peoples counter-revolutionaries. to call them reactionary. perhaps i mean i think there is not that much difference between reactionaries encounter revolutionaries and i wanted to call attention to the the reaction against the sexual revolution and the kind of pairing of sexual revolution and counterrevolution i chose the churn counterrevolutionaries i also think that it calls attention to how revolutionary the changes were of this cultural revolution and i think particularly our political

history we haven't really paid attention to this as one of the prime forces driving our politics we tend to look at it as a kind of sideline a kind of distraction from the real business of economics and foreign affairs. early in the book one of the first stories you told is the story of a woman who pretty much nobody knows her name and yet she was the godmother of the grandmother of the whatever. of the modern carter revolution the post nine hundred sixty s. kind of revolution can you kind of sum up that story for us tell us who she was and the one thing that i didn't quite get out of reading your book is what motivated her apparently she never explicitly laid it out but i'm curious if you know if you want to do a little mind reading if you if you'd like to comment. sure so you're referring to a woman being bloody beth hobbs who was a tax in middle aged woman

a member of the very conservative fundamentalist church of christ who was a single woman and supported herself by writing books for christian ladies and teaching bible study classes and one day she walked into one of the churches that she was teaching in and saw a pamphlet describing the equal rights amendment and that outraged her and she started working with a friend of hers and they wrote what's become known as the pink sheet and it was a pamphlet that went viral in the mid one nine hundred seventy s. against the equal rights amendment and it started off by saying god has created you with certain privileges and the e r a is the most drastic measure ever brought before the u.s. senate. so it was if you look at state legislators if there are the letters that

they have often use pink she was included within it and she helped organize and also represented these thousands of ordinary women from very very conservative churches who believed that the equal rights amendment violated the biblically or deemed submission of women and that it would lead to unnatural relations between men and women and she was pretty explicit in her writing that that is why she. organized against the equal rights amendment and then other cases like she started working to censor books by judy blume later after she succeeded on the rights amendment so it was a real really a religiously based fundamentalist based our position to gender equality and we should note the equal rights amendment is one single sun it's. an exact

language but it basically says you know unless you know you have a garage you know. oh you're ok i mean i think i'm pretty sure that they you know that if there are no laws shall be made to discriminate against women to discriminate spray on the basis of gender and you know this is just like it seems so innocuous and yet this woman saw this is a threat to the foundations of christianity i find that just astounding. do you think with a sense of christianity. do you think that this ties into in maybe some sort of mega cyclical way the famous letters between john and abigail adams from seven hundred eighty seven when he was helping write the constitution and she wrote to him and she wrote and i quote remember remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than were your ancestors and then he wrote back and i quote depending on it depend on it that we know better than to repeal our masculine

systems and then she wrote back to him saying if particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies we are determined to foment a rebellion you know can you draw art from there or through the suffrage movement to the feminists of the sixty's and didn't each produce a counterrevolution a backlash. yes each did produce a backlash account of evolution and in almost every case those counterrevolution reactions attracted many women on the other side so i think the lesson here is that these things don't divide women and men that it really is more foundational about the values people hold about religion it's america and america as a democracy as a civil society. that's for interesting how does this how is the sexual. revolution a key to understanding or political and economic situation. well

i think a lot of people are surprised their birth control has suddenly become a huge issue in the election and although it's astounding that the republicans would dare to go there given public opinion it's really not surprising considering the makeup of the republican party today a good close to half of core republican voters share the idea of these sexual fundamentalists you know no civil rights for gays at all no abortion in any circumstance or even rape and incest and i think what's happened you know we had in the reagan years the so-called three legged stool of the economic conservatives the social conservatives and the international foreign policy hard conserve and conservatives what we have today is kind of a tiny group of market fundamentalists and the. sexual fundamentalists and

the people that want to impose this very radical economic program the one percenters really don't have the voters to you know and social security to repeal the clean air act two and taxes on the wealthy for good and back in the eighty's they made an alliance of convenience with the burgeoning religious right somewhere in the ninety's the religious voters the sexual fundamentalists kind of took control and really are dictating to people you know like grover norquist and the koch brothers what they have to agree to in order to secure their votes it's extraordinary you you you've talked about this in the context of sex a couple of times but isn't this really not about sex as a social activity it's really about.

that's that's a good question i've been really struggling to figure out whether the religious fundamentalism that takes a very negative view of sex and takes this idea of the gods order falls apart on less the family is order with the husband and father in control of the wife and children and whether that is what this is really driving it or it is this kind of fear of women's power and women's equality i mean the certainly the consequences of it all and reproductive rights women are very constrained in what they can do in the public arena i'd like to get into the partisan nature of this and how this is shaking out right after the break war conversations with great minds with dr nancy okon write up of those.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so silly you think you understand it and then a glimpse something else you hear sees some other part of it and realize everything is off. i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.

mr.

well back to conversations of great minds i'm joined by dr nancy alcoa a historian policy analyst and the author of the groundbreaking book delirium out the sexual counter-revolution is polarizing america so back to this dr call and. to what extent is this a partisan issue to what extent has has this whole sexual revolution sees you know you clearly a moment ago we're talking about the republican party to what extent is it also part of the democratic party and perhaps even some of the groups that are nonpartisan. right well this isn't just about the republican party the democratic party has been complicit in the sexual counterrevolution as well and it goes back to the seventy's for the democrats also when there was a reaction within the democratic party among older actually very liberal man

against the rising forces wimmin of the young college students of multiculturalists in the party. and what happened it's a complicated story that i tell nothing but they opposed the new social issues being brought up but when we govern waltz the one nine hundred seventy two election by a landslide they decided that it was the fault of the base a plain progressives they gleaned wimmin deeply and gays be blamed feminists and it wasn't actually true if you look at what happened in that election but it became a narrative that has stuck with the democrats since that time and whenever democrats really face to feed they kind of. go back to this idea that they lose on the social issues and if they could just kind of downplayed and keep those

activists quieter then they would win on the other issues now this is actually wrong the facts don't support this theory but we see it come up over and over again and frankly we just saw it again with the whole uproar over birth control and obama's very quick change in policy when democratic catholic democrats started protesting. and and to that there's you know there's this uproar is continuing no rush limbaugh making all these comments going after this this young woman who was basically talking about medical conditions that can be treated with birth control pills and the whole hysteria around it. is it is a. it almost seems that the sexual hysteria or this counterrevolutionary. effort goes in waves that it pops up for a while and becomes very very intense and then it just kind of goes goes into

hiding. is that an accurate description of it through the american political process and if so is is is do the waves are they part of an arc are a good part of a long line of increasing or decreasing intensity i mean we're seeing for example eight states maryland governor maryland has signed a gay marriage bill which arguably is liberalization of. you know the would be acceptance of diversity and sexuality. are we seeing an oscillation on a descending line. yes i think you're absolutely right that we see this in waves and part of it has to do with the monetary issue but part of it also has to do with partisan strategy so back to the republicans for moments given rush limbaugh's comments today and the republicans kind of unwillingness to really call that out

they they are overreaching tremendously right now and same republicans know that this is going to be disastrous in the coming election now often the other move for republicans is self they've admitted to themselves that they realize that these far right positions on sex and women and family and gender are not popular and they haven't in many elections they kind of organize under the radar often in a different guise. to put people in office that say say they're running on jobs or running on the deficit are really totally lost stock and barrel in in sync with these sexual fundamentalists so the tea party for example was little more than a rebranding of the christian right you know they fooled the media and they fall democrats for about a year but if we look at what they did in office and we look at who they clean up

this it's pretty clear that it's the usual suspects from the religious right behind it and so how does how is that how does that play out is that is that the peak of the curve that we're on the downside of now and and that's why there's such a blowback to to to santorum and to and a lot more yes i do think so they've the purists in the base have gotten over confident and are kind of egging people like santorum on so when this is the peak and in almost every case where they show their hands the rest of america reacts as we're seeing the you know when organizing speaking out against it you know something very similar happened in one thousand nine hundred ninety two when it looked like the supreme court was on the verge of overturning roe v wade there was a kind of reignited reproductive rights abortion rights movement. clinton

wholeheartedly embrace. portion rights even brace gay rights in that election meanwhile the republicans went down this rather whole kind of holy war with pat robertson and pat buchanan and you know the last true republican moderate ran on you know a culture war platform george h.w. bush so we see this pattern of republican every which stimulates a kind of popular. uprising not uprising that's too strong but popular movement against it which tends to benefit the democrats in elections but once every but once the momentary hysteria dies out they don't people tend to forget that this is always under the surface i've i've lived in europe and spent a fair amount of time there i was in sweden a few weeks ago or be in germany in a few weeks. and have been doing so for thirty years going back and forth

a lot and while i see these some elements of this in the u.k. and i suspect we can trace a lot of this back to queen victoria and continental europe in. france germany away from this county. maybe i'm just on aware of it but i've never heard these kinds of arguments being made i've never heard this kind of dialogue or back in i think was the late seventies or early eighty's louise and i were driving through ireland and there was a big billboard that had a woman holding a little child's hand and they both had tears in their eyes and said don't let it happen vote no on seventeen or whatever it was and we stopped at a bar and said what's the billboards and they were like oh we're having a national referendum on whether or not to legalized a bores and that was what was going on you know put that was that was the u.k. slash ireland but you know why is that the continental europe if my assumptions are correct here and please let me know if they're not why do the continental europe

doesn't go through these cycles of sexual hysteria like we do and apparently. i think you're right that continental europe doesn't go through it and i'm not aware that asia because through either i think what we have that we that we share with the u.k. is the victorian heritage but none of another thing european countries have such a degree of religious fundamentalism america is really the only advanced country with this you know a very large and very mobilized fundamentalist movement so i think the real difference is. per bell religiosity of a small minority of americans think heats agitating these issues that really the polling shows the vast majority sixty seventy eighty percent depending on what

subject you're looking at you know this is done this is over it's twenty twelve we you know ninety nine percent of americans use birth control and really no one thinks that we should go back to a time when it was illegal except this tiny minority and they seem hell bent for leather on exporting it back in eighty after the war with the i mean i did relief work in uganda and it which was a british colony and winston churchill in fifty six just pulled out of there you know and so that's it we're out here and now in uganda there legislature is seriously considering legislation has been going on for a couple of years and it's been pushed by by guys at a k. street you know a lot of ease treat i guess it is that the just charlotte outed him has his book about the this culture here of right wing religious republicans most republicans some democrats too they're passing legislation to kill gay people i mean is it to what extent is america exporting its sexual history. well i think you're right to

the extent that we see it in places like africa and i hear that it's also starting in latin america to extend a lot of it is being pushed export it by americans who as you say you know these launching to power brokers with very high level of republican backing for these really grotesque kinds of legislation senator olympia snowe just announced that she was going to retire from the sun she was a moderate republican who believed in women's rights and stood up for birth control do you think that her retirement was in part a surrender to the sexual car revolutionaries or or was probably just associated with you know her deciding it's time to go. no i think it was absolutely her being fed up with the craziness in her party and the real recognition that she was in

danger in the primary in maine from the republican so-called tea party activists so you know olympia snowe kind of represents an older republican party that was actually stronger on women's rights stronger on personal freedom and stronger on sexual rights than the democratic party was and it was these women who i was talking about earlier who went into the republican convention of nineteen eighty and forced an anti abortion plank into the platform had them take out support for the equal rights amendment and they actually alstott the lead the highest ranking woman of the republican party because she was a feminist and supported the equal rights amendment so what happened with olympia snowe is this movement that has moved kind of methodically from the bottom to the top of the republican party finally got to her she had been safe for

a long time but she was no longer safe and very quickly we have just a half a minute or so to what extent is the fight for gay marriage equality a piece of this or. it absolutely is we know the polling shows a majority of americans supporting it now i think it's inevitable i think that's good but there will be this resistance this diehard resistance as there have been to the reproductive rights from the sexual fundamentalists of the right and so it's going to be a long fight that people are going to have to stay tuned in and remarkable dr nancy because the book delirium of the sexual color revolutions polarizing america thanks so much for being with us tonight. thank you for this treasure. coming up in tonight's big picture ron paul rush limbaugh's hate for women reared its ugly head again this week the republican party afford to keep standing by their man.

even we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old to tell the truth. i'm a contestant i am a total get of friends that i love brad because he is a liar and. he was kind of a big yesterday. and. i'm very proud of the will without you she has her place. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for life sleep you think you understand it and then you

glimpse something else and you hear see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture . for.