Dana Goldstein

In Their Focus on Religious Giving, Romneys are Like Most American Donors

Mitt Romney's tax documents are out, and they show the GOP frontrunner and his wife donated $7 million to charity over the past two years, an amount equal to about 16.4 percent of their income. The Romneys gave to a number of secular non-profits, including the Boys and Girls Club of Boston, the Center for the Treatment of Pediatric MS, the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and Homes for Our Troops. But they donated far and away the most money--$4.1 million in cash and $2 million in stock--to the Mormon church. 

In their decision to prioritize religious giving, the Romneys are typical of American donors. When I was working at The Daily Beast in the wake of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, we decided to take a close look at how disasters impact American charitable giving. We were surprised at the results of our research: According to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, only about one-third of all American charity--from individuals, foundations, and corporations--directly serves the poor, either within the United States or abroad. Year after year, religious organizations, typically local church groups, take home the biggest slice of American charity, even in the wake of major humanitarian crises. 

For example, Americans donated $100.63 billion to religious causes in 2010, accounting for 35 percent of all giving.

After Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, Americans responded with $2.7 billion in donations over the first year. Yet this swell of support accounted for less than 1 percent of total giving in that time period. A similar pattern took shape after 9/11 and the Asian tsunami of 2004. In fact, the discrepency between emergency humanitarian giving and religious giving was so large, it was difficult for us to visualize on this chart; imagine the bar on the right as five times higher than it actually is:

Of course, some religious giving does serve the poor, through church-run food banks, homeless shelters, and the like. But Patrick Rooney, executive director of the Center on Philanthropy, told me this is not generally the case. “A large part of that goes toward the ongoing cost of owning and operating a church,” he said, “paying for the rabbi, minister, or priest; heating and air-conditioning costs.”

Rick Santorum's Catholicism, the Tea Party, and Education Reform

Once upon a time, Rick Santorum was a major supporter of federally mandated, standards and accountability-driven education reform. As a senator, he was a high-profile backer of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, even after his amendment mandating the teaching of intelligent design was stripped from the law. When he ran for reelection in 2006 against Democrat Bob Casey, Santorum filled out a questionnaire from the Council for Exceptional Children, a special education advocacy group. In the document, he boasts about bucking his party to propose "increasing the appropriations for health and education programs by $7 billion in 2007," in order to fund gifted and talented programs and online education options in math and science. 

Fast forward to 2011, and Santorum--like Mitt Romney--can't seem to run away fast enough from his centrist education record. Santorum's new tax plan calls not for protecting education funding, but for cutting all social spending, including spending on schools, by $5 trillion over five years. In a CNN interview last week, Santorum said, "I talk all the time about having voted for No Child Left Behind. And, you know, it was a mistake. You know, it was a … a dumb thing to vote for because it gave more federal control over education, which was something that, you know, I didn’t advocate for, but I voted for.”

What happened? In short: the Tea Party. As I described in an August Slate article, the Tea Party's close alliance with the Christian Right has replaced the bipartisan, standards-and-accountability consensus on education with a stark, ideological battle between Republicans like Romney, who continue to see public schools as important anti-poverty and economic-competitiveness tools, and Republicans like Michele Bachmann, who have long seen schools as potential corrupters of the nation's youth--as institutions that illegitimately challenge the rightful role of parents in shaping children's moral, political, religious, and sexual belief systems. 

Santorum is uncomfortably wedged in the middle of this debate. Like Bachmann, he and his wife homeschool their children, in large part because of their fundamentalist religious beliefs. But Santorum is not an evangelical Christian; he is Catholic. Accordingly, like many Catholics, he has a more sanguine view of government's role in shaping the individual. Instead of railing against the public schools, he has historically fought to inject conservative social values into the curriculum, while arguing for public education to play a proactive role in ensuring economic mobility.  

As more policy contrasts are drawn between Santorum and Romney in the coming days, it will be interesting to see how both candidates speak about education--and if they speak about it at all. Santorum's campaign website never mentions school reform. Romney's site is similary silent on K-12 education, which is conspicuously absent from the sections on "human capital," "labor," and "fiscal policy." Their reluctance to discuss the issue is a sign of a deep divide within the Republican Party.

Madonna, Judaism, and Philanthropy

illustration via New York

Vanessa Grigoriadis' New York exposé of Madonna's ill-fated intervention in Malawi is well worth a read, first for its discussion of the vapidity of celebrity philanthropy, and second for its revelations about the fraudulent and cultish Kabbalah Centre, which seems more interested in bilking rich people and flipping real estate than in teaching the tenets of mystical Judaism.

The whole nasty business reminded me of one of the enduring lessons I learned in Hebrew School: that not all tzedakah, or charity, is created equal. Indeed, the Talmud outlines eight ascending levels of tzedakah, which also means "fairness" and "justice:"

1. Giving begrudgingly
2. Giving less that you should, but giving it cheerfully
3. Giving after being asked
4. Giving before being asked
5. Giving when you do not know the recipient's identity, but the recipient knows your identity
6. Giving when you know the recipient's identity, but the recipient doesn't know your identity
7. Giving when neither party knows the other's identity
8. Enabling the recipient to become self-reliant

Worth thinking about--especially number 7, I think.

A Magazine Article You Should Read

On the subway this morning I finished George Packer's sad and beautiful New Yorker profile of the Israeli novelist David Grossman, an outsized figure in his nation's literary and left-wing political scene, whose young son was killed in the 2006 war in Lebanon.

The piece was so moving I stopped reading at several points just to stare into space and absorb it all. For some reason, I was particularly affected by the section about Grossman's aborted friendship with the Palestinian intellectual Ahmad Harb. The two men would like to translate each other's books, but their respective publics, Israeli and Palestinian, would consider such an effort politically suspect, so they don't. And Grossman and Harb, though admiring, can never truly get to know one another because of the travel restrictions to and from the West Bank. Packer writes:

In a better world, [Harb] and David would be close friends. “I hope, sometime in the future,” [Harb] said. “But it’s like a phantom. You say, ‘At some point I will reach it,’ but then anything will explode everything else, and you are back at square one.”

As I left, Harb gave me an English translation of his new novel, “Remains,” to carry the eight miles from Ramallah to Grossman’s home, in Mevasseret Zion.

I am now very much looking forward to reading Grossman's latest novel, To The End of the Land, which is just out in English. It tells the story of Ora, a middle-aged Israeli Jewish woman who reunites with a former lover as her son is sent to war.

The Latest American Export: Abstinence-Only

The American political climate has been decidedly less friendly to abstinence-only sex-ed over the last several years. As Democrats came to power in 2006 and 2008, they mostly heeded the well-established cache of social science showing that abstinence messaging is less effective in preventing pregnancy and STIs than comprehensive sex-ed. Federal abstinence-only funding didn't disappear, but it dried up significantly.

Yet Focus on the Family, the Colorado-based evangelical Christian group founded by James Dobson, has found another government willing to bankroll abstinence-only education--China's. In a must-read Washington Post article, William Wan reports that thanks to a partnership between the Communist Party and Focus, teenage girls in Yunnan province are being fed many of the same discredited and sexist messages that form the core of American abstinence-only: that it is a girl or woman's sole responsibility to delay sex, and that a boy or man's role in a relationship is to demonstrate chivalry.

The key difference between Focus' work in China and its work in the United States is that in China, in order to satisfy the government, it must not talk about God, Christianity, or ask students enrolled in the program to take a virginity pledge. Wan reports, "government officials quickly stepped in, insisting that the kids pledge to no one but the Communist Party."

This story is discouraging for several reasons. First, one of the few positive outgrowths of China's coercive one-child policy is that birth control has been readily available to poor women. According to the UNFPA (PDF) 84 percent of sexually active Chinese people are using some form of contraception, with many provincial governments providing free condoms to married couples and sex workers.

But China's family planning policies have long been matched by a strong pro-marriage ideology and ideal of pre-marital virginity. The 1980 Marriage Law established minimum ages for marriage of 20 for women and 22 for men. And in a nation with a growing HIV/AIDS epidemic, there remains a strong stigma against unmarried women accessing contraceptive services.

The Post talks to a researcher who estimates that despite these barriers, more than half of all Chinese people are now having pre-marital sex. Responding to this reality with abstinence-only, instead of with greater access to contraception for single people, is the same head-in-the-sand mentality that dominates the American right, and only leads to more unwanted pregnancies and higher rates of sexually-transmitted infections.

Why is the Sky Blue?

If you believe Jewish Americans are single-issue voters, and that issue is support for the Israeli occupation, then it makes sense to ask, as Norman Podhoretz does in a new book and Commentary symposium, "Why are Jews Liberal?"

But this is a fundamental misreading of the political commitments of American Jews, 92 percent of whom describe issues other than Israel as their primary concern. According to one election season poll, the top two issues for American Jews are the economy and the Iraq war.

In his Times Magazine profile of J-Street, a PAC seeking to advance progressive views on Israel, James Traub does a good job of describing the difficulty of representing the political opinions of "the dispassionate many" on Israel, as opposed to the "passionate few" represented by AIPAC. So in one sense, Jewish neo-cons will always have a voice louder than more typical Jews when it comes to Israel, because they simply care much more. That doesn't mean they represent the community.

Why are Jews actually liberal? In the the Commentary forum, only Rabbi David Wolpe states the obvious, attributing Jewish liberalism, as I do, to our deep identification with the marginalized and oppressed:

...I suspect until conservatism convinces most Jews that they have a sympathy and practical program for those who are real or putative outsiders, it will remain, among Jews at least, distinctly the minority movement.

Interestingly, this outlook -- the attachment to the Jewish history of oppression -- is responsible for both the liberal and conservative strands of contemporary Jewish politics. The liberal strand lends support to programs that help the poor, such as universal health care and immigration reform. The conservative strand uses the reality of anti-Semitism to justify Israel's inhumane policies toward Palestinians and Arab-Israeli citizens.

Read more from Sarah Posner and Jack Ross.

cross-posted at TAPPED

Kennedy's True Legacy on Abortion and Disability

In his column this morning, Ross Douthat sets up a dichotomy between Ted Kennedy and his also recently-departed sister, Eunice. Ted was a Bad Kennedy and a Bad Catholic because he was pro-choice; Eunice was a Good Kennedy and a Good Catholic because the cause of her life was disability rights, and she supported anti-abortion rights organizations such as Femnists for Life, the Susan B. Anthony List, and Democrats for Life.

But Kennedy's legacy on abortion and disability is actually far more complex than Douthat acknowledges. In 2005, Kennedy co-sponsored a bill -- the Prenatally and Postnatally Diagnosed Conditions Awareness Act -- that expanded federal financing for support programs for expectant and new parents who receive a Down syndrome diagnosis. Research shows that doctors delivering such a diagnosis often share very little information about living with the disease, and presume that the patient would prefer to terminate her pregnancy. Indeed, about 90 percent of couples who receive a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis do choose abortion. But enriched by his sister Rosemary's life, Kennedy sought to link expectant and new parents with mentor families already raising a child with Down syndrome, as well as create a national registry of families willing to adopt disabled infants.

Kennedy's partner on the bill was conservative Catholic Sen. Sam Brownback, who regularly compares abortion to slavery. During negotiations between the two offices, Kennedy held fast to his belief that the law must go further than just dissuading abortion; he wanted to be sure the legislation offered funding to improve the lives of disabled people and their caretakers. Last October, the bill was signed into law by President Bush. In a testament to Kennedy's coalition-building genius, it was even supported by NARAL President Nancy Keenan, who said it offered women choices without undermining their right to an abortion.

Only Ted Kennedy could bring NARAL to the table with Sam Brownback. And that's because he knew, in his heart, that there was no contradiction between being deeply pro-choice and deeply pro-disability rights.

For more on the moral complications of genetic testing, disability, and abortion, check out my 2007 In These Times feature, "Genetic Disorder."

cross-posted at TAPPED

Pro-Sex Conservative Christianity?

We last encountered Mark Regnerus in the pages of the Washington Post, singing the praises of early marriage. Last week, while I was blissfully unawares on vacation, he took his argument to a friendlier audience with a cover story in Christianity Today. In the new piece, Regnerus casts himself as a truth-teller to evangelical America, informing them that in their emphasis on sexual purity, chastity, and virginity, the movement has forgotten to encourage healthy marriages, particularly among the young. He writes (emphasis mine):

Evangelicals tend to marry slightly earlier than other Americans, but not by much. Many of them plan to marry in their mid-20s.Yet waiting for sex until then feels far too long to most of them. And I am suggesting that when people wait until their mid-to-late 20s to marry, it is unreasonable to expect them to refrain from sex. It's battling our Creator's reproductive designs. The data don't lie. Our sexual behavior patterns—the kind I documented in 2007 in Forbidden Fruit—give us away. Very few wait long for sex. Meanwhile, women's fertility is more or less fixed, yet Americans are increasingly ignoring it during their 20s, only to beg and pray to reclaim it in their 30s and 40s.

This message will be, I think, powerfully attractive to many progressive Christians. It accepts -- and even celebrates -- the naturalness of sexual desire. Regnerus writes, "sex feels great, it feels connectional, it feels deeply human. I never blame [young adults] for wanting that."

And yet, if you plumb Regnerus' worldview, you see that just beneath the sex-positive surface is a deep yearning for traditional gender roles. He's upset with Christian America not just because it has made sex so shameful, but also because the community has bought into a trend in the wider culture: that of encouraging both men and women to delay marriage into their late-20s, in order to focus on education, career success, and financial stability. "Most young Americans no longer think of marriage as a formative institution, but rather as the institution they enter once they think they are fully formed," he laments.

That's true -- and there are major benefits to that. As Regnerus admits, financially-stable, highly-educated, slightly-older couples are much more likely to avoid divorce. His solution to this problem is to encourage parents and communities to offer more "support" to young couples in love. He seems to envision all these young lovers as middle-class college students with bright futures ahead, and parents able to offer a gentle push toward bourgeois marriage, preferably with open checkbook in hand. With their families' and ministers' approval and counsel, Regnerus imagines, young people can reasonably marry at the age of 20 or 21, and thus engage in guilt-free, God-sanctioned sex.

But in his enthusiasm for young women hunkering down at home with hubby and kids -- they must not "ignore" their reproductive destinies! -- Regnerus simply ignores the class implications of his argument. Poor people in their early 20s don't have the inherited socioeconomic and educational advantages that would make success at early marriage more likely. Economic instability and early marriage are leading predictors of divorce. Put together, they are disastrous for a couple's future.

If Regnerus really wanted to encourage early marriage and more stable, young families, he might support government social safety nets, such as universal health care, child care, and maternity and paternity leave. All of these make parenthood and marriage more tenable for the young and poor. Yet he describes himself in the piece as a lifelong "fiscal conservative." It's hard, then, not to conclude that, like the evangelical Christian movement as a whole, Regnerus is really more interested in promoting "traditional" family life -- with a woman at home -- than in revisiting notions of sexual abstinence.

cross-posted at TAPPED

Hebrew Schools and Israel

Over at the Prospect, I've written an essay about my Jewish upbringing, and what I was and wasn't taught about the history and politics of Israel. This is a piece that's been percolating in my mind for years, so I hope you all check it out. As a bonus, you get to read about my childhood rabbi who was arrested for driving while high. You can't make this stuff up.

The institutions that claim to speak for the broadest swaths of mainstream American Jewry -- the three unions of Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox congregations -- explicitly teach children not to identify with the Jewish people's long, Diaspora history as a strange people living in a series of strange lands. Rather, they valorize Zionism and Israel, often discouraging any critical thinking about either the history of the Jewish state or its present-day politics.

Raised as a Conservative-movement Jew, it was not until college that I learned about Israeli history -- written by Jews -- documenting the stories of the 800,000 Palestinians displaced by Israel's founding. At synagogue, I heard nothing about the daily lives of the nearly four million stateless Palestinian Arabs living in the lands seized by Israel after the Six-Day War of 1967.

Hebrew School taught me that Israel was the Jewish people's answer to the Holocaust, and that its open immigration policies for Jews would prevent the occurrence of another genocide. In medieval and early-modern Europe, laws often prohibited Jews from owning weapons or serving in the military. One teacher told us that Jewish men were regularly forced to stand by, idly, as Gentile brutes raped their wives and daughters. But in Israel, the Jewish people would no longer be weak, effeminate, or intellectualized. In Israel, we became sabres, or prickly pears -- still sweet and loving internally, but proudly tough and dangerous on the outside. In Israel, we would have machine guns.

New Studies Find Use of Ulcer Drugs to Induce Abortion

A stomach turning article in the New York Times today reminds us that the fight for reproductive justice isn't just a legal one, but is also deeply cultural. Two new studies of Latina women, particularly Dominicans, have found widespread use of prescription ulcer medication to induce abortion. Side effects include excessive bleeding, shock, and even rupture of the uterus. Nevertheless, some pharmacists are willing to sell the drug without a prescription for about $30. In a Catholic, anti-choice culture, many teenagers and women find this painful, dangerous abortion method preferable to visiting a family planning clinic or doctor's office, even if they are insured.

It was 12 years ago, but the memory remains vivid: She was handed a packet of pills. They were small and white, $30 for 12. Ms. Dominguez, two or three months pregnant, went to a friend’s apartment and swallowed the pills one by one, washing them down with malta, a molasseslike extract sold in nearly every bodega in the neighborhood.

The cramps began several hours later, doubling Ms. Dominguez over, building and building until, eight and a half hours later, she locked herself in the bathroom and passed a lifeless fetus, which she flushed.

Affordability remains a factor here; with abortions costing upwards of $1,000 and uncovered by public insurance plans, many women simply cannot afford them. Another option that should be more available and affordable is RU-486, the "abortion pill," which also includes misoprostol, the active ingredient in the ulcer medication. Yet RU-486, administered by a doctor and taken in private, is safe and intended for this purpose. It still gives women the advantage, if necessary, of passing their abortions off as miscarriages to anti-choice partners, family, or friends.

Most disturbingly, the Times reports on two cases of immigrant women being imprisoned by American judges for the crime of inducing abortion with ulcer drugs. Desperation and lack of health insurance should not be criminalized. It's hard to believe that any judge would see women -- not society and culture at large -- as the problem here.

Update: It just came to my attention that The American Prospect's deputy editor, the estimable Ann Friedman, was all over this story two years ago when she worked at Mother Jones. Go Ann!

cross-posted at TAPPED