(11 of 12)
The clean-living capital of the antipornography crusade might be Cincinnati, where Charles Keating Jr. began a moral crusade in the 1950s that residents have carried on ever since. Arthur Ney, the county prosecutor, says, "There is not one X-rated movie house or bookstore in the county today. They know if they bring them in here, we're going to enforce the law." The Meese commission report, says Steve Hallman, director of Citizens Concerned for Community Values of Greater Cincinnati, "will give momentum nationwide to obscenity-law enforcement."
In the tiny town of Belgrade, Mont., a legislative committee was formed to ban pornographic materials inside the city limits. It so happens that there are no adult bookstores in Belgrade (pop. 3,200); the city elders just want to make sure that it's kept that way.
Campaigns against pornography are not being orchestrated solely by conservative Republicans from the heartland. Boston Mayor Raymond Flynn, a populist Democrat in the cradle of liberty, has been trying to clean up the city's "combat zone," which was officially designated an adult-entertainment area in 1974.
Opposition to government intervention in individual lives has always been a pillar of conservative thought. In the 1960s and '70s, while liberals agitated for federal intervention on civil rights and the Viet Nam War, conservatives felt smothered by a leftist tyranny of activism. The roles have now reversed. As the New Right presses its case against pornography and homosexual activities, liberals argue that this amounts to unwarranted government intrusiveness into the homes of private citizens. There are, of course, distinctions among the issues, yet the sea change reveals the inherent contradictions in the way Americans feel about Government. As Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish Nobel laureate, once pointed out, Americans will say, practically in the same breath, "No one can tell me what to do" and "There ought to be a law against that."
For Republicans, the moral revival has been a distinct political blessing. But it could turn into a risky one. "Morality is a very dangerous issue for the Republican Party," says William Schneider, a political analyst at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "Religion is to Republicans what race is to Democrats. Religion could tear the G.O.P. apart in the next election." Tony Podesta, executive director of People for the American Way, which was formed as a foil to Falwell's Moral Majority, says that Republicans are in danger of becoming dominated by a narrow segment of the ideologi- cal spectrum. "In many places," he says, "the Republican Party machine thought it would be good to broaden their base and ended up getting swallowed up by the religious-right movement."
Both Democrats and Republicans are jealously eyeing the votes of baby boomers, who do not, as a rule, share all the values or the goals of the religious right. "The key word for 1988 is tolerance," insists Republican Strategist Roger Stone. A fellow analyst of baby-boom voters, George Bush's strategist Lee Atwater says that whoever succeeds Reagan will have to emulate him: "Reagan won the baby-boom vote in 1984 because he projected tolerance. They did not think that Reagan would impose his personal views on them. A Republican can afford to be more conservative on social issues as long as he conveys the notion of tolerance."