I am so glad to see
George Lakoff's ideas getting wider recognition. I first heard of him from
Allen Brill over a year ago--before
"The Right Christians" became "
The Village Gate", and long before he invited me to
blog there.
Matt Zemek, another
Village Gate blogger, used Lakoff's ideas to
frame the different political perspectives within the Catholic church.
ABUSE OF THE HUMAN FAMILY: STRICT FATHER BEATS DOWN NURTURING MOTHER
Go to Catholic news outlets such as the National Catholic Reporter(www.natcath.org). Go to Catholic peace groups such as Pax Christi USA (www.paxchristiusa.org). Go to Catholic reform groups such as Call To Action (www.cta-usa.org) and Voice of the Faithful(www.votf.org). Here you'll see the Nurturant Parent view at work in Catholic journalism, peace organizing, Church lay movements, and clerical reform movements.
...
Nurturant Parent Catholics, when in the political arena, generally choose to emphasize social advocacy and a seamless garment ethos instead of an intense and excessive one-issue focus on abortion. Eliminating poverty, improving workplace provisions for women, and softening draconian welfare policies are ways in which Nurturant Parent Catholics try to work politically. Nurturant Parent Catholics reason that, by improving a larger, integrated set of social problems while manifesting direct love, care and concern for the troubled women they advocate for, society can make abortion obsolete instead of illegal.
This approach--rendering Roe irrelevant instead of trying to overturn it in the courts--is seen by Nurturant Parent progressive Catholics as the way to bring the whole of society in step with Catholic values--winning the hearts of the troubled women on the frontline of the abortion issue, but also improving social policy on a wide range of interconnected issues. It would seem to do much more good than waging a legal fight whose only value is ideological, and is not tied to improving the economic conditions of young pregnant women.