Measuring the value of victory

With just a few days left in the 108th session of the Nebraska Legislature, those keeping score in the culture wars can start doling out the spoils.

The best this space can gather is that culture war victories in legislatures — aside from some self-satisfaction and I imagine a little gloating — amount to very little. Culture war spoils equal just this side of bupkis.

To review: Thirty-three senators decided that, unlike men, women in Nebraska will not have autonomy over their bodies; that parents, in consultation with licensed medical professionals, can no longer decide what’s best for their children; and that, despite evidence that more guns make us less safe, the untrained and unbalanced are allowed to carry concealed firearms without a permit.

What Is the victory in any of that? Where are the spoils for the people of Nebraska? What searing problems did any of that solve? Why has the state government — in opposition to overwhelming testimony from health professionals — become a medical arbiter in Nebraska children’s lives and Nebraska women’s reproductive systems? Why have we ceded the political, scientific and moral high ground to win the culture war?

After the Legislature rejected a bill to ban abortions after six weeks, they tacked an amendment onto Legislative Bill 574, a bill designed to block transgender youth from seeking gender-affirming care. LB 574 had already passed one round of debate. The amendment banned abortions in the state essentially at 12 weeks gestation, so in real time about 10 weeks.

A circus of legislative rule high wire acts ensued, during which time no one sufficiently explained how abortion and gender-affirming care qualified to meet the state’s requirement that legislative proposals fall within a single subject. When winning is the only thing that is important, rules are simply details to overcome.

After LB 574 — carrying with it a newly minted, more extreme ban on abortion (no exception for fatal fetal anomalies or protections for doctors) — passed the second round of debate, more than 1,200 medical professionals across the state sent a letter to senators imploring them that their solutions were worse than the supposed problems. Perhaps I missed it, but at no time did I hear how many gender-affirming surgeries trans kids in Nebraska under 19 are having.

Gov. Jim Pillen, who helped craft the divergent amendment, said at one point during the march to victory that he applauded those senators who “stood up for our commonsense, conservative values.” At one time during three decades of writing about Nebraska politics I understood “conservatives” to be all about small government and individual freedom — as in the government should mind its own business. LB 574 and its tag-along amendment restricting what women can decide to do with their bodies is anything but small government and individual freedom. The bill interferes with parents and doctors trying to determine what’s best for a child; the amendment claims the uterus of every Nebraska woman is its business.

Another culture war front is the push for something called “constitutional carry,” which passed the Nebraska Legislature this session. As of Sept. 30, Nebraskans can carry concealed firearms without even knowing how to shoot one or, more critically for the lives of Nebraskans, when to shoot one.

The argument made by the law’s proponents is that nothing so onerous as training or a permit should stand in the way of someone exercising an unfettered Second Amendment right. Applying the same logic to say, the First Amendment, flies in the face of that whole fire and crowded theater limiting principle of absolutism, always a rousing discussion to what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes meant when he said it.

Aside from case law, research from other states that have adopted constitutional carry indicates that gun violence and deaths are up. Nevertheless, Nebraskans can now more easily carry concealed firearms.

You are absolutely right. Some will applaud the wins because the decisions affirm their beliefs and, after all, that’s what the culture wars are all about: Who gets to define America or, more specifically, Nebraska.

Finally, whether the triumvirate of culture war victories in the Legislature pass Pillen’s “commonsense” test is not really important. What needs to be measured is the value of three new laws for Nebraskans.

A definition, like a pyrrhic victory, is not enough. We have real problems to solve in Nebraska: 80,000 unfilled jobs and a yearning to keep our best and brightest home come to mind. All of which makes one wonder. What is the true value of victories in the culture wars?