cultural rift

The biggest difference I've been able to find between American and British "values"--that is, issues surrounding children, religion, and being offended--is the presence of healthy cynicism. Brits have it. Americans don't.

British people openly acknowledge something that far too few Americans do--if you tell a child or teenager 'no' they will go out and do whatever you've denied simply to spite you. For instance, if you tell your child not to read Harry Potter because it's full of the devil's craft, your offspring will pop down to his local library to covertly read it as soon as he possibly can. If you tell your young adolescent that pornography is a dirty sin, she will seek it out, watch it, and may even get hooked on it.

Everyone is aware of this. In the back of every book-banning committee member's mind is a clear recollection of his own teenage porn stash, her hidden copy of The Catcher in the Rye, her own half-burnt bundle of sage that she used to cleanse the air during her friend's Solstice ceremony that one time. Teenagers are quite predictable in their naughtiness--something that cigarette and alco-pop manufacturers bank on.

But in America parents must pretend that they never were young, or that they only were very briefly. They expend a lot of breath declaring that they either "never would have even Considered doing that" or "did all of those things once and got them out of the way." In order to preserve social acceptability in their churches, PTAs, and garden clubs millions of American parents must ignore hundreds of years worth of psychological research and thousands of years of common sense in regard to the adolescent mind. They must voice their belief that strong moral teaching and parental involvement will keep their kids sober, sexually abstinent, straight, and devout despite their own experience to the contrary twenty years before. They must wave their arms around and shout Depravity! every time a book that uses the s-word is included in a high school literature curriculum, despite calling the teacher who teaches it far worse than that at the dinner table. They demand that picture books books like And Tango Makes Three be taken out of their children's sight and put into the up-high and out of the way "alternative family" section of the library to reduce their mind-broadening wherever possible, as young as possible.

I almost wonder if they deliberately do this so that their kids will read these books and challenge their publicly-outlined preconceptions. I rather hope they do. But I sadly doubt it.

Parents in Britain tend to have far more outward comfort in their awareness of the young mind. The cultural understanding is that if you limit a teenager too severely, he will do what you told him not to. I don't pretend to know what goes on in people's homes, but I do know that even conservative parents don't try to restrict the education or freedom of other people's children just because they don't want theirs coming into contact with ideas they disagree with. That's not to suggest that Brits don't harbour hatred or intolerance. They're just as privately back-assward and stuck in their ways as Americans are, but due to their very, very close proximity to the rest of the world they can't really manage insularity. You can't prevent your kids finding out about and tolerating homosexuality when the well-liked head teacher of your school is openly gay. You can't rally too many troops to the cause of blocking the construction of a Muslim cultural centre in someone else's neighbourhood when a significant proportion of your friends and neighbours are Muslim. There aren't many opportunities in London for people to establish single-minded communities, and while they may behave in accordance with the rigours of their culture or religion, people generally don't see a point in trying to convert or impose said rigours on anyone else.

The same may be said of most urban areas in the USA--tolerance is borne, not out of education or morality training, but proximity. People realize here that there's no point in trying to change people's minds or behaviours--there's too many people with too many contrasting views. As long as you just live and let live everyone is fine, but don't dare try and impose your flavour of crazy on anyone else.

American book-banners, prayer-in-schoolers, anti-gays, and other such douchebags simply haven't had to live around people outside of their teeny tiny worlds. Social acceptability in these communities is allowed to be singularly defined because it has been singularly established, uncontested, for many years. Natural, Normal, and Necessary don't need to be taken into consideration when your understanding of human nature hasn't grown since Queen Victoria declared gay sex 'icky' but couldn't comprehend the mechanics of lesbianism. It doesn't matter if you had trouble fighting nature in your adolescence, it doesn't matter if the pastor of your mega-church was caught in bed with a Costa Rican male prostitute--if you are surrounded at all times by the people who established your concept of right and wrong in your infancy, that concept will solidify in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Evidence which is available, yes, but if you prevent it from being seen, not necessary to consider. It is easy to suppress your knowledge, your memories, your instincts when you're rewarded for doing so with status and respect. It's easy to forget that you were once rebellious, curious, and motivated entirely by your libido. It's easy to fall into the trap of believing that if you ban normal actions you can prevent them. If you never have to hear that good people have good lives that are utterly unlike yours you never have to accept that your right is not the only sort of right.

You don't grow a thick skin if you're always right. You don't need tolerance if you're always right. You don't raise your children to seek out the best in others if you think everyone else is wrong.

There's no real way to break up these knots of self-appointed Bests, to force them into diverse communities where their demands are opposed, not by the evil Media or the Government You Didn't Vote For, but by Steve and Gareth upstairs who would be great dads, and the researchers at the local university who can explain why teenagers can't be expected to abstain if you would only listen.

I wish public education could fix the Evangelical problem, but it can't--only experience can teach tolerance.