Or at least Bush family values. And perhaps that’s only natural. After all, this president came to office with a social agenda forged in the crucible of the Christian right–an agenda now embraced by much of mainstream America. As a man, Bush was born again, at 39. As a candidate, he spoke out against abortion–and for his faith. As a president, he made clear from the beginning that he would be a moral leader, not just to Americans but also the world. One of his very first acts, in fact, was to sign an order that withheld funding from overseas agencies that even discussed abortion with their clients.
The next item on the agenda: virginity. As he has with abortion, Bush seems prepared to use U.S. clout and money in international organizations to export just-say-no abstinence to sex outside marraige. The Bush administration and its allies in Congress have signaled their intentions very plainly. Consider:
Earlier this year, at a U.N. General Assembly Special Session on Children, Washington sought to make abstinence–not, say, contraception or sexually transmitted diseases–the centerpiece of sex education worldwide. The Bush administration lost that particular battle, but it set the tone for other fights to come.
In October, 10 members of the U.S. Congress wrote the director of the U.S. Agency for International Development challenging a $65 million grant to the Population Council. They said it was an “outrage” to fund the council, an organization that does work in more than 50 countries, because it is a “promoter” and “provider of abortion.”
Lawmakers also recently reminded the agency that abstinence remains “the administration’s stated priority” in the global battle against HIV and sexually transmitted diseases.
To much of the world, it’s puzzling (if not alarming) that the United States should even think of exporting a religiously inspired agenda. “This push for family values represents a very narrow conception on the part of Christian evangelical right-wing types of what family values are, and they don’t have a monopoly on moral and ethical ways of behavior,” says Francisco Sagasti, the director of Agenda: Peru, a think tank in Lima. Clifford Longley, a British writer on religion, bluntly calls it “cultural imperialism.”
It’s one thing to export capitalism and Hollywood, these critics say. But family values? That’s a bridge too far–especially at a time when America is busily decrying the way the Taliban treated women, or the way Islamic states trample democracy. And by the way, wasn’t it odd, amid America’s “crusade” against Muslims post-9-11, that the Muslim world’s fundamentalists joined with the United States at last May’s U.N. Children’s Summit in promoting sexual abstinence? Such conundrums seem destined to grow more common. And that will make lots of world leaders nervous. Typical is Tony Blair, the British prime minister. Like Bush, he’s a religious man, and his beliefs help explain his support for the “just wars” of Kosovo, Afghanistan and, if it happens, Iraq. But he comes to his religiosity by his studies and not, as Bush claims, from having been “saved.” A year ago NEWSWEEK asked Blair about his religion. He sank into uncharacteristic inarticulateness: “I mean, you believe what you believe in, but it’s, I think, as far as possible, you’re best to keep politics separate from your beliefs, is how I would describe it.”
That’s definitely not how Bush would describe it. As inarticulate as he’s sometimes viewed, the American president has no problem coming up with words to square his religion with his politics. He campaigned unashamedly for the presidency as a man with “Jesus in my heart,” a man who felt rescued by Christianity from his wayward youth. And so it is today that we find ourselves with Bush the Colossus, bestriding the world. Poring over America’s 2000 election results, the rest of the world may see Bush as an accidental president. But his policies, especially since 9-11, have been anything but accidental. With Bush, and perhaps with other U.S. presidents to come, the world will have to contend with a kind of U.S. president it has never seen before–a leader with a global reach that extends far, far beyond that of anybody else’s.
As Washington seeks a say even in when and how people have sex or not and with whom, the rest of the world may have its chance to experience the full reach of America’s power, for better or for worse. It can always just say no. But history suggests that just saying no won’t be enough.
