A new book on the U.S. Republican Party sets out an agenda that its authors argue will help weld working class voters — who have bounced between political allegiances over the decades — to the party as the foundation for the next conservative majority.

Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream, by Ross Douthat, a senior editor at The Atlantic, and Reihan Salam, an associate editor at the same magazine, is already making some waves.

What readers of this blog may find most interesting is some of its comments on religious conservatives, a key Republican Party base, and its contribution to the growing debate about America’s “culture wars.”

The authors take square aim at Thomas Frank’s 2004 book What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, an influential work that has become widely regarded as the leading liberal critique of the Republican Party’s blue-collar strategy.

In a nutshell, a big part of the Frank thesis is that social issues such as abortion are useful distractions from stagnating wages and job lay-offs which lead blue collar workers to vote against their economic interests, ie, for the Republican Party.

“… the ’social issues’, from abortion and marriage law to the death penalty and immigration, are not just red herrings distracting the working class from their economic struggles, as liberals have insisted for the better part of forty years,” Douthat and Salam write.

“Rather, they’re at the root of working class insecurity. Safe streets, successful marriages, cultural solidarity, and vibrant religious and civic institutions make working-class Americans more likely to be wealthy, healthy, and upwardly mobile,” they write.

On the 2006 congressional elections, in which the Democratic Party wrested control from the Republicans, they argue that a two-pronged strategy was employed.

On the one hand, the authors say Democratic candidates reached out to religious voters in the Midwest and the South. On the other, there was a stream of books, essays and blogs “warning of the looming theocratic” menace posed by the Republicans and their conservative Christian backers.

This they argue helped to galvanise part of the Democratic base “and delivered the party its largest majority ever among the faithless.”

Against this backdrop, one wonders how the 2008 presidential election will play out? There is no doubt that Barack Obama is aiming for the votes of the faithful, a topic that we and others have written about.

But can the secular left and mildly religious liberals warn of a right-wing theocracy when the presumptive Republican candidate, John McCain, is regarded with suspicion by the “Religious Right,” whose leaders he once branded as “agents of intolerance?”

What do you think?

Mohammed Moussaoui, the newly elected head of France’s Muslim council CFCM, has lost no time in criticising the case of a Muslim husband who had his marriage annulled because his wife had lied about being a virgin. The “virginity lie” case caused uproar in France, where critics warned against letting religious issues creep into civil law. Under public pressure, Justice Minister Rachida Dati (herself a Muslim who had a marriage annulled), dropped her original positive assessment and had the decision overturned. The couple remains married until September, when the case will be considered again.

Asked about the case, Moussaoui told the Paris daily Le Figaro: “These people confuse customs and religion. Chastity is recommended for the man and the woman, but it is not a condition for a Muslim marriage. A man loves a women as she is, virgin or not.”

National Muslim leaders in France were notably silent about the issue when it flared up. One of the few who did say anything, Fouad Aloui of the Union of French Islamic Organisations (UOIF), was the main rival to Moussaoui in the recent election as CFCM president. All he said was: “This is not a religious case. It is a legal decision based on the law, so it is up to the judge to decide.” That sounds like an indirect approval of the decision, although it must be said he sounded quite reluctant to talk about it at all (here France Info audio in French).

If the CFCM does get more active, as Moussaoui has pledged to do, it might be logical to call him to testify at the appeal. That could be interesting because his statement could be interpreted in two ways. By saying a preference for virgins is a custom and not based on Islam, he could be called by the defence lawyer who argued religion should play no role in the court’s deliberations. But by saying virginity is not a condition for a Muslim marriage, he could equally testify for a prosecutor arguing the man had no right to an annulment based on the idea that virginity was an “essential quality” of a bride.

The appeal is coming up in late September. Watch this space.

The “virginity lie” case gripping France for the past two days has given French politicians the opportunity to indulge in one of their favourite pastimes — expressing indignation. There’s been much more heat than light in this story since it broke last Friday.

If you haven’t been following it, the story is about a French Muslim couple who got their marriage annulled after the husband complained the wife was not the virgin she had claimed to be. Since he could not have cited either religion or the traditional Muslim preference for virgin brides as valid reasons for annulment, the husband’s lawyer argued the wife had lied about an “essential quality” necessary for the marriage. Under French law, a marriage can be annulled if, for example, one partner found out only after the wedding that the other had lied about a previous marriage or a criminal record.

Politicians, feminists and human rights activists immediately demanded the ruling be overturned. The critics vied to issue the most ringing denunciation. “A real fatwa for women’s liberation … (like) a ruling handed down in Kandahar” was a memorable one from Fadela Amara, the state secretary for urban affairs who comes from an Algerian Muslim family. Here are many more in French. By Monday, Justice Minister Rachida Dati — another cabinet member with a North African Muslim background — was flip-flopping. After originally defending the ruling as a means of helping a woman get out of an unwanted marriage, she decided on Monday to ask a public prosecutor to launch an appeal.

The news today was that the erstwhile husband and wife both accept the ruling and do not want an appeal that would make them a legally married couple all over again and force them to replay their separation through a longer and more costly divorce process. The woman’s lawyer said she was furious. “I have to get on with my life,” he quoted her as saying. “I don’t know who decided that they would think for me. I haven’t asked for anything. It feels like I’m hallucinating.”

Almost nobody but the couple and their lawyers want the ruling to stand. But almost nobody is actually thinking through the implications of what they’re demanding.

Most critics want the ruling overturned for one or several of the following reasons:

• it violates a woman’s privacy by making virginity a possible criterion for marriage.
• it violates sexual equality because no proof is asked of a groom’s virginity.
• it introduces a religious concept of the virgin bride into the secular marriage contract.
• it treats the bride like merchandise in a commercial transaction.

These are all valid arguments. Unfortunately, the result of a successful appeal would be to restore the marriage of a couple who do not want to be married, especially not after the drama they went through. As was widely reported, the hoodwinked husband discovered his wife’s lie on their first night together and went right back to the wedding reception, which was still in progress, to announce the news…

Simply overturning the ruling would also leave on the books the paragraph in the civil code that allowed it in the first place. Several hundred marriages are annulled in France every year because of the “essential quality” clause, and nobody’s saying this should be scrapped. Some critics have said the other criteria — such as hiding a previous marriage – were OK but a woman’s sex life must remain completely private. There is probably a way to amend the code to accommodate that, but the legislators will have to get around another problem. Male impotence is currently accepted as a criterion for annulment. Should that be private too?

One of the few politicians who seemed to look beyond a knee-jerk reaction was the straight-talking health minister, Roselyne Bachelot. While explaining her position, she made some statements that might surprise people outside of France. But her comments still made a lot more sense than most others:

“This is a topic that cannot be resolved in court,” she said. “What one ruling has done, another can’t simply undo. Now, it’s an issue for national legislators. Parliament is where all this should be decided.

“It’s true that the notion of a ‘fundamental quality’ is something that, in the case of virginity, may have been widely accepted … in the 19th century or in the early 20th. Morals have changed and that’s fine. So I want parliament to pass a law to define these characteristics.”

She rejected the argument that the wife’s lie was the central issue. “The right to lie is a fundamental right of human beings. The issue at the heart of this is the notion of a fundamental, substantial and essential quality.”

Nadine Morano, the state secretary for family affairs, warned against seeing this as a Muslim issue. “People say it’s a Muslim family, but I also know many families of practising Catholics for whom this element remains an essential quality for both the man and the woman.”

“No matter what anyone says, the decision handed down by the court in Lille conformed to the civil code. Should we make a law and say we cannot include virginity as one of the essential qualities of a person simply because we see that it creates inequality between men and women?”

Any suggestions about what French lawmakers should do once the soundbite phase of this story is over?

A French court has annulled the marriage of two French Muslims because the husband complained his wife was not the virgin she had claimed to be. His lawyer won the case by arguing a civil marriage is a legal contract and lying about an important element in it amounts to fraud. Religion had nothing to do with it, he argued, and the court agreed. More details are in our news story here.

But religion obviously had something to do with this. The man has a traditional Muslim view (and not only Muslim, by the way…) that his wife must be a virgin at marriage. Some Muslim families shun daughters who are sexually active before marriage, in rare cases going so far as committing a so-called “honour killing.”

The decision is also discriminatory. Only a woman’s virginity can be physically tested, so applying this standard violates the legal equality between men and women.

The clause in the civil code that the lawyer used is usually applied to cases where a spouse finds his/her new partner concealed an earlier divorce or had a physical or mental disability that made a normal sex life impossible. French media have mentioned earlier cases where it was used. In one, a man had his marriage annulled because he discovered his wife had been a prostitute. In another, a devout Catholic woman used it against a husband who had concealed his earlier divorce.

One interesting angle here — although Islam is mentioned in this debate, there hasn’t been much Muslim-bashing or suggestions of “creeping Sharia” like those made in Britain after Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams suggested some elements of Islamic law should be taken into British law. It’s not surprising the husband’s lawyer did not mention religion because a French court would have thrown out an argument based on faith. The debate is over which issue takes precedence, prosecution of a fraud case or defence of equality and individual rights.

Amar Lafsar, rector of a large mosque in Lille where the case was tried, said Islam does not necessarily demand virginity for a new bride and gives men and women the same rights. Asked what he tells young Muslim women considering marriage, he said: “I tell them a girl should preserve herself for her husband, for her Prince Charming, and if the girls listen and preserve their virginity and chastity, that’s great. But they’re free. They’re in a country of law and liberty. Each is free to respond or not to the message.” Here he is speaking in French to RTL radio.

The man was reported to be a 30-year-old French convert to Islam and his wife a student of about 20 from a French Muslim family. According to Le Monde, the wedding festivities stretched late into the night and the husband, who had left with his wife, returned to the party and announced the news. He went to see his lawyer in the morning.

The case leaves a whole list of questions. Looking back, should the court have ruled as it did? Should the principle of sexual equality take precedence over the realities of a broken contract? And what should now be done? A government spokesman suggested an appeals court should review the verdict, but overturning it would place the woman back in a marriage her husband doesn’t want. Letting the verdict stand creates a precedent that, according to feminist philosopher Elisabeth Badinter, treats the woman as “merchandise.”

What do you think about this?

For most readers outside the United States, and probably many living there, the recent stories about the polygamous sect raided in Texas in early April raised several basic questions about multiple marriage and the law in America. Like any other Western society, the United States bans polygamy. Mainstream Mormons officially banned the practice in 1890, but several breakaway groups continued it. While informed readers may know that, it still came as a surprise to see there was a polygamous community of several hundred Americans living in a large compound right under the noses of the local police and politicians. And they were not the only ones — once-hidden polygamists are now pressing to have “plural marriage” decriminalised. What’s going on here?

Andrea Useem, author of the interesting blog Religion Writer, has come up with a fascinating look behind these recent polygamy headlines. She’s got links to blogs with names such as Polygamy Now and Introspection of a Plural Wife (at Heart). The most interesting part, though, is the long interview she has with John Witte, the director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory Law School in Atlanta. As she puts it: “He explains why polygamy laws are rarely enforced, how “moral repugnance” is one of the last arguments against polygamy, and why having a concubine is still legal.”

Read it all here.

Useem also has a link to one of several interviews with women in polygamous marraiges on YouTube. Here it is: