c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Charles W. Colson, former special counsel to Richard Nixon, served a prison term for his role in the Watergate scandal. He now heads Prison Fellowship International, an evangelical Christian ministry to the imprisoned and their families. Contact Colson via e-mail at 71421.1551(at)compuserve.com.)

(UNDATED) In our era of special interest politics, the big frogs in the political pond spend a great deal of time croaking about the so-called”gender gap.”Democrats insist that women increasingly favor their party, which allegedly puts them on the winning side of the gap, while Republicans counter that men are increasingly moving into their camp, so there.

Yet few political strategists, or the candidates they serve, seem to care that this gap they so enthusiastically celebrate and, indeed, widen at every opportunity, reflects an extremely troubling shift in the way Americans think and live, a shift that we don’t seem to have the will _ or desire _ to reverse.

One of the more interesting dissections of the gender gap was performed recently by Steven Stark in the Atlantic Monthly. Stark not only points out the dual nature of the gap: women to the Democrats, men to the GOP. More interesting is Stark’s observation that the conventional wisdom regarding the cause of the gap is largely wrong.

Like many people, I have always assumed that”women’s issues”such as abortion explained the shifts in political loyalties. Yet it turns out that men and women are not all that far apart on abortion and similar hot-button issues.”Rather, the gulf today,”writes Stark,”tends to be on issues involving the existence and expansion of the social welfare state.” And when you think about it for a second, this loyalty to the Democrats is fully understandable. Many women will naturally support the party credited for both expanding and protecting government-paid entitlements for this reason: In a world where men have been emancipated from their traditional obligations, many women need a new source of security. Since poppa became a rolling stone, increasing numbers of women have come to rely on a more dependable fellow: Uncle Sam.

This is not to suggest that the majority of women, any more than men, desire a life on the dole. Quite the contrary. We may like to believe in Cadillac-driving”welfare queens”who spend their days washing down state-purchased Twinkies with state-purchased muscatel. But welfare is no such picnic. Its recipients are all too often trapped in a violent and hopeless subculture. Welfare mothers subsist on macaroni and cheese and often stand by helpless as their children fall victim to random violence.

Women don’t want welfare, but many women have been driven to depend on government and favor big social problems by the moral collapse brought about by the sexual revolution. The loss of traditional morality _ resulting in a flight from responsibility by a large number of men _ have driven millions of women into social liberalism at a time when most people realize these programs don’t work, and indeed are harmful.

Men, of course, are getting a free ride. Many readers might not remember the thunderous cheer that rose from the male camp when the sexual revolution was announced. For men, the benefits were abundantly clear. Sexual conquest, as it was once known, would no longer be such an ordeal. The traditional idea that a man should accompany a woman to the altar before accompanying her to the bedroom became instantaneously passe. It was as if men had been put on notice that from here out, they were on perpetual spring break.

Simultaneously, the traditional social order that required men to take responsibility for their children was tossed out as being too restrictive. These ideas have permeated modern culture, right down to our prime-time sitcoms. The result has been social chaos: high rates of illegitimacy accompanied by increases in childhood poverty and violent crime.

What is to be done? Sadly, there is a Catch-22 working here. The traditional moral code that protected women from male irresponsibility is opposed by many women as being too harsh and confining.

Amazingly, traditionalists, who currently find themselves more at home in the Republican Party, now find themselves denounced as being anti-women. Meanwhile, the ideas that are responsible for leaving many women in the welfare trap continue to be celebrated throughout our culture as liberating.

We do have a gender gap in American politics. More distressing, however is the reality gap that allows so many people _ Democrat and Republican alike _ to believe we can reject traditional morality without creating immense societal harm.

MJP END COLSON