{"id":32,"date":"2008-08-01T12:48:49","date_gmt":"2008-08-01T12:48:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/progressive-purity-tests.html"},"modified":"2008-08-01T12:48:49","modified_gmt":"2008-08-01T12:48:49","slug":"progressive-purity-tests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/progressive-purity-tests.html","title":{"rendered":"Progressive Purity Tests"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><font color=\"#000000\">Wow, that was quick; we&#8217;re barely open for business and already we&#8217;ve been <a href=\"http:\/\/streetprophets.com\/storyonly\/2008\/7\/30\/12846\/3777\">tagged as insufficiently progressive <\/a>&#8211; not based on anything we&#8217;ve written, mind you, but on what we might write. Only, can we really not work together first and feud later? Are we so overstaffed in the fight for fundamental change that none but the perfect need apply? Are conservative purity tests so alluring that we&#8217;ve got to have a piece of that action? <i>Must<\/i><span>&nbsp; <\/span>we play the secular version of &#8220;is he Catholic enough?&#8217; <span>&nbsp;<\/span>And what, you wanna send <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/07\/29\/washington\/29justice.html?bl&amp;ex=1217476800&amp;en=8f738be5ba496284&amp;ei=5087%0A\">the progressive answer to Monica Goodling<\/a> over here to ask us a couple of questions? (You know, like when we first knew Obama was the one, and why.)<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><font color=\"#000000\">&nbsp;<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><font color=\"#000000\">Growing up in a very conservative family in a very conservative area of the country, one of the many things I never got or signed off on was how it could be that one side was right about absolutely everything while the other &#8211; the &#8220;damnDemocrats&#8221; &#8211; were more like poor old Goofus in <i>Highlights for Kids<\/i>, who never managed a smooth move in his life. This did not make sense to me then, so why would I want to flip the labels and carry on that same way now? A nice liberal lady I interviewed for a story once told me about how she&#8217;d grown up in a Right-thinking milieu, and when I said yeah, same here, she said, &#8220;But from the time you were little, you knew that wasn&#8217;t you, didn&#8217;t you?&#8221;<span>&nbsp; <\/span>Her theory was that &#8220;same as you&#8217;re born gay or straight, you&#8217;re born liberal or conservative.&#8221; I wouldn&#8217;t swear to that, though it was true enough in my case to make me laugh. But whatever we call ourselves and however we got here, aren&#8217;t labels a luxury we can&#8217;t afford?<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wow, that was quick; we&#8217;re barely open for business and already we&#8217;ve been tagged as insufficiently progressive &#8211; not based on anything we&#8217;ve written, mind you, but on what we might write. Only, can we really not work together first and feud later? Are we so overstaffed in the fight for fundamental change that none&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":243,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defining-progressive"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Progressive Purity Tests - Progressive Revival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/progressive-purity-tests.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Progressive Purity Tests - Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Wow, that was quick; we&#8217;re barely open for business and already we&#8217;ve been tagged as insufficiently progressive &#8211; not based on anything we&#8217;ve written, mind you, but on what we might write. Only, can we really not work together first and feud later? Are we so overstaffed in the fight for fundamental change that none&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/progressive-purity-tests.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-08-01T12:48:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"mhenneberger\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Progressive Purity Tests - Progressive Revival","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/progressive-purity-tests.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Progressive Purity Tests - Progressive Revival","og_description":"Wow, that was quick; we&#8217;re barely open for business and already we&#8217;ve been tagged as insufficiently progressive &#8211; not based on anything we&#8217;ve written, mind you, but on what we might write. Only, can we really not work together first and feud later? Are we so overstaffed in the fight for fundamental change that none&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/progressive-purity-tests.html","og_site_name":"Progressive Revival","article_published_time":"2008-08-01T12:48:49+00:00","author":"mhenneberger","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/progressive-purity-tests.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/progressive-purity-tests.html","name":"Progressive Purity Tests - Progressive Revival","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-08-01T12:48:49+00:00","dateModified":"2008-08-01T12:48:49+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#\/schema\/person\/1742591d63ea05d81f69ad59d0794dbb"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/progressive-purity-tests.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/progressive-purity-tests.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/progressive-purity-tests.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Progressive Purity Tests"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/","name":"Progressive Revival","description":"Politics from the New Religious Progressives","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#\/schema\/person\/1742591d63ea05d81f69ad59d0794dbb","name":"mhenneberger","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/699\/699ac51d4fc8db926295a025830359e0x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/699\/699ac51d4fc8db926295a025830359e0x96.jpg","caption":"mhenneberger"},"description":"Melinda Henneberger is a contributing writer for Slate, a columnist for the Catholic opinion journal Commonweal, and the author of If They Only Listened to Us: What Women Voters Want Politicians to Hear. For 10 years, she was a reporter for The New York Times. She lives outside Washington with her husband, Washington Post reporter Bill Turque, and their 12-year-old twins. Nothing in their house is off-the-record.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/mhenneberger"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/243"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}