By Martin F. Nolan, Globe Columnist, 08/08/98

SAN FRANCISCO

In 1885, as he lay dying of cancer, Ulysses Simpson Grant, former president and former commanding general of the Union Army, received an injection of brandy in his arm to ease his pain. The next day, the Women's Christian Temperance Union denounced the doctors for giving the general intoxicating liquor.

At the high tide of American Puritanism, the WCTU symbolized a Victorian obsession that still rules politics. Today, both parties are fixated on OPB, Other People's Behavior, using scorn, piety, and false pity.

The Republicans scapegoat homosexuality. The Democrats demonize tobacco. Neither side, in their zealotry, heeds the New Testament wisdom of St. Matthew: ``And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?''

Self-righteousness is at the core of this politics. The GOP, fearful of defectors among its armies of Christian soldiers, seeks to energize the party base by waving the witch doctor's rattle of OPB. The gay lifestyle is a handy talisman for stout defenders of ``family values'' to beat back the heathen hordes of lefty Democrats.

Piety keeps company with the bogeyman. We're not gay-bashing, goes the pharisaic chant. We hate the sin but love the sinner. Yeah, right, as anyone can say who ever witnessed a legislative or congressional debate on a gay-related subject. Tolerance is seldom the hallmark of any such discussion.

Tolerance is also missing in talk about tobacco. While smokers and gays may seem like disparate subjects, the reaction to each is similar: a hot-eyed wrath that only OPB can evoke. With a resounding sense of self-righteousness, the response often involves a strong desire to proseltyize the heathen. An ex-gay or an ex-smoker is not only a splendid trophy but living proof that there's no zealot like a convert. When the conversion effort fails, the next step is to turn the obdurate miscreant into a pariah.

Tobacco is bad for everyone, a fact of science. Hysteria over tobacco serves the needs of Democrats today, a fact of politics. If Ulysses Grant were seeking the Democratic presidential nomination today, he would be disqualified because he was once seen smoking a cigar. He used to smoke 20 a day during the Civil War, which probably caused his cancer, thus feeding a peculiar sense of self-satisfaction that animates those fixated on OPB. When the AIDS epidemic began to match the toll of lung cancer, the crocodile tears of critics flowed smugly.

Self-righteousness and even envy link gay-bashers to those who swoon over the sight of a cigarette. In Palo Alto, near Stanford University, smoking is banned in public parks. Why? To protect Palo Altan toddlers in the unlikely event an offender would deliberately exhale fumes over the jungle gym? No, it is designed to appease adult dismay at the sight of another adult enjoying an unhealthy, incorrect, and guilty pleasure.

Those who lecture smokers are perfect Puritans, the type Thomas Babington Macaulay described in his ``History of England'': ``The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.''

The instinct to criticize and ostracize is as strong as the arm of Carry Nation, who wielded an ax to saloon walls on behalf of the WCTU in the 19th century. H. L. Mencken, the leading American student of Puritanism, wrote that Prohibition was flagging until Carry Nation grabbed her ax.

``Until she invented her hatchet technique, the tide was plainly running against the drys,'' he wrote. ``They had learned how to get laws on the books, but they had not learned how to shut up saloons, and so their hearts were growing faint.''

Carry Nation's spirit lives today among those gripped by Puritanism, which Mencken defined as ``the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.''

Martin F. Nolan is a Globe columnist.

This story ran on page A15 of the Boston Globe on 08/08/98.
© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.

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