2020: The Year Of Moral Panic

Last week, my wife and I warched an episode of the Crimes That Changed Us series on Investigation Discovery on the McMartin preschool case. This was a bizarre, years-long rehearsal of allegations against a Manhattan Beach, CA day care that involved sex abuse of toddlers, a bad clown in a secret underground room, and Satanic sacrifices on the altar of an Episcopal church. None of this could be proven in court, and after two hung juries, the prosecution eventually got tired and dropped all charges

The narrator of the episode said the McMartin case was an example of "moral panic". My wife suggested that the current COVID crisis seems like a moral panic as well. I wasn't sure, but the idea was tantalizing enough that I decided to do some research on the web the next day.

Moral panics are normally the province of sociology. What I've found is that much of the academic discussion is limited by the current Overton window, and academics will be likely to accept COVID restrictions as entirely reasonable. I don't agree, and naturally, I won't find conventional discussion necessarily insightful or helpful. But, with reservations, I find the YouTube discussion above is at least a good general introduction to the subject. Other web discussins, like Wikipedia, nevertheless do seem to provide a consensus outline of what a moral panic is:

A moral panic is a feeling of fear spread among many people that some evil threatens the well-being of society. It is "the process of arousing social concern over an issue – usually the work of moral entrepreneurs and the mass media".

In recent centuries the mass media have become important players in the dissemination of moral indignation, even when they do not appear to be consciously engaged in sensationalism or in muckraking. Simply reporting a subset of factual statements without contextual nuance can be enough to generate concern, anxiety, or panic. Stanley Cohen states that moral panic happens when "a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests".

Earlier examples of moral panics would include the Salem witch trials and Prohibition. Some discussions trace the incidence of moral panics to the need to resolve an underlying social tension. Prohibition, for instance, has been traced to tensions over immigration, particularly Catholics, who routinely consume wine and other alcohol, whereas nativist Protestants were often teetotal. The narrator of the TV special above traced the McMartin case to bourgeois discomfort over the rising trend of families where both parents have jobs and the resulting need to place children in day care. Both suggestions seem reasonable, and I'll discuss this in tomorrow's post.

So a key first element of a moral panic is a set of conditions that makes a threat to overall social order credible -- and this threat is often identified with a group. What this group is in the case of COVID is also worth separate discussion, although one key factor is that mass media and moral enforcers have emphasized, from the start of the panic, that China, although empirically the place where the COVID virus somehow escaped, is most assuredly not the threat. Odd, no?

The next element of such a panic is "moral entrepreneurs", individuals who become clearly identified with the issue, and who work in concert with, the mass media to articulate the threat in its early phases. In the McMartin case, the key entrepreneur was Judy Johnson, a Manhattan Beach, CA mother who alleged that her toddler son had been sodomized by her estranged husband and by a McMartin teacher. As the case developed, Ms Johnson turned out to be mentally unstable, and the charges likely were motivated by the custody battle, but they were enough to incite panic given the underlying social tensions that media and other entrepreneurs could exploit opportunistically. (Ms Johnson subsequently was foud dead at age 42 of alcoholic liver diease in the course of the panic.)

Other moral entrepreneurs emerged, including Los Angeles District Attorney Ira Reiner, who secured grand jurty indictments against every school employee, and Kee MacFarlane, a psychologist who conducted highly questionable interviews with the toddlers, promptng them to confirm stories of secret tunnels, flying witches, children being flushed down toilets, and animals being slaughtered on the altar of a local church.

This leads to another feature of moral panics, that the perceived threat is disproportinate to the actual threat in some measurable way. In recent times, the disproportion can be overcome by professional credentials among the moral entrepreneurs. In the McMartin case, the bizarre accusations and unbelievable overall narrative were supported by credientialed experts, including a district attorney backed up by professional psychologists and medical doctors.

The life of the McMartin scandal was relatively brief. I think the factors behind this included limited potential gain for the entrepreneurs -- Ms Johnson turned out to be too sick to continue in her campaign -- and other actors were driven by some combination of narcissism and fairly limited prospects for professional advancement, which proved not to be attainable given their overall poor performance in the courtroom.

In addition, the McMartin case proved to be limited in geographic scope, with fairly limited implications for overall social control on the part of the moral enforcers. People still needed day care, so imposing some form of radical control over it was not a realistic goal. Prohibition, on the othr hand, had a much wider scope, though it failed, first practically and soon enough legislatively, because too many people wanted to drink legallly.

Several discussions of moral panics I've found do suggest they have a life cycle, with a "morning after" phase. I'll conside this in subsequent posts as well.

Roman Catholic Bishops Begin Pushback On COVID Restrictions

From the Catholic News Agency

[San Francisco Abp Salvatore Cordileone] criticized a new health order from the state of California placing San Francisco and San Mateo Counties into a more restrictive tier of coronavirus restrictions, resulting in a ban on indoor worship services.

The health order treats religious worship as a “non-essential” activity, while allowing hair and nail salons, massage parlors, and tattoo parlors to remain open, Cordileone noted.

“This is precisely the kind of blatant discrimination to which the Supreme Court gave injunctive relief in New York,” he said, referencing a decision Wednesday which blocked New York from similarly closing houses of worship while allowing secular retail venues to remain open.

. . . The archbishop recognized concerns over rising COVID hospitalizations, and said he is discerning the proper course of action, with advice from his fellow bishops, archdiocesan lawyers, and infectious disease specialists.

Also from the Catholic News Agency,

Kentucky’s four Catholic dioceses will not suspend public Masses despite the governor’s request that religious services be held online only until December 13.

. . . “At this time, we will not be suspending public liturgies but encourage all to act in a responsible way that respects the seriousness of this pandemic and the health and safety of all,” said Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville in a statement on November 19.

I think the subtext here is that, with the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn winning its injunction against New York State lockdown orders, the US bishops are beginning to evaluate their options. Abp Cordileone has been in the lead in objectinng to California lockdown measures, while the Archdiocese of New York endorsed the Diocese of Brooklyn's suit when it was filed. That Cordileone would mention that he's getting "advice from his fellow bishops, archdiocesan lawyers, and infectious disease specialists" suggests that serious next steps will be undertaken.

It appears from the direction of both statements that the ecclesiastical authorities intend to regain control over conditioins of worship and liturgy, for now giving communicants discretion over whether to worship in person. I don't know if the bishops would articulate their situation in exactly these terms, but I think they see that we're in a moral panic, where "moral entrepreneurs" have seized public opinion and are controlling public behavior for essentially their own aggrandizement. This would include a public health establishment aligned with leftist politicians who wish to de-privilege a range of social behavior, including Jewish and Christian worship.

Although moderates insist that such measures -- extending not just to church, but increasingly to traditional holiday celebrations like Halloween and Thanksgiving -- are meant to be temporary, other politicians and public health figures telegraph that they're meant to become a "new normal". Even the moderates are vague about just how "temporary" the measures will be, and a consensus seems to be emerging that they won't end with a vaccine. I think the bishops are correct to oppose all such trends, legally and in the public forum.

"Moral enforcers" are also seeking to perpetuate the authority they've gained from the initial crisis, for instance now by insisting that new waves of the virus continue to threaten the social order. The bishops legitimately see themselves as the traditional spokesmen for some part of the social order and are seeking to regain their normal role. Even if they don't necessarily see the current circumstances as a "moral panic", I think they're at least resisting the right symptoms, and for the right reasons. I think Evangelical spokesmen like Pastor John MacArthur are correctly working in the same direction.

The fairly recent notion of "moral panic" does seem to be a productive way to understand what's going on. I'll look more closely at this in subsequent posts.

Mounties Enforce The New Normal In Manitoba

As reported here, "Under new lockdown restrictions in Manitoba, no more than five people can gather in one location, including if they remain in their cars." However, a church in Steinbach, MB elected to hold a drive-in service in violation of the order. The RCMP, of all agencies, then blocked the highway leading to the church parking lot to prevent this.

From episodes like this, it seems like Canada is an order of magnitude crazier than the US on COVID restrictions, and the US is pretty crazy. But in the US, police agencies began to recognize even last spring that hauling moms off in cuffs for taking their kids to the playground was a bad look, and they dropped it. Now, poliec agencies back off this sort of thing, with the chiefs saying in one way or another that they don't enforce health orders.

Manitoba borders the US states of Minnesota and North Dakota and has had 16,483 COVID cases total, with 301 deaths. for a case fatality rate of about 0.02%. Manitoba's population is 1.359 million, which I believe gives a 2020 COVID death rate of about 22 per 100,000, which is roughly comparable to the overall 2018 Canadian death rate from seasonal flu and pneumonia of 23 per 100,000.

But this results in the national police being called in to block church attendance. Poor Steinbach, which with a population of less than 20,000 is the third largest city in Manitoba, seems to have become a focus for provincial indignation. "Steinbach late to recognize COVID-19 threat, some residents say," reads the CBC headline.

The Mounties blocked vehicle access to an anti-lockdown protest there Nov 14, while health officials issued fines to inividual protesters, apparently for not wearing masks or social distancing. In the US, enforcement of mask and social distance rules at protests is nugatory, and in fact, the epidemiological effect of non-socially distanced protests hasn't been publicized, if it's been measured at all.

Press coverage of COVID case rates in Canada appears to be even more hysterical than in the US. But we're looking at a global phenomenon that I'm beginning to think is basically a moral panic. I'll have more to say about this.

Another Free-Exercise Petition Goes To The Supreme Court

On Nov 23, the Thomas More Society announced that it had filed a petition for Writ of Certiorari with the US Supreme Court on behalf of South Bay United Pentecostal Church in San Diego. This is essentially a renewal of a petition for certiorari that the court deniedd in a 5-4 vote last May.

The announcement quotes special counsel Charles LiMandri, “Governor Newsom, in revising his reopening restrictions under his new California ‘Blueprint’ framework, has not only continued his disparate treatment of places of worship but has exacerbated the discrimination by targeting a core practice of South Bay’s religious expression – the ability to raise one’s voice to worship God in song." This has been a concern I've had since the start of lockdowns, that government assumes the ability not just to limit or prohibit attendance at religious services, but to regulate liturgical practice.

Choral singing, chanting, congregational responses, use of pew hymnals and missals, and processions have all been effectively banned, with no justification. Singing was banned universally due to anecdotal evidence from a single Mt Vernon, WA choir practice, when plain evidence from the Southern California megachurches that have not implemented COVID restrictions and continue to sing is that, even without masks, normal liturgical practice does not spread the disease.

The Nov 25 decision by the Supreme Court staying Gov Cuomo's esecutive orders indicates that the court will tend to strike down disparate treatment, especially in cases where any specific attendance limits are imposed on churches and synagogues, but no equivalent limits are placed on "essential" businesses. The Thomas More suit notes that Newsom's color-coded controls have no provision for returning to full liberty and only permit 50% church capacity at the lowest risk tier.

(In the Roman Catholic Diocese of Los Angeles, it appears that the diocese at least is no longer imposing numerical limits on outdoor mass attendance, although singing and other liturgical practices continue not to be used. Indoor masses are still prohibited. This is an indication of the vague and arbitrary nature of such controls.)

It interests me that, as flights delivering COVID vaccine begin, health departments have been making no announcements of how they plan to implement vaccinations, or how they may affect COVID restrictions going forward. It seems clear that authorities will be slow and very reluctant to relax controls, no matter the effectiveness of vaccines.

This is going to be a long and difficult fight. It's nevertheless encouraging that political authorities are forced to recognize that the population will not be docile going forward.

Canada Isn't The US

Toronto is less than a hundred miles from Buffalo, but I couldn't help but notice a contrast. Over the US holiday, photos and videos of Toronto police arresting restaurant owner Adam Skelly for trying to reopen his barbeque vent viral. Commentators saw at least eight units and ten officers on the scene, which was little short of a SWAT deployment. Skelly was unarmed and faced charges like operating a business without a license.

A week ago in Buffalo, three sheriff's deputies and a health inspector entered a gym to try to disperse members who were holding a meeting. It sounds as if the members had had some type of legal advice, as they shouted at the deputies that they were in effect conducting a warrantless search, and under the US Fourth Amendment, they were trespassing on private property. After some shilly-shallying and scolding from the health inspector, they were prevailed upon to leave the building and then the parking lot.

Nobody was cuffed and hauled away to jail like Skelly.

Skelly's public statements in the days prior to his arrest indicate this was an event he planned and staged for the express purpose of becoming a martyr. This is exactly why in general, US police agencies have avoided this type of confrontation, and many sheriffs and police chiefs have explicitly said they do not enforce health orders. I'm puzzled that Toronto authorities allowed themselves to be put into the situation of creating both a martyr and a leadership figure, when equivalent attempts to do this sort of thing in the US created folk heroes like Karl Manke, the Owosso, MI barber, and Shelly Luther, the Dallas salon owner.

(For that matter, although an internal review, a review by another police agency, and yet another review at the provincial level, of the May 4 violent takedown of the Lethbridge, AB Star Wars trooper were promised, I've found no reference to any such review being published or even conducted in the nearly seven months since that happened. Canada, I fear, isn't the US.)

Although the Los Angeles County health department just tightened its latest restrictions to prohibit any gatherings of people who aren't members of the same household, it explicitly excepted both protests and church services, which it said are "constitutionally protected rights". The addition of church as an express exception is completely new, and it reflects a well-founded fear of an active citizenry, as well as the newly rediscovered role of the US Supreme Court.

I don't believe I would be happy living in Canada.

Another Free-Exercise Case Goes To The Supreme Court

In yesterday's post, I mentioned a petition for injunctive relief that's gone to the court from a New Jersey SSPX priest and an Orthodox rabbi. I covered this case in its initial phase on my old blog here. In another case, Harvest Rock Church of Pasadena, CA has petitioned for injunctive relief pending appeal in its federal lawsuit against California lockdown orders. This is the same type of relief the court granted the Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and the New York synagogues Wednesday night.

One possible difference among the suits is that Harvest Rock Church has been deliberately violating the California orders, while as far as I can determine, the other churches and synagogues have not. An argument the Catholic diocese made in its case was that it had been following the existing rules prior to Gov Cuomo's red-light order, and in following those rules, it had seen no COVID cases. The court in its opinion recognized this argument in the diocese's favor.

Harvest Rock is in a different position, since it's one of three Southern California megachurches that resumed worship last May without masks or social distancing. All three claim that there have been minimal p;ositive tests among their thousands of attendees since that time, and apparently no hospitalizatins. (I assume that local media would cover more numerous positives or any hospitalizations heavily if they took place.) How the court will react to this difference remains to be seen.

It isn't entirely clear if in fact the New York synagogues had been violating previous, less restrictive COVID orders prior to Gov Cuomo's imposition of "red zone" orders. Certainly the implication of Cuomo's remarks, as well as press coverage, was that the Jews had somehow been wrecking things for everyone else and needed to be curbed, so this may have been an issue.

The conundrum at the basis of all COVID restrictions is that they don't seem to have any effect on testing rates in particular. The states with the tightest new restrictions had had stringent ones before the latest spike. Most of California already prohibited indoor church services and required masks and social distancing. Choral singing and congregational response were also prohibited. There have been equivalent, though looser, controls over most other acitivity, including retail shopping. In California, masks are ubiquitous.

Yet the response of civil authorites has been to scold the population for not being safe enough, when it appears that people have been following all appropriate guidelines, and in fact nobody seems to be asking why, if the guidelines are being followed, cases are spiking. If the only answer is to tighten controls still more, that will simply mean an indefinite renweed stay-at-home lockdown, which is in fact what's being threatened, with the implication that this is the fault of the citizenry, who will deserve it.

At the same time, the authorities seem generally to be aware that a new lockdown will probably result in civil unrest. In addiiton, If COVID control measures continue to be arbitrary and ineffective -- as they're more and more appearing to be -- this will damage the ability of health officials to control future epidemics. That so far, there's been no effective leadership in this area at either the state, national, or global level has been the unacknowledged crisis of 2020.

Supreme Court Stops New York Restrictions On Churches And Synagogues

This is being widely covered, for instance here, so I'm not going to go into specifics. On one hand, this is something that should have been done last May, when the court refused to hear similar California cases, at least psrtly on the basis that Gov Newsom loosened the restrictions once the suits were brought.

But that didn't deal with the reality that all such restrictions are subject to the governor's whim,. and six weeks later, Newsom simply reimposed the restrictions he'd lifted. Chief Justice Roberts in his dissent from the new ruling said that Cuomo had lifted the strictest restrictions as soon as the suit was filed, but the majority recognized that Cuomo, like Newsom, could pull the same ploy and issued an injunction against enforcing them, whether he'd temporarily lifted them or not.

For the court to deal with this has been overdue, since such extreme restrictions are in force elsewhee. The court''s decision noted inconsistencies in capacity limits for houses of worship vis-a-v9is other indoor activities. Whether this line of reasoning can be applied to other cases remains to be se4n.

In addition, the court noted that the houses of worship had not seen COVID cases under the prior, looser restrictions. This is one argument that the California megachurches that have not followed the governor's directives have made: for months, with thousands attending church services without social distancing, there has been negligible transmission. Whether this will affect their legal cases remains to be seen.

But at least this is a belated start.

The Thomas More Society has brought a very similar motion for injunctive relief to the Supreme Court in a New Jersey case. The New York restrictions were much more extreme -- limits of 10 or 25 attendees -- while the New Jersey restrictions are more common in other states, 25% of capacity up to a numerical limit. But the suit alleges that churches are being held to different standards from other activities.

We'll have to see what develops.