With the background that Jewish women stay in abusive marriages twice as long as their non-Jewish American counterparts, we attempt to understand the religious and cultural factors that may inhibit Jewish women from leaving violent relationships, and examine Scriptural and Rabbinic texts as to Jewish beliefs regarding spousal violence. A variety of academic sources and primary scriptural texts were analyzed for religious and cultural attitudes towards Jewish intimate partner violence. Eight Jewish victims of spousal abuse, five Rabbis and seventeen community support workers were interviewed. Jewish women face a variety of unique issues with regard to how domestic violence is experienced. Issues of communal shame, fear of anti-Semitism, learned accommodation, community disapproval, divorce law and other cultural and religious factors act as barriers to leaving. Biblical, Talmudic, and Rabbinic texts, however, speak clearly against marital violence and support a community effort toward victim support. There are thus conflicts between actual Jewish religious doctrine, and the interpretation of Jewish values amongst Jewish community members. There are social and cultural barriers to Jewish women leaving their abusive relationships, but an analysis of religious doctrine offers a source of strength for women to leave. The onus is on the Jewish community to effect change by breaking the silence and renouncing abuse.

This research looks at how local television news framed the efforts in Iowa in 2010 and 2012 to unseat Iowa Supreme Court Justices whose 2009 ruling in the case Varnum v. Brien made Iowa the third state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage. By looking at relevant news packages and interviewing journalists, news directors, and spokespersons, I traced the way the traditionally ignored judicial retention votes became a top political story, and how particular frames entered the news. I found that despite a well-meaning intention to cover the story in a professionally acceptable fashion, these same news values and reporting rituals blinded journalists to how their attempts to provide “balance” ultimately accomplished the opposite. Evidence studied here suggested that morality politics was the dominant frame throughout most of the coverage, with the civil rights aspects of the issue mostly relegated to the day after each election rather than in the weeks prior. Political science literature defines morality politics as a campaign strategy that relies upon arguments based on “morality,” “values,” or even “sin” to motivate supporters. In the Iowa case, this concept gets modified because while the conservative campaign engaged the logics of morality politics, they also felt the need to couch their campaign in issues like “judicial activism.” I conclude the ability to get news coverage of the anti-retention campaign and get this modified morality politics framing as dominant in that coverage reveals the exercise of political and social power in defense of the hegemonic heteronormative cultural matrix.

Sex education has been an American morality war from the beginning. This thesis studies the rhetoric the two major types of advocacy groups, the Christian Right and the Liberal Left, uses to discuss sex education. I conducted a content analysis of six sex education advocacy organizations. I used three organizations from the Christian Right: The Heritage Foundation, Family Research Council, and Focus on the Family and three advocacy organizations from the Liberal Left: American Civil Liberalities Union, Guttmacher Institute, and Planned Parenthood. I coded and analyzed the most relevant content each advocacy organization uses on their online platforms. As a result of my analysis, I found that the Christian Right and the Liberal Left are not debating sex education with each other, but talking to their respective bases as an audience. Meaning that no actual debate about sex education is happening in America. Furthermore, when the advocacy organizations discuss sex education, other connected issues are entangled in the debate: this is not just about sex education. Sex education is at the center of other issues both the Christian Right and the Liberal Left discuss such as: healthcare, morality, marriage, education, and STIs. Sex education is a morality war, because it is about more than sex education it is about the foundation of the Christian Right and the Liberal Left.