SOURCE: Wikipedia, captured 2020-09-15
This page last modified: 2023-06-12 16:45:20 -0700 (PST)
The Christian right (the religious right) are Christian political factions that are characterized by their strong support of socially conservative policies. Christian conservatives seek to influence politics and public policy with their interpretation of the teachings of Christianity.
In the United States, the Christian right is an informal coalition formed around a core of conservative evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics. The Christian right draws additional support from politically conservative mainline Protestants and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The movement has its roots in American politics going back as far as the 1940s and has been especially influential since the 1970s. Its influence draws from grassroots activism as well as from focus on social issues and the ability to motivate the electorate around those issues.
The Christian right is notable for advancing socially conservative positions on issues including school prayer, intelligent design, embryonic stem cell research, homosexuality, euthanasia, contraception, sex education, abortion, and pornography. Although the term Christian right is most commonly associated with politics in the United States, similar Christian conservative groups can be found in the political cultures of other Christian-majority nations.
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Criticisms of the Christian right often come from Christians who believe Jesus' message was centered on social responsibility and social justice. Theologian Michael Lerner has summarized: "The unholy alliance of the Political Right and the Religious Right threatens to destroy the America we love. It also threatens to generate a revulsion against God and religion by identifying them with militarism, ecological irresponsibility, fundamentalist antagonism to science and rational thought, and insensitivity to the needs of the poor and the powerless."
Commentators from all sides of the aisle such as [hypocrite] Rob Schenck, Randall Balmer, and Charles M. Blow criticized the Christian right for its tolerance and embrace of Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election, despite Trump's failure to adhere to any of the principles advocated by the Christian right groups for decades.
See also: Christian left, a range of center-left and left-wing Christian political and social movements that largely embrace social justice viewpoints and uphold a social gospel.
One argument which questions the legitimacy of the Christian right posits that Jesus Christ may be considered a leftist on the modern political spectrum. Jesus' concern with the poor and feeding the hungry, among other things, are argued, by proponents of Christian leftism, to be core attributes of modern-day socialism and social justice. However, others contend that while Jesus' concern for the poor and hungry is virtuous and that individuals have a moral obligation to help others, the relationship between charity and the state should not be construed in the same manner.
According to Frank Newport of Gallup, "there are fewer Americans today who are both highly religious and liberal than there are Americans who are both highly religious and conservative." Newport also noted that 52% of white conservatives identify as "highly religious" while only 16% of white liberals identify as the same. However, African-Americans, "the most religious of any major racial or ethnic group in the country," are "strongly oriented to voting Democratic." While observing that African-American Democrats are more religious than their white Democrat counterparts, Newport further noted, however, that African-American Democrats are "much more likely to be ideologically moderate or conservative."
Some criticize what they see as a politicization of Christianity because they say Jesus transcends political concepts.
Mikhail Gorbachev referred to Jesus as "the first Socialist."
The Christian right has tried to recruit social conservatives in the black church. Prior to the 2016 United States presidential election, African-American Republican [transphobe] Ben Carson emerged as a leader in the Christian right. Other Christian African-Americans who identify with conservatism are Supreme Court of the United States Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, rapper Kanye West, Alveda King, and pastor Tony Evans.
Whilst the Christian right in the United States is making a tough stand against the progression of LGBT rights, other Christian movements have taken a more lenient approach towards the matter, arguing that the biblical texts only oppose specific types of divergent sexual behaviour, such as paederasty (i.e. the sodomising of young boys by older men).
During the Trump administration, there is a growing push for religious liberty bills that would allow individuals and businesses claiming anti-LGBT beliefs that are religious in origin to exempt themselves from obeying anti-discrimination laws intended to protect LGBT people.
There are a large number of evangelical / fundamentalist Christian influenced, very wealthy, very influential, highly pernicious "dark money" 501(c) nonprofit organizations pushing anti-LGBTQ+ agendae.
To more fully understand the genesis, funding, and propagation of anti-LGBTQ+ forces prevalent throughout society, it is imperative to identify and understand the "dark money" [501(c) nonprofits] forces that fund and fuel these hateful agendae. Note, particularly, the following Machiavellian influencers.
The Heritage Foundation: numerous Trump admin appointees including Betsy DeVos, Roger Severino and others - culminating in the Trump administration's erasure of transgender civil rights protections in health care.
[2019-01-29] Heritage Foundation: Conservative group hosts anti-transgender panel of feminists 'from the left'.
Secretive Right-wing Nonprofit Plays Role in COVID-19 Organizing
Those, and other groups deploy well-funded, highly sophisticated agendae and personnel, providing incredibly powerful resources for those who seek to subvert human rights and freedoms. Most notably, many of the groups listed above were tapped by Donald Trump to lead, staff and direct repressive anti-LGBTQ+ policies affecting millions of vulnerable Americans. [Those same groups likewise sourced personnel and policies that drive various neoliberal, neoconservative, neofascist, misogynistic, xenophobic policies within the Trump administration.]
Regarding transphobia, note particularly the following Trump administration transphobes:
Betsy DeVos: billionaire hyper-religious zealot
Roger Severino -- highly damaging, hyper-religious zealot who within the Trump administration eviscerated transgender rights - citing pro-Christian objections to providing fundamental healthcare based on religious objections.
Note also (again, invariably religion-driven) transphobic hate (versions of which baselessly accuse gay men of pedophilia):
Some social scientists have used the word "dominionism" to refer to adherence to Dominion Theology as well as to the influence in the broader Christian Right of ideas inspired by Dominion Theology. Although such influence (particularly of Reconstructionism) has been described by many authors, full adherents to Reconstructionism are few and marginalized among conservative Christians. In the early 1990s, sociologist Sara Diamond defined dominionism in her PhD dissertation as a movement that, while including Dominion Theology and Reconstructionism as subsets, is much broader in scope, extending to much of the Christian Right. She was followed by journalists including Frederick Clarkson and Chris Hedges and others who have stressed the influence of Dominionist ideas on the Christian right.
The terms "dominionist" and "dominionism" are rarely used for self-description, and their usage has been attacked from several quarters. Journalist Anthony Williams charged that its purpose is "to smear the Republican Party as the party of domestic Theocracy, facts be damned." Stanley Kurtz labeled it "conspiratorial nonsense," "political paranoia," and "guilt by association," and decried Hedges' "vague characterizations" that allow him to "paint a highly questionable picture of a virtually faceless and nameless 'Dominionist' Christian mass." Kurtz also complained about a perceived link between average Christian evangelicals and extremism such as Christian Reconstructionism:
The notion that conservative Christians want to reinstitute slavery and rule by genocide is not just crazy, it's downright dangerous. The most disturbing part of the Harper's cover story (the one by Chris Hedges) was the attempt to link Christian conservatives with Hitler and fascism. Once we acknowledge the similarity between conservative Christians and fascists, Hedges appears to suggest, we can confront Christian evil by setting aside 'the old polite rules of democracy.' So wild conspiracy theories and visions of genocide are really excuses for the Left to disregard the rules of democracy and defeat conservative Christians -- by any means necessary.
Lisa Miller of Newsweek said that many warnings about "dominionism" are "paranoid" and that "the word creates a siege mentality in which 'we' need to guard against 'them.'" Ross Douthat of The New York Times noted that "many of the people that writers like Diamond and others describe as 'dominionists' would disavow the label, many definitions of dominionism conflate several very different Christian political theologies, and there's a lively debate about whether the term is even useful at all." According to Joe Carter of First Things, "the term was coined in the 1980s by Diamond and is never used outside liberal blogs and websites. No reputable scholars use the term for it is a meaningless neologism that Diamond concocted for her dissertation," while Jeremy Pierce of First Things coined the word "dominionismist" to describe those who promote the idea that there is a dominionist conspiracy.
Other criticism has focused on the proper use of the term. Berlet wrote that "some critics of the Christian Right have stretched the term dominionism past its breaking point," and argued that, rather than labeling conservatives as extremists, it would be better to "talk to these people" and "engage them." Sara Diamond wrote that "liberals' writing about the Christian Right's take-over plans has generally taken the form of conspiracy theory," and argued that instead one should "analyze the subtle ways" that ideas like Dominionism "take hold within movements and why."
Dan Olinger, a professor at the fundamentalist Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, said, "We want to be good citizens and participants, but we're not really interested in using the iron fist of the law to compel people to everything Christians should do." Bob Marcaurelle, interim pastor at Mountain Springs Baptist Church in Piedmont, said the Middle Ages were proof enough that Christian ruling groups are almost always corrupted by power. "When Christianity becomes the government, the question is whose Christianity?" Marcaurelle asked.
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See main article: Mark Keith Robinson
[RightWingWatch.org, 2021-10-29] N.C. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson Declares That "Christian Patriots" Will "Own This Nation and Rule This Nation".
North Carolina's Christian nationalist Republican Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who recently announced that he's "about 95 percent sure" that he will be running for governor in 2024, spoke at a Stand Up For America rally in Raleigh, North Carolina Friday morning [2021-10-29], where he thundered that "the Christian patriots of this nation will own this nation and rule this nation."
Mark Robinson began his speech by thanking God and declaring that anyone who doesn't agree that the United States is a Christian nation is free to go live somewhere else. "You can leave God's country, and we will not miss you," Robinson said. Later, Robinson told the crowd that they are God's regiment on Earth and "the living embodiment" of all those who have sacrificed their lives in defense of this nation.
"Tell our enemies on the other side of the aisle that will drag this nation down into a socialist hellhole that you will only do it as you run past me laying on the ground, choking on my own blood because I will not give up this nation to you!" Mark Robinson bellowed [YouTube link]. "It is not yours. You did not build it, you did not defend it, and you will not own it. We will. The Christian patriots of this nation will own this nation and rule this nation and help freedom survive for future generations."
... According to a federal appeals court ruling on March 7, 2018, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) does not justify discrimination against employees on the basis of their lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender identity. However, on October 15, 2019, federal judge Reed O'Connor said that, because of the RFRA, federally-funded healthcare insurers and providers must be allowed to deny medical treatment and coverage on the basis of the sex, gender identity or termination of pregnancy of the person who is requesting the services, even if the services are medically necessary. Transgender people may be turned down even if the healthcare service they need is not related to their being transgender. ...
[📌 pinned article] Salem Media Group: Christian right mass media, including Salem Radio Network. | see also: Larry Elder
[📌 pinned article] Christian Coalition of America
[📌 pinned article] Moral Majority
[📌 pinned article] Michael Richard Pence
[📌 pinned article] [RewireNewsGroup.com, 2021-09-30] Panty Grab: How Evangelicals Are Rewriting Sexual Privacy Rights. All of the rights we consider normal are based on the 14th Amendment. Conservative Christian evangelicals have their sights on dismantling all of that.
"I think what people are missing is that they're coming for the 14th Amendment." Laurie Bertram Roberts, Executive Director of the Yellowhammer Fund and a seasoned reproductive justice advocate in Mississippi, surprised me when she said that.
She's right, of course, but the way she phrased it struck me. Oftentimes people will warn that conservatives are coming for your birth control. Or for the right of same-sex couples to marry and adopt or foster children without discrimination. But "they're coming for the 14th Amendment" means more than that.
It means conservative Christian evangelicals have their sights set on dismantling the 14th Amendment, and they're not just coming for what law nerds call substantive due process rights. Those are rights that relate to intimate areas of people's lives: the fundamental right to privacy, out of which springs the right to abortion and the right to contraception, along with other rights related to childbirth, childrearing, marriage, and sex.
It means they're coming for the part of the United States Constitution that is supposed to level the playing field for systematically minoritized and oppressed people. It's not just due process rights that conservatives are after - it's the very basis of the right to equal protection, too. They want to strip 14th Amendment protections from people who are alive and breathing and confer those protections on fertilized eggs, embryos, and blastocysts.
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The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Often considered one of the most consequential amendments, it addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. The amendment was bitterly contested, particularly by the states of the defeated Confederacy, which were forced to ratify it in order to regain representation in Congress. The amendment, particularly its first section, is one of the most litigated parts of the Constitution, forming the basis for landmark Supreme Court decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954) regarding racial segregation, Roe v. Wade (1973) regarding abortion, Bush v. Gore (2000) regarding the 2000 presidential election, and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) regarding same-sex marriage. The amendment limits the actions of all state and local officials, and also those acting on behalf of such officials. ...
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In case you haven't noticed - and I know you have - this country [
Somehow, despite everything in election 2020 [
Meanwhile, a year [2021] in which the
[MotherJones.com, 2021-11-26] The Pope Welcomed Biden. So Why are US Catholic Bishops Waging a Holy War? And their not-so-secret weapon is the Holy Eucharist. | There was an unprecedented politicization of conservative Catholic clergy, some saying that any Catholic who voted Democratic would go to hell while others threatened to deny communion to Democrats in their parishes. | Archbishop Gomez delivered a polarizing public address at a conference in Spain arguing that "wokeness," "social justice," and "intersectionality" were "dangerous" and "atheistic" pseudo-religions that "have come to fill the space that Christian belief and practice once occupied."
[theNation.com, 2021-11-26] Who Is the University of Austin For? The project's uphill battle points to a deeper contradiction within what might be called neo-neoconservatism.
[CTVNews.ca, 2021-10-30] Number of Canadians reporting religious affiliations at all-time low: StatCan.
A new report from Statistics Canada (StatCan) has found that Canadians are becoming less religious. StatCan data released on Thursday [2021-10-28] shows that in 2019, only 68 per cent of Canadians 15 or older reported having a religious affiliation.
It's the first time that fewer than 70 per cent of Canadians reported being religiously affiliated since StatCan began tracking the data in 1985. Between 2000 and 2017, the percentage of religiously affiliated Canadians hovered around 77 to 82 per cent, before declining to 75 per cent in 2018. Only 23 per cent of Canadians in 2019 reported attending group religious activities, such as church service, at least once a month. Between 2000 and 2009, that figure was around 30 per cent.
StatCan also found that religion was becoming less important for more Canadians. The percentage of people who reported that religious or spiritual beliefs were somewhat important or very important was 54 per cent in 2019. In the mid-2000s, it was around 70 per cent.
Individual religious activities, such as prayer or meditation, are also on the decline. Only 30 per cent of Canadians reported engaging in such activities at least once a week, compared to 46 per cent in 2006, when the data was first collected. ...
[ExposedByCMD.org, 2021-10-04] ALEC Leaders Boast About Anti-Abortion, Anti-Trans Bills.
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[ExposedByCMD.org, 2021-10-04] ALEC Leaders Boast About Anti-Abortion, Anti-Trans Bills.
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a pay-to-play network of conservative state lawmakers and business lobbyists that writes model legislation, claims that it no longer works on social policy. But videos of ALEC-led events, obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), tell a very different story.
At the 40th anniversary meeting of the Council for National Policy (CNP) in May 2021, ALEC leaders boasted about their extensive efforts to advance state legislation to severely restrict access to abortion and limit the rights of trans students, as well as voter suppression bills.
CNP is a secretive network of far-right Christian political figures and donors that works behind the scenes to influence Washington. "We've had a history of working on other issues like gun rights and social issues and things like that, which has not ended well for ALEC," said CEO Lisa Nelson at a "Saving American Through the States" action session at the group's meeting. "Because of our intersection of business and legislators we kind of stick to the fiscal issues."
However, right after saying that, Nelson explained how her organization is creating model "election reform" policies "through" the Honest Elections Project [see also], a dark money voter suppression group tied to the influential Leonard Leo, CMD reported. Nelson states specifically that ALEC has "acted as a resource for legislators" and planned to develop a "model policy" with the Honest Elections Project at its July 2021 meeting.
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[RightWingWatch.org, 2021-09-23] Anti-LGBTQ, Anti-Choice Groups Mobilize to Elect Glenn Youngkin Virginia Governor.
Anti-LGBTQ and anti-choice religious-right groups and leaders are mobilizing to help Republican Glenn Youngkin win this year's Virginia gubernatorial election in which voting is already underway.
Youngkin has bragged about endorsements from national religious-right groups, including the anti-choice Susan B. Anthony List and National Right to Life Committee. Another right-wing anti-choice group, CatholicVote.org, told supporters in an email on the first day of early voting that the group had been "planning for this race for months." CatholicVote.org slammed Catholic Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe's support for Roe v. Wade and told its followers that the race has "national importance" and "the first big high-profile referendum on the Biden presidency." CatholicVote.org claimed that it had recruited more than 100 volunteers for its voter outreach efforts.
Another religious-right political operation, My Faith Votes, is mobilizing to maximize turnout of conservative Christian voters in the Virginia election. In an email sent to supporters Tuesday, My Faith Votes' Jason Yates [local copy] said, "What happens in Virginia will send a loud signal to the rest of the nation." Jason Yates asked activists to join an operation to send letters to "Christians who are unlikely to vote unless encouraged to go to the polls and stand for biblical values."
"Impact the elections in Virginia for the Lord," says a My Faith Votes webpage recruiting volunteers. "He promises blessings from our obedience and so we do as He instructs and trust the results to him."
My Faith Votes invested heavily in an unsuccessful effort to elect Republicans in the 2021 Georgia U.S. Senate races won by Sens. Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff and in the failed campaign to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom. My Faith Votes' page for Virginia voters promotes a video in which Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson urges people to vote for "godly" candidates and against people who "practice perversion."
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... On 2015-05-02, Ben Carson proclaimed that in two days he was going to make a major announcement on his decision on whether to enter the presidential race. ... Carson suspended his campaign on 2016-03-04 and announced he would be the new national chairman of My Faith Votes, a group that encourages Christians to exercise their civic duty to vote. ... [Source: Wikipedia.]
[CNN.com, 2016-03-04] ... Earlier Friday, My Faith Votes announced Ben Carson as its new national chairman, putting out a statement ahead of Carson's address to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
"Nothing is more important to me than my personal faith, and it is my faith that motivated me to be involved in the political process to begin with," Carson said in a statement. "I believe Christians in this country can easily determine the next president of the United States and all other national and local leaders, should they simply show up at the polls."
The tax-exempt nonprofit educational group [My Faith Votes] says it will undertake a national media campaign that will gather steam into the November [2016] presidential election. "In the last four presidential elections, an average of less than five million votes separated the major candidates." My Faith Votes President Sealy Yates [local copy], said in a statement. "Yet, more than 25 million Christians didn't bother to even show up at the polls in 2012."
Ben Carson repeated the message in a video on the My Faith Votes's website, saying it's his goal to encourage all Christians in "exercising our civic duty and voting."
My Faith Votes said Carson agreed to take on the position the same day he announced he could not see a "path forward" for his presidential campaign on Wednesday. He did not participate in the GOP debate on Thursday. ...
[Economist.com, 2021-09-22] Religious belief really does seem to draw the sting of poverty. Whether the cause is spiritual or social remains to be determined. "... The upshot is that religion seems to protect people from at least some of the unpleasant effects of poverty. Exactly how is less clear. ..."
[CommonDreams.org, 2021-09-18] Architect of Texas Abortion Ban Takes Aim at LGBTQ+ Rights While Urging Reversal of Roe. "Make no mistake, the goal is to force extreme, outdated, religious-driven values on all of us through the courts." | "... women can 'control their reproductive lives' without access to abortion; they can do so by refraining from sexual intercourse" -- Jonathan Mitchell | "All anti-LGBTQ and anti-choice views stem from the same desire to control bodies." -- Zack Ford, Alliance for Justice
Advocates for reproductive freedom and LGTBQ+ equality on Saturday pointed to a legal brief filed in a U.S. Supreme Court case that could soon overturn as a crucial example of the broader goals of those fighting to end abortion rights across the United States. "It's never just been about fetuses. It's about controlling sex," tweeted Muhlenberg College assistant professor Jacqueline D. Antonovich, a historian of health and medicine.
Both Antonovich and Elie Mystal, The Nation's justice correspondent, responded to a portion of the brief by New York University School of Law professor Melissa Murray that challenges previous rulings from the country's highest court on not only abortion but also LGBTQ+ rights. "Of course" the so-called "right to life" movement is also coming after cases that established key LGBTQ+ protections, said Mystal, "because it's never about 'life' and always about 'Christian fundamentalism.'"
The amicus brief (pdf) that Murray highlighted - co-authored by the architect of a new abortion ban in Texas - urges reversing Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling that affirmed the constitutional right to pre-viability abortions, and the related 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
The brief also takes aim at , a 2003 case that overturned homophobic state sodomy laws, and the 2015 equal marriage case Obergefell v. Hodges, suggesting that the court should not "hesitate to write an opinion that leaves those decisions hanging by a thread. Lawrence and Obergefell, while far less hazardous to human life, are just as lawless as Roe."
Zack Ford of the progressive group Alliance for Justice said Saturday [2021-09-18] that "this is hardly surprising. Conservatives know they've got the Supreme Court in the palm of their hands and they'll ask for anything and everything, including the return of sodomy laws. Remember, ALL anti-LGBTQ and anti-choice views stem from the same desire to control bodies."
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The legal mind behind S.B. 8, Jonathan F. Mitchell, "has spent the last seven years honing a largely below-the-radar strategy of writing laws deliberately devised to make it much more difficult for the judicial system - particularly the Supreme Court - to thwart them," according to The New York Times. A former Texas solicitor general and clerk to the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Jonathan Mitchell also co-authored the legal brief attacking Lawrence and Obergefell. His brief for the group Texas Right to Life - just one of several anti-choice filings submitted to the high court in late July 2021 - also states that "women can 'control their reproductive lives' without access to abortion; they can do so by refraining from sexual intercourse.'"
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[MIT: TechnologyReview.com, 2021-09-16] Troll farms reached 140 million Americans a month on Facebook before 2020 election, internal report shows. "This is not normal. This is not healthy." In the run-up to the 2020 election, the most highly contested in US history, Facebook's most popular pages for Christian and Black American content were being run by Eastern European troll farms. These pages were part of a larger network that collectively reached nearly half of all Americans, according to an internal company report, and achieved that reach not through user choice but primarily as a result of Facebook's own platform design and engagement-hungry algorithm. ... | Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28565121
[reposted, RelevantMagazine.com, 2021-09-28] In 2019, Almost All of Facebook's Top Christian Pages Were Run By Foreign Troll Farms. | Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28691585
[RewireNewsGroup.com, 2021-09-08] How Evangelical and Catholic Women Organized to Gut 'Roe' and Undermine Equality. I grew up in the religious right and have seen firsthand how rallying against abortion became a winning strategy for conservatives.
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One thing I quickly learned was that, unlike right-wing culture warriors, the left doesn't have much of a functional grassroots organizing practice. Or rather, the left has good, solid organizing on the local grassroots level, especially when working on issues that the Democratic Party isn't willing to take on directly. This is queer organizing, this is the early days of Black Lives Matter and similar groups, this is the Sunrise Movement, this is ACT UP. But once progressive issues become more mainstream and moderate, the organizing praxis becomes scattershot and reactionary at best.
Conservatives built a solid tradition of grassroots strategy in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely thanks to the work of Phyllis Schlafly and her Eagle Forum mailing list, which proved that angry conservative housewives who devoted their free time to hounding local officials and building a patriarchy-friendly voting bloc were highly effective. That strategy successfully defeated the Equal Rights Amendment and provided Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority with a blueprint for how to activate the religious right: get the vote out and make constituents call in about specific issues to influence elected officials' votes. After a few flops in attempts to manufacture crises around which the religious right could coalesce, the leadership of the Moral Majority found that framing abortion access post-Roe v. Wade as "on-demand" abortion worked well to get evangelicals angry and voting.
Prior to 1978, the evangelicals were largely neutral or pro-choice when it came to abortion and birth control. They refused to side with the Catholics on this issue, urging that "therapeutic" abortion was an essential part of health care for those who needed abortions to save their own lives or prevent added trauma following rape or incest. But Schlafly's activation of a joint coalition of Catholic and evangelical women voters clued in the religious right that perhaps opposing abortion was the way to go on winning the White House against incumbent Jimmy Carter.
They tried it, and it worked - Reagan got elected, and the conservative strategy was set for the next 40 years and beyond.
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[RightWingWatch.org, 2021-09-07] The 'Mastermind' Behind the Draconian 'Heartbeat Bill' Banning Abortion as Early as 6 Weeks.
Americans woke up last Wednesday morning to a new reality: Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark legislation granting a woman a right to an abortion, was violently under attack through the passage of a new "heartbeat bill" in Texas.
That law - which bans abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy, makes no exception for rape or incest, and allows private citizens to sue anyone who performs or aids a woman in getting an abortion - is the first so-called heartbeat bill to have become law and actually be enforced. The Supreme Court did not swoop in and prevent the law's enforcement as some had hoped: That evening, the top court allowed the law to stand in a 5-4 decision, with the five right-wing lawmakers firmly in camp against Roe simply claiming it was a procedural issue that abortion providers had not addressed, voting in effect for Texan women to lose the right to abortion provided under Roe.
For Janet Porter, the Texas law was a dream come true. The longtime religious-right activist took to Rumble, a posterboard of her book, "A Heartbeat Away," propped up in the background as she announced the news. "That makes Texas the first state in the nation to actually enforce their heartbeat law of the 14 states who have passed them," she told the camera.
[Wikipedia, 2021-09-07] Janet L. Folger Porter (born October 13, 1962) is an American Pro-Life activist and author. Porter founded the now defunct website ReaganBook and, in 2003, conservative Christian ministry Faith2Action. Porter is most known promoting the pro-life movement and the protection of fetuses in the womb. She also is an outspoken Christian, who seeks to conservative Christian values. In 2018, the Southern Poverty Law Centre designated Faith2Action as a hate group for its anti-LGBT stance. In 2017, she served as a spokesperson for Roy Moore in his campaign for the United States Senate special election in Alabama, 2017, drawing media attention for repeatedly refusing to answer direct questions about the candidate's publicly stated beliefs. She was the National Director for the Center for Reclaiming America, during 1997 to 2002, and an Ohio Right to Life legislative director. Porter has also worked for campaigns supporting George W. Bush for president; Mike Huckabee for president; Mandate to Save America; Birther Movement; and Risk Factors. ...
[Wikipedia, 2021-09-07] ... Roy Stewart Moore (born February 11, 1947) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the 27th and 31st chief justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama from 2001 to 2003 and again from 2013 to 2017, each time being removed from office for judicial misconduct by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary. ... Roy Moore is considered an advocate of far-right politics. He has attracted national media attention and controversy over his views on race, homosexuality, transgender people, and Islam, his belief that Christianity should order public policy, and his past ties to neo-Confederates and white nationalist groups. Moore was a leading voice in the birther movement, which promoted the false claim that president Barack Obama was not born in the United States. This movement has promoted the claim before, during, and since Obama's time in office. He founded the Foundation for Moral Law, a non-profit legal organization from which he collected more than $1 million over five years. On its tax filings, the organization indicated a much lesser amount of pay to Moore. ...
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[LAReviewOfBooks.org, 2021-08-15] How the Pandemic Radicalized Evangelicals.
[AlterNet.org, 2021-08-17] How a Los Angeles megachurch became a bastion of evangelical coronavirus denial: 'There is no pandemic.' [Grace Community Church]
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, evangelical Christians have been among the most polarizing voices in a divided nation struggling to respond to a grave public health emergency. From the moment authorities began addressing the crisis last year, evangelicals have protested government-ordered lockdowns, resisted measures such as mask-wearing, defied restrictions on indoor worship services, and fought public health officials all the way to the Supreme Court.
More recently, white evangelicals have emerged as the demographic group most resistant to getting vaccinated against COVID-19. Their embrace of conspiracy theories and overall pandemic denialism contributed to their avid participation in the January 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol. A religious group that prides itself on its patriotism has become a major impediment to advancing the United States's goals.
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See also: [theIntercept.com, 2020-05-23] Inside the Influential Evangelical Group Mobilizing to Reelect Trump. [United in Purpose]
[CommonDreams.org, 2020-10-05] The Man Who Would Be President: Mike Pence, Corporate Theocrat. The case of Mike Pence should be an ongoing urgent reminder that -- as toxic and truly evil as Donald Trump is -- the current President is a product and poisonous symptom of an inherently unjust and anti-democratic status quo. Mike Pence embodies the political alliance of very conservative evangelical forces with anti-regulatory forces of corporatism. Pence ranks high as a Christian soldier marching in lockstep with Trump on all major policy issues, a process that routinely puts business interests ahead of human lives.
[RightWingWatch.org, 2020-10-05] POTUS Shield's Mark Gonzales Calls Amy Coney Barrett Nomination God "Setting the Stage to Take Over" the Courts.
[RightWingWatch.org, 2020-10-05] Michele Bachmann Prays God Will Empower Religious-Right "David" to Slay Vote-By-Mail "Goliath". Former Representative Michele Marie Bachmann.
... Bachmann supports both federal and state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage and any legal equivalents. In August 2006, the Star Tribune reported that in March 2006, while on a Minneapolis radio show, Bachmann advocated a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. A caller asked her to explain how he, a heterosexual, would be harmed if his gay neighbors were allowed to marry. Bachmann replied, "Public schools would have to teach that homosexuality and same-sex marriage are normal, natural and that maybe children should try them." The Star Tribune also reported that Bachmann had publicly called homosexuality "sexual dysfunction," "sexual identity disorders," and "personal enslavement" leading to "sexual anarchy."
In a July 2014 radio interview, Bachmann claimed that gay rights activists want to abolish age of consent laws in the United States so that adults can "prey on little children sexually."
In 2020, Bachmann claimed that "transgender Black Marxists" were "seeking the overthrow of the United States and the dissolution of the traditional family."
Source: Wikipedia
[CommonDreams.org, 2020-10-05] Trump's Amy Coney Barrett Nomination Another Step Toward Christian Fascism. All fascist and totalitarian movements paper over their squalid belief systems with the veneer of morality.
"The best propaganda is that which, as it were, works invisibly, penetrates the whole of life without the public having any knowledge of the propagandistic initiative."
-- Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany (1933-1945).
[VICE News, 2020-09-01] Video: Anti-abortion Evangelical Pastor Rob Schenck Says GOP Is a Religious Cult. Pastor Rob Schenck later admitted that he was part of a group that paid Norma McCorvey (also known as Jane Roe from the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision) to lie that she had changed her mind and become against abortion.
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