Soulforce member Wick Thomas stands vigil at Yellowstone Baptist College during its Equality Ride 2007
Younger Evangelicals
Where Will They Take the Christian Right?
By Pam Chamberlain
The Public Eye, Spring 2009
Last October a chartered bus rolled deep through the South, its passengers college-aged young people drawing inspiration from the Freedom Riders of the 1960s. The black vinyl advertising plastered on the side broadcast the riders’ goals, “Equality Ride 2008: Faith in Action: Social Justice for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered People.” The bus brought young LGBTQ activists and their allies face to face with students at 15 Christian colleges in an attempt to generate more acceptance of homosexuality at evangelical schools.
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Tying the Not
How the Right Succeeded in Passing Proposition 8
By Surina Khan
The Public Eye, Spring 2009
On June 26, 2008, 1,000 ministers, mostly from evangelical congregations, met by conference call to discuss tactics for passing Proposition 8, a ballot initiative to ban same sex marriage in California by amending the state constitution. The call was convened by Pastor Jim Garlow from the 2,500-member Skyline Church in San Diego County. The ministers on the call had a far reach: they lead congregations representing about one million people, and Garlow alone provides radio commentary to 629 stations each day.
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Culture Wars, Evangelicals, and Political Power
lessons from the 2008 Presidential Election
By Chip Berlet and Frederick Clarkson
The Public Eye, Winter 2008 (Web Only)
It would be nice if conservative White evangelicals called off the Culture Wars that they started and continue to aggressively pursue. It would be even nicer if liberal (and even some progressive) pundits stopped prematurely announcing the end of the Culture Wars and the demise of the Christian Right. Neither is likely to happen any time soon.
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New Report! Pushed to the Altar: The Right Wing Roots of Marriage Promotion
The George W. Bush Administration has abandoned proven poverty reduction strategies and instead is encouraging women - especially welfare recipients - to marry their way out of poverty. This groundbreaking new report by PRA President Emerita, Dr. Jean Hardisty, traces the influence of right-wing fatherhood groups and Christian Right organizations on the Administration's "marriage promotion" programs, and the channeling of millions of federal dollars back to these groups despite rules guiding the separation of church and state. Jointly published by Political Research Associates and the Women of Color Resource Center.
Heritage is Hip to Culture
Think Tank Turns to Family Values
By Pam Chamberlain
The Public Eye, Winter 2007
The Heritage Foundation is known for winning the ear of Presidents for its conservative economic policies. But in June of 2006, Heritage launched a website, familyfacts.org, offering tidbits of research promoting traditional families and the social value of religion. Why have photos of smiling parents and children replaced the staid blue and white Liberty Bell that has represented Heritage for nearly 35 years?
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Gay Conservatives: Unwanted Allies on the Right
By Pam Chamberlain
The Public Eye, Summer 2007
In the high-adrenaline, and heavily heterosexual, world of Beltway lobbyists, the gay Log Cabin Republicans have their work cut out for them. Ostracized by the Republican Party which continues to receive their fierce loyalty, the LCR is the group that represents the dilemma of gay conservatives: they want to be players on the Republican team, but who is willing to put them in the lineup?
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The gay rights movement in the United States is often traced to June 27, 1969, in New York City, when police raided a Greenwich Village bar, the Stonewall Inn, and bar patrons rebelled in protest. Seven years later, in 1976, in Dade County, Florida, Anita Bryant led the first religious campaign against gay rights. Her campaign (run by Bryant, her husband Bob Green, and a political operative named Ed Rowe, who went on to head the Church League of America briefly and later Christian Mandate) opposed a vote by the Dade County commissioners to prohibit discrimination against gay men and lesbians in housing, public accommodation, and employment. Bryant promoted a successful referendum to repeal the commissioners' vote, and her campaign gained strength and notoriety.
By the end of the 1970s, a political movement was born that incorporated conservative Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals as full partners in opposing gay rights and abortion. Homophobia has become a deep current in the Christian Right, part of a "pro-family" campaign that champions families with a strong father and that enforces a Biblically mandated heterosexuality. With the "ex-gay movement," the Right has taken a pseudo-scientific turn using therapy to rescue gays from what the Right sees as an unnatural perversion.
Gay Conservatives
By Surina Khan
The Public Eye, Spring 1996
