November, 2006

Writing in the Washington Times, Gary Andres claims that old-school Right that has been represented by the so-called “Values Voters” crowd is no longer ascendant following the drubbing the GOP took in the last election.

Andres says there is “growing evidence suggests the ‘culture war’ is indeed changing, causing a wake that could jostle many vessels in the harbor of traditional American politics” and suggests that

As conservative Christianity — particularly as practiced among evangelicals — matures, many are beginning to ask other questions with broad political implications. What does it mean to live in a community? Who is my neighbor? These issues posed by [Rick] Warren, [Michael] Gerson and others signal a new direction for conservative Christians — a shift loaded with implications.

“The broadening evangelical agenda,” as Andres refers to it, certainly sounds promising – unfortunately, as we have noted before, the most politically influential right-wing leaders have long been opposed to attempts to broaden the Religious Right agenda and have openly complained that efforts to address issues such as poverty and the environment weakens their hold on “values voters.”  In fact, just this week, the incoming head of the Christian Coalition resigned because the organization refused to expand its agenda beyond opposition to homosexuality and abortion or give up its “partisan, Republican roots.”

Leaders such as Rick Warren might be trying to turn the movement in a “new direction,” but the Right’s old-guard is having none of it and is currently engaged in a campaign demonizing him for daring to invite Sen. Barack Obama to participate in the “Global Summit on AIDS and the Church.”

If anything, the recent electoral loss appears to have convinced right-wing leaders such as Vision America’s Rick Scarborough not of the need to broaden their agenda, but rather to fight even harder to push their current extremist agenda in order to mobilize their activists

We lost because the majority of Christians still stayed home. We lost because a growing number of Christians are practicing a dead faith … Many Christians meet on Sunday mornings and pray for revival, but when they have the chance to vote their stated convictions and effect positive change through the ballot box, they refuse. Their faith is therefore meaningless and void of life. Not until we address this tragic sin will America be restored.

…

I believe what America needs today is a massive lobbying effort to get pastors to do what’s right.

…

We need a massive Get Out the Pastor effort, where millions of pro-life activists lobby their pastors to do what’s right regarding same-sex marriage, abortion and other key moral issues.

…

Now is the time to recognize where the real battle rages…in God’s Church. Now is the time for us to encourage the thousands of pastors who are standing strong and true, and to confront the ones who are not. Now is the time and -- with God’s help and your support -- Vision America will lead the charge.

Perhaps leaders such as Rich Warren will succeed in broadening the “evangelical agenda” to cover issues such as poverty and the environment – if so, it’ll only happen over the militant opposition of right-wing political powerhouses such as Focus on the Family, the Christian Coalition, and Vision America.

“Americans Have Judges on Christmas List,” according to a press release from Concerned Women for America pushing the lame-duck confirmation of a handful of controversial judicial nominees whom Bush resubmitted after the election.

Pat Robertson told his “700 Club” audience today that, while “the liberals laugh and say, ‘Oh, that’s not true’” about the “War on Christmas,” “We have been under assault.” In particular, Robertson said, “stores that have always said ‘Merry Christmas’ are now being forced to say ‘Happy Holidays.’”

Watch the video segment: Broadband or Dial-Up.

Robertson brought on a special guest to explain the meaning of the “War on Christmas”: Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly. According to O’Reilly, so-called “SPs,” or “secular progressives,” are waging a culture war against traditional Americans to “wipe out all spirituality in the marketplace … so that their agenda politically can get passed easier.”

Watch the video segment: Broadband or Dial-Up.

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights placed a costly advertisement in the op-ed section of the New York Times declaring that “cultural fascists” are preparing to destroy Christmas again this year. Catholic League President William Donohue writes:

There is something sick about Friendship Trees, Winter Solstice Concerts, Holiday Parades and Holly Day Festivals. The neutering of Christmas extends to the banishment of Nativity Scenes from the public square, the expulsion of baby Jesus from crèches not otherwise forbidden, the banning of red and green at school functions, the censoring of “Silent Night” at municipal concerts, etc.

(It’s worth noting that these latter two examples apparently refer to accusations made by Fox News hosts and Religious Right figures last year that turned out to be bogus – see here and here.) Last year, Donohue developed a brief boycott against Wal-Mart, and had another “beef” with Land’s End, for the use of those retailers of the phrase “Happy Holidays” in their promotional material rather than the supposedly more potent expression “Merry Christmas.”

This year, the group has set up a “Christmas Watch,” compiling alleged violations of the spirit (if not the letter) of Christmas law. “Grinches” include a mail-order catalog that sells a “Cat Nativity” scene and thieves who stole a man’s nativity scene from his front yard in Greenfield, Pennsylvania.

Whipping up a paranoid conspiracy theory of a “War on Christmas” is becoming something of an annual, festive tradition on the Right. While nobody is “banning” Christmas, right-wing groups can at least attack retailers, school administrators, and others whose yuletide cheer doesn’t cut muster. But what’s unusual about Donohue’s Times ad is the strange argument he makes to convince people not to say things like “Happy Holidays” – a seasonal greeting used not only as shorthand for “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year” but also as a way to express kind sentiments to those who celebrate other days. According to Donohue, one should make a point of impoliteness – excluding people is the reason for the season, apparently, and it is also the true meaning of “diversity”:

To be excluded is normal. Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Veteran’s Day, Black History Month, Gay Pride Parades—they all exclude someone. The Olympic Games are a showcase of segregation—men are barred from women’s sports—yet not even radical feminists call it sexist. Should all of these holidays and events be banned because some feel excluded?

By celebrating Christmas we are celebrating diversity. Don’t let the cultural fascists get their way this year.

As we have noted before, there appears to be something about the issue of judicial nominations that makes the Right take leave of their senses.  

For example, Vision America’s Rick Scarborough frets about the Democratic take-over of the Senate in January but insists that, despite the election results, “the American people elected George W. Bush in 2004 with the expectation that he would keep his campaign promise to nominate judges” who share the Right’s agenda regardless of which party controlled the Senate and is urging him to ignore calls to nominate any sort of “compromise” candidates.

To this end, Scarborough claims

When Clinton was president, there was no talk of compromise candidates. Our 42nd President put hard leftists like Ruth Bader Ginsberg on the bench.

The only thing that can be taken from this ridiculous claim is that Scarborough either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the facts because, as Senator Orrin Hatch recounted in his autobiography, at a time when Democrats controlled the Senate and he was merely the ranking minority member of the Judiciary Committee, President Clinton still conferred with him when it came to potential nominees for the Supreme Court

Our conversation moved to other potential candidates. I asked whether he had considered Judge Stephen Breyer of the First Circuit Court of Appeals or Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. President Clinton indicated he had heard Breyer’s name but had not thought about Judge Ginsberg.

I indicated I thought they would be confirmed easily. I knew them both and believed that, while liberal, they were highly honest and capable jurists and their confirmation would not embarrass the President. From my perspective, they were far better than the other likely candidates from a liberal Democrat administration.

In the end … he nominated Judge Ginsburg and Judge Breyer a year later, when Harry Blackmun retired from the Court. Both were confirmed with relative ease.

Scarborough is not the only one who seems oblivious to history, no matter how recent. In Human Events, Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton writes that

Liberals in the Senate have turned the judicial confirmation process on its head, obstructing the President’s judicial nominees for political reasons. They even resorted to launching judicial filibusters, ignoring the constitutional directive to provide up-or-down votes on all judicial nominees. Why? Not because the nominees were unqualified. But rather because they didn’t like the nominees’ philosophy of judicial restraint.

As we have noted repeatedly, if folks on the Right are really concerned about judicial nominees being denied a vote because one or more senators don’t “like the nominees’ philosophy,” perhaps they can start hounding Sen. Sam Brownback to lift his hold on the nomination of Janet Neff -  a hold that Brownback says is going to continue indefinitely

Last year, a Chicago judge allowed a wrongful-death suit to go forward against a fertility clinic that had accidentally destroyed a couple’s frozen embryos. This month, religious-right groups have signed on to the cause, reports the American Family Association’s AgapePress:

On November 17, a coalition of nine Illinois and national pro-life organizations filed friend-of-the-court briefs in the case in support of the parents. Comprising the coalition are Illinois Citizens for Life, Concerned Women for America, the Illinois Right to Life Committee, Life Advocacy Resource Project, Illinois Federation for Right to Life, Concerned Christian Americans, the Illinois Family Institute, Lutherans for Life, Inc., and the Catholic Conference Center of Illinois. The case is now pending before the Illinois appellate court.

Paul Linton is special counsel for the Thomas More Society of Chicago, which is representing the pro-life coalition. He says the trial judge was correct in concluding that the embryos were human beings under the state's wrongful death statute and should be protected by the law in the event of their destruction.

"Of course," Linton points out, "we want to maintain the standard that human life begins at conception -- understood as fertilization -- and not at a later stage of development, for example, where there is implantation."

According to Thomas Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Society, this case, on the cutting edge of abortion politics, “is the modern equivalent to Dred Scott in a Petri dish” – one in which the far limits of the “pro-life” position could potentially be legally delineated. But given that in-vitro fertilization involves the fertilization of a number of embryos, most of which will be discarded, one has to wonder what the Illinois couple was thinking when they began the process.

Nov. 29: Update appended.

When it was recently announced that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Illinois) would speak at a global AIDS conference at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, radio talker Kevin McCullough was quick to denounce the partnership between the “evil” young senator and Warren, author of the best-selling “Purpose-Driven Life”:

In doing so he has joined himself with one of the smoothest politicians of our times, and also one whose wickedness in worldview contradicts nearly every tenant of the Christian faith that Warren professes.

So the question is, "why?"

Why would Warren marry the moral equivalency of his pulpit - a sacred place of honor in evangelical tradition - to the inhumane, sick, and sinister evil that Obama has worked for as a legislator?

According to McCullough, what makes Obama “a man who represents the views of Satan at worst or progressive anti-God liberals at best” is his position on abortion and his support of “the radical homosexual activist lobby.”

Obama, who in his keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention famously called for political ecumenism, will appear with far-right Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) to be tested for HIV on stage. But the spirit of bipartisanship in approaching issues, like AIDS, that cross the ideological divide is not enough to tamper the Right’s political efforts. Perhaps hoping to preempt a future presidential bid by Obama, right-wing leaders are coming out unusually strong against the AIDS Day appearance.

Houston Chronicle wonders what “personnel services” cost half its 2005 budget; the group is stonewalling media.

“Just no way,” says S.C.’s Graham, while right-wing Committee for Justice, Judicial Watch, and Rick Scarborough push on. Meanwhile: Brownback continues blocking separate nominee.

Following Michigan referendum; next target could be Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Missouri or South Dakota.

Jerry Falwell, Gary Bauer, Lou Sheldon, Richard Land meet with ’08 candidate in Boston.

Over large contributions and expenditures in Michigan GOP primary and elsewhere. Also: Club’s Toomey fires parting shot at Chafee.

Bishop Harry Jackson will recruit across nation in 2007 and 2008.

Texas Rep. Bonilla gets little support from fellow Latinos.

Including bill to combat separation of church and state.

“Intellectual hijacking.”

Though outgoing Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romey’s recent long-shot attempt to end same-sex marriage in that state has received considerable attention, his recent attacks on programs serving LGBT youth have largely flown under the radar. Two weeks ago, Romney, a potential presidential candidate, submitted his final annual budget in which he eliminated all funding for the Department of Education’s Safe Schools Program and slashed funding for a Department of Public Health Program aimed at preventing LGBT youth suicide by nearly one-third.

In 1998, a study in the journal Pediatrics examined the experience of LGBT youth in Massachusetts high schools. Among the key findings were:

…GLB youth [were] more than three times as likely to have attempted suicide in the past 12 months, almost five times as likely to have missed school because of fear about safety, more than nine times as likely to have used injectable drugs in their lifetime, and more than four times as likely to have been threatened with a weapon on school property…

The researchers concluded “that educational efforts, prevention programs, and health services must be designed to address the unique needs of GLB youth.”

Given this and other research documenting the effects of bullying on LGBT youth, Romney’s decision to cut these life-saving programs is puzzling. Does Governor Romney disagree with the substantial and respected body of research linking bullying and harassment in schools to higher suicide rates among LGBT youth? Or, does he hope that showing disdain for the struggles of LGBT youth will increase his appeal among Republican voters in 2008?

Back in October, the Christian Coalition announced that it had chosen Rev. Joel Hunter as its new president.  At the time, Hunter was touted as someone who might be able make the Coalition relevant again, primarily by helping the organization move beyond its traditional anti-gay, anti-abortion agenda.  Hunter seemed to recognize that he had his work cut out for him, saying that he had “always been drawn to lost causes.”

Now, it looks like it was more of a “lost cause” than even Hunter imagined and he has resigned before even assuming the post

The Central Florida pastor recently tapped to lead the Christian Coalition of America resigned his position in a dispute about conservative philosophy -- more than a month before he was to fully assume his post, he said Wednesday.

The Rev. Joel Hunter, of Longwood's Northland, A Church Distributed, said he quit as president-elect of the group founded by evangelist Pat Robertson because he realized he would be unable to broaden the organization's agenda beyond opposing abortion and gay marriage.

He hoped to include issues such as easing poverty and saving the environment.

"These are issues that Jesus would want us to care about," Hunter said.

The resignation took place Tuesday during an organization board meeting. Hunter said he was not asked to leave.

"They pretty much said, 'These issues are fine, but they're not our issues; that's not our base,' " Hunter said of his conversation with the group's leadership.

A statement issued by the coalition said Hunter resigned because of "differences in philosophy and vision." The board accepted his decision "unanimously," it states.

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The coalition's rejection of Hunter's approach means it is unwilling to part with its partisan, Republican roots, Hunter said.

As Hunter notes, when given a choice b