February 2007

“There is no constitutional conflict in using tax dollars to fund faith-based initiatives,” reasons Sekulow.

Oklahoma oil execs and new Sonics owners bankrolled Gary Bauer’s Americans United to Preserve Marriage.

Commenting on Utah court’s denial of visitation rights for ex-partner.

Claims his Time article denouncing gay parents was “entirely respectful.”

“Citizens for Legal Communities” target landlords, employers in Springboro.

Discussing Alexandra Pelosi’s recent documentary “Friends of God,” veteran religious-right activist and Republican campaigner Gary Bauer identifies the crux of his disagreement in Pelosi’s suggestion that, beyond the wedge issues of abortion and gay rights, liberals and conservative Christians may find they have common ground. According to Bauer, “evangelicals will never be able to ‘move past’ abortion”:

Pelosi's answer exemplifies a belief gaining popularity in the mainstream media: that if evangelicals would only look beyond "wedge issues" like abortion and same-sex marriage, some common ground might be found.

This view suggests that these are merely a few among a laundry list of important public policy questions. But, for the vast majority of evangelicals, the right to life and the definition of marriage are fundamentally and inescapably moral theological issues. Take the right to life, whose importance is rooted in the Christian belief that all human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. The centrality of the human person to the Christian worldview helps evangelicals think about and prioritize every political issue that arises, with those policies and laws that pose the gravest threat to human life placed at the top of the agenda. It also helps explain why evangelicals will never be able to "move past" abortion, as Pelosi and many others on the Left hope. The same can be said for issues relating to marriage, family and, of course, the role of religion in public life.

But while these issues keep activists like Bauer in business, they are not the issues that Evangelicals use to determine how they vote. According to the Center for American Values in Public Life’s American Values Survey, just 19 percent of Evangelicals chose abortion and same-sex marriage as the kinds of issues “most important in the United States today.” In contrast, 77 percent cited poverty and affordable health care.

The Los Angeles Times reports that failed congressional candidate and Minutemen co-founder Jim Gilchrist is fighting a pitched battle against the organization’s board after being ousted for mismanagement:

Gilchrist, 58, a national figure in the fight against illegal immigration, was removed as president of the Minuteman Project this month by its board of directors, which accused him of abusing his power and leaving more than $400,000 of the organization's money unaccounted for.

…

Deborah Courtney, the group's recently appointed treasurer, said in an interview that a direct mail company helped raise $750,000 for the group in 2006, but that she believes the Minuteman campaign received only $311,000. Courtney said she and others had been unable to trace the rest of the money.

…

They also said he should not have used $13,000 in Minuteman funds to defend himself in court against their allegations. He said the group must pay to defend itself against "rogues."

…

Some of Gilchrist's opponents recently filed a complaint against their former leader with the Internal Revenue Service, alleging that he did not obtain nonprofit status for the group. They say he improperly received a 40% discount nonprofit postal rate by using another organization's nonprofit status.

With no clear pick, group “risks relegation to the margins.” Meanwhile: Brownback on the trail to prove his viability.

DOJ program, launched at SBC, “further confirms” freedom in “serious danger” from “sustained attacks by the ACLU and its allies.”

Dobson refuses to meet with Soulforce. Also: Group partners with Truth Wins Out to unmask distortion of research.

“700 Club” biggest slice of $247 million revenue.

To “enlist 100,000 Values Voters, 10,000 key leaders, 5,000 Patriot Pastors and 5,000 women.” Meanwhile: Busy Scarborough in Texas on the “biblical role” of judges, and back in Missouri for stem cell research.

Ends with Rep. Rohrabacher threatening impeachment of Bush.

Featuring John Yoo.

The next presidential election is still more than twenty months away, but the Right is not wasting any time in preparing to mobilize its activists to turn out in force.  

For instance, the Family Research Council just announced that it will be hosting its second “Values Voter Summit” in October, which they declare is “guaranteed to change the debate in 2008.”

It appears as if Rick Scarborough and Alan Keyes are gearing up for the election as well, announcing their new “Seventy Weeks to Renew America” project:

On July 4, 2007, Dr. Alan Keyes and I will launch a major effort to enlist 100,000 Values Voters, 10,000 key leaders, 5,000 Patriot Pastors and 5,000 women - who will pray for national renewal and who will vote their Christian values on election day 2008.

…

There are 70 weeks from July 4, 2007 until the last Wednesday before the national elections of 2008. We will be in an average of one city each week for those 70 weeks, calling the church to be the church.

Normally, the fact that the Right is this motivated this early would be a good sign for GOP presidential hopefuls, but not this time around since these activists are not particularly enthused about any of the current frontrunners. As Rick Scarborough wrote recently (emphasis in original): 

Can the Republican Party continue to claim to be the Party of Values in light of the current crop of front-runners? I think not.

…

We must pray and work toward securing a candidate that we can not only vote for, but get excited about when we go to the polls.

And we should be ready to go outside the Republican Party if it refuses to give us such a candidate. Christians must always remember that we are followers of Christ, not pawns of a party which often wants to dance with us before the election but then ditches us right after the final vote count.

The Right is firmly convinced that they lost the last election because Republicans were not committed enough to pushing their agenda - despite the fact that it is completely untrue – and doing all they can to ensure that it doesn’t happen again, even going so far as to threaten to bolt the party. 

It’ll never happen, of course, but it will undoubtedly throw GOP candidates’ frantic courtship of the Right into overdrive.

Gonzales spoke (transcript) on new report and solicited collaboration with group that codified support for Bush’s extreme judicial nominees in official resolution. Focus on the Family sees move as counter to Democrats.

Plus “Polygamy will be legalized” and “Landlords will be forced to rent to homosexuals.” Focus urges opposition. Also: Hate crimes bill in Montana.

Would prevent most cases of cervical cancer. Stanek: “Why not mandate condoms for boys?” Also: CWA says “opt-out” is unacceptable. Weyrich: “It makes no sense at all.”

At NYU.

Not happy with McCain, Giuliani, or Romney. Tells NH activists to “pin them down.” Also: She urges revival of parental notification law that Supreme Court struck down in part.

The case of Lt. Gordon James Klingenschmitt has been a right-wing cause célèbre for well over a year now and looks as if it will continue to be one for the foreseeable future. Yet while the Klingenschmitt saga drags on over his willful violation of orders, it is probably safe to assume that the Right will not be rallying around Don Larsen, a Pentecostal military Chaplain who lost his job because he switched religions:

Larsen's private crisis of faith might have remained just that, but for one other fateful choice. He decided the religion that best matched his universalist vision was Wicca, a blend of witchcraft, feminism and nature worship that has ancient pagan roots.

On July 6, he applied to become the first Wiccan chaplain in the U.S. armed forces, setting off an extraordinary chain of events. By year's end, his superiors not only denied his request but also withdrew him from Iraq and removed him from the chaplain corps, despite an unblemished service record.

Because Larsen is not Christian, it is unlikely that the Family Research Council will be defending Larsen’s “freedom of religious expression,” or that Vision America will praise “this bold man is standing up for his right to pray in his own faith tradition” and call on Senators to “stand with him publicly,” or that Alan Keyes will be calling on his supporters to send petitions to the Department of Defense demanding Larsen’s reinstatement, saying “Respect for our Constitution, simple justice and faithful obedience to religious conscience demands no less!”

And Larsen probably won’t be invited to be a featured speaker at the Right’s next victimization rally and thus will never get the opportunity to publicly liken himself to Abdul Rahman, the Afghani man who faced a potential death sentence for converting.    

In lashing out at affirmative action programs in college admissions, Mychal Massie of “Project 21” warns of “the harm done to minority students who have repeatedly been told the world is out to get them after they drop out or flunk out of schools they weren't qualified to attend to start with.” According to Massie, “diversity” is “Hitlerian”:

I have repeatedly argued that the level of bigotry inherent in diversity should be glaringly obvious. It is a perverse form of Hitlerian motivations vis-à-vis attempted social engineering for no other reason than to have a color-coded campus matrix.

Massie is the host of an Internet radio show and a frequent spokesman for right-wing causes through his involvement with “Project 21,” a front group for the National Center for Public Policy Research designed to market a “new leadership for Black America.” NCPPR is perhaps most famous for allegedly laundering money between corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. “Only a Rip Van Winkle, asleep for the past 50 years, would mistake Massie and his colleagues for civil rights leaders,” as a PFAW report put it.

Nevertheless, occasionally Massie’s self-promotion pays off. Earlier this month, an Associated Press story on the debate in the Virginia legislature over apologizing for slavery used Massie as a prominent source:

Moreover, an apology won't cure community ills, said Mychal Massie, with the National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives.

That will come from blacks emphasizing two-parent homes, education over fast money and personal responsibility for life choices, Mr. Massie said.

"A willing disregard for responsibility, a willing disrespect for education, ad nauseam, is not attributable in any way to slavery," said Mr. Massie, who considers an apology redundant.

"We see black leaders on every level," he said. "America has apologized."

(“National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives” is the tagline on the “Project 21” website, apparently used by mistake.)

Pres. hopeful writes for newsletter of and helps fundraise for group active in VA’s off-year elections.

Second-most (to Billy Graham) familiar religious figure.

For nation.

Gaffney, fresh from Lincoln quote incident, accuses Grover Norquist of running “pro-Islamist influence operation.”

Christian author, organizer, and Religious Right critic Jim Wallis took to the pages of Time Magazine last week to boldly declare that “The Religious Right's Era Is Over.” According to Wallis:  

In the churches, a combination of deeper compassion and better theology has moved many pastors and congregations away from the partisan politics of the Religious Right … Evangelicals — especially the new generation of pastors and young people — are deserting the Religious Right in droves … [M]any Republicans have had it with the Religious Right … The era of the Religious Right is now past, and it's up to all of us to create a new day.

It’s good news that most Americans – and most Christians -- do not share the political priorities of Religious Right leaders, and religious voters shifted away from GOP candidates in significant numbers in 2006.  But the fact that every GOP presidential candidate is in the process of openly supplicating to Religious Right powerbrokers like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and James Dobson is a sign that it’s probably premature to declare complete victory over a group that remains a core constituency of the Republican Party.

We’ve noted that trend in the past (see, for example, here, here, here, or here). Here are some examples from just the past week:

Washington Post - McCain, Romney Vying for Support Of Conservatives

New York Times - Giuliani Shifts Abortion Speech Gently to Right

Associated Press - McCain Courting Christian Conservatives

MSNBC - The Preacher Primary: GOP Leaders Battle for Support from the Three Kingmakers

Just today, the AP reported that four Republican candidates – John McCain, Mitt Romney, Sam Brownback and Duncan Hunter – all recently traveled to Florida to woo religious broadcasters at their annual convention.  

History shows that Religious Right political leaders don’t just slink away after defeat.  Some of them are holding a Restore America Conference later this week in Oregon, for which they have some blustery big plans:

Evangelical Christians are the largest voting block in America.  The future course of America depends upon them mobilizing 19 million that are eligible, but not even registered to vote.   In 2006, 22 million did not vote, but that is about to change.  The 2nd Annual Restore America Conference, February 23rd and 24th, just outside of Portland, Oregon is gearing up to educate and mobilize 1000 Christian leaders to encourage their constituents to vote and win!

And in early March, a collection of right-wing luminaries will head to Ft. Lauderdale for D. James Kennedy’s annual “Reclaiming America for Christ” conference which will provide "Christians deep within the trenches with a welcome respite from the battle and fuel to carry on" as they receive "training in Christian grassroots action and methods to mobilize churches on moral issue."

Pharmacist refused to dispense Plan B.

While Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) has won the hearts of the Religious Right with his fervent advocacy on causes from stem cells to Christmas, the long-shot presidential candidate has yet to win their minds: “Brownback has to prove he can win,” as Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention said. One part of his strategy to do so, apparently, is to convince the far Right that no other candidate will satisfy them. He saw an opening when doubts were raised about the longevity of former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Massachusetts)’s commitment to right-wing positions on abortion and gays, but as it turns out, that left him vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy from his home state.

As reported in The New Republic and elsewhere, when Brownback first ran for Congress, his position on abortion was less than clear. Now, the Kansas City Star is reprinting a pair of articles from 1996 that raise even more questions. Republicans with moderate stands on abortion thought he was one of them:

When Sam Brownback first ran for Congress, Dixie Roberts thought she knew his type — Main Street Kansas Republican with mainstream values.

"I liked Sam. I thought he was a moderate," recalls the Republican activist from Manhattan.

Glenn Walker, a party worker from Hiawatha, had the same impression, that Brownback was heir to the Kansas Republican Party of Alf Landon, Dwight Eisenhower and Nancy Kassebaum, fiscally conservative and moderate on the social issues.

No wonder they were more than a little surprised in 1995, when their congressman turned out to be one of the new Republican revolutionaries, an outspoken firebrand in one of the most conservative Congresses in history.

Conservatives cried hallelujah, while moderates in Brownback’s 2nd District were incredulous.

"I thought that Sam ... moved farther right than what I thought he was," Walker said. "Maybe I misread him."

If moderates did misread Brownback, so did anti-abortion activists. "He changed his position" since running in 1993, said David Gittrich, executive director of Kansans for Life, in another 1996 article.

If he did, of course, he wouldn’t be the first far-right politician to do so and to still earn the full support of the Religious Right. Rick Santorum (R-PA), who was the Senate’s most vocal anti-abortion activist until he was voted out in November, began his political career with a position paper supporting abortion rights (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/28/1990). And Romney has cited Ronald Reagan’s evolution on the subject as Reagan constructed the right-wing coalition that would drive his ascent to the White House. But similar revelations about Brownback could neutralize his attempt to woo the Religious Right away from Romney, and thus keep Brownback in the long-shot category, far away from the generous donors he needs to break away.

Washington Times columnist and prominent neoconservative Frank Gaffney opened his Wednesday column with a forceful quote attributed to President Abraham Lincoln:

Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.

This quote may have been news to Lincoln scholars, but it appears thousands of times on the Internet. It was even cited last year at a DC press conference by Congressman Jack Murtha’s Republican opponent, Diana Irey. The quote was especially familiar to close readers of Unification Church publications, which include the Washington Times and Insight magazine. That’s because the quote is fake and first appeared in the pages of Insight magazine. J. Michael Waller opened his 12/23/03 article, “Democrats Usher in An Age of Treason,” with those words. He later explained in an email to Factcheck.org:

The supposed quote in question is not a quote at all, and I never intended it to be construed as one. It was my lead sentence in the article that a copy editor mistakenly turned into a quote by incorrectly inserting quotation marks.

In other words, a Washington Times columnist recycled a fake Lincoln quote that originally appeared in the Washington Times' magazine. Incidentally, Factcheck.org concluded that, quote marks or not, Waller’s assertion about Lincoln was false. Insight is now defunct as a stand-alone magazine, but its website has continued to peddle misinformation with remarkable success. A recent smear piece, which falsely claimed that Hillary Clinton would accuse Barack Obama of covering up time spent at an Indonesian madrassa as a child, was picked up by Fox News and conservative talk radio and spewed across the nation. You might think any news organization would be embarrassed to no end for making the same glaring error twice. But the Washington Times didn’t run a correction in today’s paper and Gaffney’s column is still posted – without an update, correction or apology – on washingtontimes.com and David Horowitz’s frontpagemag.com. For right-wing pundits, agitating the base clearly trumps getting the story right. After all, as Abraham Lincoln might have said, one should "never let the facts get in the way of a good story." Update: The Washington Times has finally pulled the Gaffney column from its site, but not before Republican Congressman Don Young of Alaska cited the quote on the House floor.

Via ThinkProgress. Previously, Goode warned immigration policy would lead to Muslim congressmen streaming over the border.

As Romney courts Right and plans graduation speech at Robertson’s Regent U.

Repent America, Ted Pike, and Peter LaBarbera.

Powerful Texas state Rep. Warren Chisum (R), an advocate of religious-right causes such as banning adoption by gay couples and amending the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage, has passed along a “memo” from a kindred spirit in the Georgia House claiming that “teaching evolution amounts to indoctrinating students in an ancient Jewish sect's beliefs,” reports the Dallas Morning-News.

“Indisputable evidence – long hidden but now available to everyone – demonstrates conclusively that so-called 'secular evolution science' is the Big Bang, 15-billion-year, alternate 'creation scenario' of the Pharisee Religion," writes Mr. Bridges …

Mr. Bridges also supplies a link to a document that describes scientists Carl Sagan and Albert Einstein as "Kabbalists" and laments "Hollywood's unrelenting role in flooding the movie theaters with explicit or implicit endorsement of evolutionism."

Bridges, the sponsor of bills to undermine the teaching of evolution in Georgia, referred Texas lawmakers to a web site dedicated to opposing both the theory of evolution and that the earth revolves around the sun. According to this web site, which offers state legislators Bridges’s anti-evolution bill as model legislation,

The Bible and all real evidence confirms that this is precisely what He did, and indeed:

The Earth is not rotating...nor is it going around the sun. …

Today’s cosmology fulfills an anti-Bible religious plan disguised as "science".

The whole scheme from Copernicanism to Big Bangism is a factless lie. Those lies have planted the Truth-killing virus of evolutionism in every aspect of man’s "knowledge" about the Universe, the Earth, and Himself.

Although Chisum said he does not agree totally with Bridges’s views, he appeared amenable to Bridges’s anti-evolution legislation, saying, “You ought to teach creation as well as the fact of evolution.”

Falwell, Robertson, Dobson. Meanwhile: Giuliani sees judges as way around abortion position; Brownback attacks Romney on abortion, but Right eyes “[w]inability” against “Darth Vader-like” Clinton.

And “crush criticism of homosexuality.”

“[T]raining a generation of young lawyers.”

For much of the last year, Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) has been cozying up to the Right Wing, apparently in anticipation of the Republican primary campaign for president next year. In his 2000 run, he lambasted Jerry Falwell and James Dobson as “agents of intolerance” and he attacked opponent George Bush for speaking at South Carolina’s Bob Jones University, which at that time had a ban on interracial dating. This time around, he’s made amends with Falwell, he’s trying hard to win over Dobson, and he’s open to speaking at Bob Jones. And next week, McCain will have an opportunity to solidify his creationist credentials.

As ThinkProgress notes, McCain has an ambiguous record when it comes to science education. In 2005, he said that “Intelligent Design” creationism should be taught alongside evolution, but a year later, he said that creationism should “[p]robably not” be taught in a science class.

So while McCain’s upcoming address at a Discovery Institute lunch in Seattle is ostensibly about globalization, it ought to give him the chance to articulate his position on whether creationism belongs in public schools. The Discovery Institute is the most active promoter of “Intelligent Design” and increasingly the public face of creationism, working with school boards to undermine the teaching of evolution and sending fellows, such as young-earth creationist Paul Nelson, to present ID as a scientific theory.

If McCain were to stake out his decision on education policy based on science, he could do worse than to begin in his home state at the Grand Canyon, which the National Park Service notes is “a world-renowned showplace of geology” going back hundreds of millions of years but which has become a central front in the political debate surrounding evolution. If he makes his decision based on appeasing the Right Wing, he might find his anti-evolution position a difficult sell among the rest of the voting public.