June, 2008

While the Religious Right came into this election cycle in some disarray—fueling countless premature “Religious Right is dead” articles—that doesn’t mean they can’t still make a major impact. They’re sure going to try. Witness James Dobson’s tirade last week against Barack Obama’s faith—a move so crass it’s made some allies blanch. And on Friday, Family Research Council unveiled a TV spot against Obama, focusing on abortion.

FRC President Tony Perkins—who also stars in the ad—said the timing, on the heels of Focus on the Family’s anti-Obama radio series, is a coincidence.

The ad quotes a recent Obama speech on Father’s Day, in which the senator said, “We need fathers to recognize that responsibility doesn’t just end at conception.” Perkins, baby in arms, changes the subject from raising children to abortion: “If, as you say, fatherhood begins at conception [sic], when does life begin?”

And it’s only June. Both Perkins’s ad and Dobson’s radio rant may suggest that the two Religious Right heavyweights are worried about Obama making a good first impression among the religious conservatives they claim as their own constituency. But these attacks also suggest that we can only expect more over the next four months.

With the GOP’s Congressional electoral prospects looking increasingly dim and John McCain trailing by double-digits in current polls, it looks like right-wing activists see the writing on the wall and have started to deemphasize the importance of having ideological allies control the levers of political power: 

Jim Daly, Focus on the Family's president and chief executive officer, downplays the Bush administration's significance to the Christian right.

"Our advocacy for pro-family policies, at the federal and state level, has never been dependent upon who holds what office," Daly said. "We advocated for the sanctity of human life, the value of traditional marriage and other issues that affect the family before President Bush was in the White House, and we'll continue to do so after he leaves it."

Of course, this line of argument might be more convincing if Focus on the Family and its head, James Dobson, hadn’t played a key role in getting President Bush elected in 2000 and 2004 and gone all out to help the GOP retain control of Congress in 2006.  It would be even more convincing if Daly had not said this just days after Dobson and FOF spent an entire week attacking Barack Obama and John McCain was not currently clamoring for a chance to meet with Dobson and try to win his support.

In addition to blocking traffic from websites they don’t like, it looks like the web-geniuses behind the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow site have a few other tricks up their sleeves, such as automatically replacing any use of the word “gay” with the word “homosexual” in any of the AP stories they run … leading to instances in which proper names are reformatted to meet their ridiculous standard, such as this article about sprinter Tyson Gay winning the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials in which he is renamed “Tyson Homosexual”:

Though AFA has since corrected its article, it looks like this auto-replace feature has been embarrassing them for quite some time now:

And while they may have fixed this particular instance, it looks like they haven't gone back through their archives and corrected other articles where this happened, such as this article where professional basketball player Rudy Gay is referred to as "Rudy Homosexual."

As we noted yesterday, John McCain was scheduled to meet with a handful of right-wing activists in Ohio who were not particularly excited about the prospect of supporting his campaign.  At the meeting, McCain reportedly “took detailed notes and listened intently” but apparently didn’t quite win them over:

He spoke for more than an hour but never mentioned issues that social conservatives skeptical of McCain want to hear about: his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage, or appointing conservative judges to the Supreme Court.

Conservative activists say that's a big problem.

"John McCain needs to talk about life more often, he needs to talk about marriage," activist Phil Burress said. "If the senator thinks he is going to run the campaign appealing to the middle by avoiding to talk about the social issues, he is going to lose Ohio."

But what do you know?  One day later, it looks like the message these activists delivered has sunk in, leading McCain to suddenly come out in support of the California Marriage Amendment:

United States Senator John McCain today announced his support for the California Protection of Marriage initiative on the state's November ballot, leaders of the ProtectMarriage.com campaign announced. In an email received by the ProtectMarriage.com campaign, Senator McCain issued the following statement:

"I support the efforts of the people of California to recognize marriage as a unique institution between a man and a woman, just as we did in my home state of Arizona. I do not believe judges should be making these decisions."

With Congressional Republicans terrified of the potentially disastrous electoral showing that seemingly awaits them this November, it looks as if they are pulling out all the stops to demonstrate to their right-wing base that they are committed to advancing their agenda, no matter how obvious the pandering or how fruitless the effort may be – which explains why several Republican Senators have, once again, introduced the Federal Marriage Amendment.

The ultimate irony is that two of its main sponsors are Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana and Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho – not exactly the poster boys of the family values crowd or particularly upstanding examples of the supposed sanctity of the “union of a man and a woman”:

SJ 43 IS

110th CONGRESS

2d Session

S. J. RES. 43

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to marriage.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

June 25, 2008

Mr. WICKER (for himself, Mr. VITTER, Mr. CRAIG, Mr. ROBERTS, Mr. INHOFE, Mr. BROWNBACK, Mr. ALLARD, Mr. THUNE, and Mr. SHELBY) introduced the following joint resolution; which was read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

JOINT RESOLUTION

Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to marriage.

      Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which shall be valid to all intents and purposes as part of the Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years after the date of its submission by the Congress:

`Article --

      `Section 1. This article may be cited as the `Marriage Protection Amendment'.

                                      

      `Section 2. Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.'.

Despite the fact that James Dobson has repeatedly attacked John McCain and made it abundantly clear that he will not, under any circumstances, vote for him, it looks like McCain is still grovelling for a meeting.

According to the Los Angeles Times, at the recent meeting with right-wing activists in Ohio that we wrote about yesterday, McCain told participants that he's still trying to win Dobson over:

McCain told the activists Thursday that he also hoped to meet with James C. Dobson, founder of the influential group Focus on the Family, who has said he would not vote for McCain. "The senator spoke fondly of him, but believes there's probably room for some bridge-building," said Mike Gonidakis, head of Ohio Right to Life.

Participants said McCain took detailed notes and listened intently. McCain's aides said they were satisfied with the meeting, and one called it "successful."

Focus on the Family has wrapped up its three-part series attacking Barack Obama’s faith and understanding of Christianity.  In part one, FOF Vice President Tom Minnery accused Obama of having “a fierce misunderstanding of Christianity,” while in part two he called Obama’s interpretation of the Bible sacrilegious.  In the final installment, Minnery said Obama has a “complete and utterly ridiculous understanding” of the role of religion in public life.  

Trobee: Tom, in the next segment of the address, I think it really represents the crux of the issue. What he says, basically, is that Christians are being asked to set aside their values and basically to keep their noses out of politics.

Obama: Now this is going to be difficult for some who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, as many evangelicals do.

Minnery: Oh oh

Obama: But in a pluralistic democracy, we have no choice. Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality. It involves the compromise, the art of what's possible. At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise.

Minnery: In a way, he’s right. What we believe, we believe absolutely. But no one who understands the proper place of religion in a free society believes that God’s edicts ought to be imposed on everyone. Nobody can impose anything on anyone. We understand compromise. We believe that it is unrighteous, wrong, to take the lives of innocent unborn children but we want to fight for those beliefs in the Democratic halls of the legislatures of the Congress. We are able to work back to our principle piece by piece, increment by increment, compromise by compromise, if you will. We are quite willing to be involved, as citizens, in the legislature that our civil government provides for us. We don’t want to impose any edict, any religious principle of God.

Obama: If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God's edicts, regardless of the consequences. To base one's life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.

Minnery: What he is suggesting here is that somehow conservative Christian people, presumably Dr. Dobson, whom he mentioned by name, wants to impose a theocracy. There has never been a suggestion from here or in any orthodox, evangelical source that a theocracy is appropriate for the United States of America. A theocracy, God’s edicts, were what the Israelites had to contend with. That’s called the Old Testament. This is called the New Testament. Salvation is open to everyone. Our Christianity is based on love. Nobody can force anyone to love anyone else. So this is a complete and utterly ridiculous understanding of how we bring faith into the public square.

John McCain’s messy break-up with televangelist Rod Parsley had the potential to hurt him most in Ohio, a swing state necessary for McCain and the place where Parsley built a network of electorally-charged “Patriot Pastors” in 2004 and 2006. Now McCain is making amends by delving deeper into the state’s Religious Right.

Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio secretary of state who helped Bush win there in 2004, is a close ally of Parsley; the two campaigned heavily together during Blackwell’s losing bid for governor in 2006. In an AP story today, Blackwell was critical of McCain’s ham-handed efforts to enlist the Religious Right:

"He has never identified with the evangelical and Christian movement and therefore he can, at times, misread or misinterpret certain activities in the political field of play or certain comments that are offered," said Blackwell, now at the Family Research Council, a conservative think tank. "I personally would like for John to get to the point of comfort with some of our issues and policy positions, through understanding and genuine acceptance."

Despite these warnings, Blackwell is a Republican politician at heart and is supporting McCain (who endorsed Blackwell in 2006)—he even recorded a robo-call for the Arizona senator before the Ohio GOP primary in February. But other activists are even more cagey about how much they’ll work for McCain.

In the same AP article, Chris Long of the Ohio Christian Alliance (which broke away from the Christian Coalition when it got too soft) warned, “There’s certainly a little reservation about Mr. McCain.”

Phil Burress, a leader of Ohio’s Religious Right, has been skeptical of McCain’s judges promises and emphasized in March that McCain had a lot more sucking up to do:

Burress, who heads Cincinnati-based Citizens for Community Values, says although he would vote for McCain in the general election, the Arizona lawmaker has thus far failed to energize the bloc Burress refers to as "values voters."

"They are not mobilized right now -- and in fact, they're just going to be sitting back waiting to hear what he has to say to try to get these people to engage in his campaign," explains Burress.

Burress contends McCain needs to apologize to evangelical Christians and values voters for the way he has treated them over the years. He says because the senator is not likely to make that apology, he must strengthen his pledge to appoint strict constructionist judges to the Supreme Court.

Jack Willke, the former National Right to Life leader who has been called the “grandfather” of the anti-abortion movement, also made “clear” to McCain the unhappiness of the Right, as the Wall Street Journal reported last month.

Nevertheless, Willke, like the others, is supporting McCain. But McCain is still worried enough to set up a meeting today with Burress, Wilke, Long, and others, as Jake Tapper reports.

Lori Viars, executive director of the Family First PAC … told the Dayton Daily News that her fellow conservatives "would probably hold our nose and vote for McCain."

Apparently before said mass nose-holding can transpire, this meeting was required.

TVC claims that “radical Muslims…under the guise of religious freedom” are pursuing a platform of “creeping sharia—that is, getting companies, communities, and states to change policies in order to force everyone to obey Sharia law, a totalitarian system of regulations that govern Islamic theocracies.” This means that “constitutional concepts like one person/one vote would be replaced by Sharia concepts which values a woman’s vote at half that of a man.” Some neighborhood businesses may already be on board: “Caribou coffee shops and Church’s Fried Chicken are Saudi-owned companies which operate and manage their employees based on Sharia principles.”

Peter LaBarbera worries about the potential effects of a Congressional hearing on “Discrimination Against Transgender Americans in the Workplace": "What Americans have to realize is that, if you get the federal government behind this perversion of civil rights, it will have a cascading effect throughout the whole American society. Small businesses could be forced to hire people embracing gender confusion. You have people in jobs that face the public such as a maitre d' in a restaurant – a man decides that he is really a woman and he is going to start dressing as a woman." LaBarbera is optimistic, though, because “when most people see ‘big bulky men in dresses’ they immediately ‘recoil.’”

Focus on the Family continues with its attack on Barack Obama’s faith and understanding of Christianity, with FOF's Gary Schneeberger discussing it on Janet Folger's Faith 2 Action radio program while FOF Vice President Tom Minnery continues his three-part video criticism, claiming that Obama’s interpretation of the Bible is such a “sacrilege” that he “could cry”:

Trobee: Tom, [Obama] says he Christianity doesn’t have a monopoly when it comes to politics and yet, in the next clip, we’ll see what he really thinks about that.

Obama: Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our bibles. Folks haven't been reading their bibles.

Minnery: I could cry. I could cry. That’s a gross misunderstanding of Scripture. To compare the dietary laws that pertained to the Israelites with the New Testament, Kingdom of God theme of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount is a grotesque mischaracterization of what we believe as a Christian people today. He is mixing the Levitical law which applied to the Israelites as they were coming out of 400 years of slavery in Egypt at a time when God chose them to be his holy people; he was purifying them, everything he said then applied to them. Jesus opened to everyone the benefit of Heaven. It’s a new era, the New Testament era, and to willingly mix all this up is, to me, a sacrilege.

Trobee: And it doesn’t stop there. Let’s watch this next one …

Minnery: I hate to even think what’s on this next one.

Obama: Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God's will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

Minnery: Well, hello Senator. Isn’t it evident that taking of innocent human life is killing, is murder, whether someone believes in faith or whether someone does not believe in faith? Is this not evident to all? He hides behind what he believes is some false notion of religion and yet those notions of religion underlie much of our Western civilization’s law. For example, thou shalt not murder – that’s a religious concept. It comes in the Old Testament, it was affirmed in the New Testament, and it’s a law. Because it’s religious, should it be erased from law? Of course not. There are good reasons why this religious principle works well in secular, civil law for everybody regardless of whether they buy into the religious origin of that law. Thou shalt not steal is another religious precept that makes a pretty good law for everybody. He’s mixing things up here and I hope he’s mistaken, I hope he’s not willful, but I don’t know.

If any Religious Right commentators were still bashful in knocking Barack Obama’s Christianity, James Dobson’s decision to attack Barack Obama on theological grounds is like a permission slip for them to come out of the woodwork.

“When you enter into that conversation, you open your theology and your policies up to scrutiny,” claimed Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “And that's what Dr. Dobson did.” Rick Scarborough—who is revamping his “Patriot Pastor” church rallies—said he “was appalled by the Senator's remarks … [T]he presumptive Democratic nominee is no friend of Bible-believing Christians.”

Mike Huckabee, who once came to the defense of Jeremiah Wright but now is working for both Fox News and John McCain, also joined the amen corner, accusing Obama of “reinterpret[ing]” religion and claiming that “what Barack Obama has done is to drive his campaign into a sink hole by saying some things regarding religion that I think will make people who are religious very uncomfortable.”

And Baptist Press, the media outlet of the Southern Baptist Convention, also promoted Dobson’s attack. BP’s executive editor Will Hall wrote that the senator “disrespected a portion of the Word of God simply because it does not fit his worldview” on the issue of homosexuality. “Obama's misappropriation of Scripture to fit his political perspective is more grave than its implications for a presidential election,” he added, calling the supposed scandal “biblical in proportion.”

Published next to the report on Dobson’s comments and Hall’s piling-on, Baptist Press also featured the words of Richard Land, the Southern Baptist Convention’s political spokesman:

"I think to go into the particular beliefs of a particular faith and to try to grill a candidate on that is an intrusion into his personal faith," Land said. "I think what we want to know in a campaign is how that person's faith impacts them.

Wait a minute—it sounds like Land is defending Obama and repudiating the “intrusion” of James Dobson! Indeed, Land said it was fine for candidates to talk about faith and their values, but that “they shouldn't either be asked to be or volunteer to be a spokesperson for their faith tradition, in other words talking about the particulars of their faith.”

Of course, there’s a catch: Land was speaking nearly three weeks before Dobson made his comments.

When Dobson attacked Land’s favored presidential candidate Fred Thompson—even saying he didn’t “think he’s a Christian”—Land called Dobson’s words “harsh and unwarranted.” Will Land hold Dobson to the “intrusion” standard this time?

And what about Obama’s statement that the U.S. is “no longer just a Christian nation,” which Dobson and his lieutenant also attacked? Land said at the above event that he “was, as a Baptist, somewhat appalled by John McCain’s assertion that the Constitution created America as a Christian nation.” Will he say he’s “appalled” by the Focus on the Family version?

Well, we’re not going to hold our breath. Land has been trying to rally the Right to John McCain, even as some complain about McCain’s faith talk. "I'd rather have a third-rate fireman than a first-class arsonist,” Land said recently of the two candidates.

Although all tax-exempt organizations are legally required to be non-partisan, the Alliance Defense Fund “has recruited 50 pastors to deliver sermons in September that will include direct endorsements of political candidates.” ADF has a legal defense in the works as well: “Erik Stanley, ADF’s senior legal counsel, said it would argue that the tax-exempt status of religious groups “is a right, not just a privilege” and that religious leaders enjoy a number of special protections under the First Amendment.”

Janet Folger, convinced that Colorado’s SB 200, the infamous ”restroom bill,” makes her anti-gay book illegal, knows just what message she wants to send: “A week from today I'm flying to Denver and attending a press conference with Colorado pastors and state leaders to … break the law. We are handing out my book, ‘The Criminalization of Christianity,’ and waiting for arrest. It may be that next week's column will be written from a jail cell.”

Baptist Press: “The next president is going to nominate at least two and maybe more Supreme Court justices. When Dad started the Moral Majority back in the late '70s, he had a vision, he had a plan to bring our country to the point where abortion on demand would no longer be legal. We are so close, with President Bush putting [Samuel] Alito and [John] Roberts onto the court, we are one vote away from a court that would be a strict constructionist court (and) not one that tries to legislate from the bench… So, for people -- even conservatives -- to say that Sen. McCain is not the perfect candidates and therefore we're just going to stay home, that's not a wise move and I don't think Dad would support that move.”

After generating a wave of coverage with his nearly unprecedented attack on Barack Obama and his understanding of his own Christian faith in yesterday’s radio broadcast, James Dobson has returned to his standard program format for the time being with a program about “Recapturing the Joy.”  But that doesn’t mean that Focus on the Family is about to let the story go or about to back of its incessant attacks against Obama and his faith.  

Today, FOF unveiled the first installment of a three-part video series in which host Kim Trobee and Focus' Vice President of Public Policy Tom Minnery criticize Obama’s 2006 Call to Renewal Keynote Address.  In it, Minnery claims that Obama still has a long way to go in his “journey of faith” because he’s no where “close to our understanding of what the Christian faith is.” Minnery also gets unnecessarily worked-up about the fact that Obama sought to “compare James Dobson with Rev. Al Sharpton,” when, in fact, Obama wasn’t comparing them at all; he was contrasting them – a key distinction apparently lost on Minnery, Dobson, and the people at Focus on the Family:

Kim Trobee: Tom, Obama explains that he was not raised in a particularly religious household. He talks about his Dad being a Muslim and then becoming an atheist and he says that his mother grew up with a healthy skepticism of organized religion. What does that tell us with regard to his own views on religion?

Tom Minnery: It tells us that he’s on a journey of faith, and that’s a good thing because we think people out to journey toward faith. But from what he says about the Christian faith, who knows where he is? He’s not close to our understanding of what the Christian faith is, by any means.

Trobee: Let’s go ahead and show this first clip of the video.

Barack Obama: Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America's population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.

Trobee: Is that true?

Minnery: No, it’s not true. It’s not even close. Senator, we are not an atheist nation. Senator, we are not a Hindu nation. We are not a Buddhist nation. 76% of the people, according to last year’s Pew Center on Religion survey, people identify themselves as Christian. Now, all of them are not practicing, yet 40% still go to church once a week and, by and large, it’s Christian denominations they’re going to. We are, along among the world, a nation still with a strong Judeo-Christian heritage and he is trying to erase that. And he does so at his own peril.

Trobee: In the next clip, he takes aim at Dr. Dobson and that’s something that, up until now, we were unaware had happened. Let’s take a look at it.

Obama: And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's?

Minnery: Wow. For someone on a journey of faith to compare James Dobson with Rev. Al Sharpton is breathtaking. Many viewers will know that Al Sharpton achieved his notoriety as a polarizing, racist figure in American life, a black racist figure. That’s strong language, but that is who he was and who he is and you can find numerous stories about his run-ins with racial incidents in the past, from the Tawana Brawley hoax to the Central Park jogger issue in which he entered the fracas on the side of black racism. And to compare that with Dr. James Dobson, a child psychologist – not even a Reverend – is a fierce misunderstanding of Christianity.

When Prince William County, Virginia enacted a crackdown on undocumented immigrants last year, county supervisor John Stirrup complained of “economic hardship and lawlessness” in the affluent D.C. suburb, warning of “a downward spiral, similar to the patterns to be found in the Third World countries these illegal immigrants left.” This spring, news media began to report on an exodus of immigrants and “deserted” businesses that cater to Latinos. Corey Stewart, chairman of the county board and a major backer of the crackdown, called it a “stunning success.”

Now Prince William is finding its anti-immigrant fervor may be giving it a bad reputation—an unfortunate image in the midst of a housing crisis that has hit new suburban developments the worst. From the Washington Post:

In May, the median price of a home in the county was $256,124, compared with $375,000 in May 2007, according to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems. Three hundred more homes were sold this May than a year ago.

Even so, [Stephen Fuller, director of George Mason University Center for Regional Analysis] said it's going to be a "slow cure," in part because the county's actions to curb illegal immigration have "damaged its image as a good place to do business."

[Resident] Katherine M. Gotthardt said she thinks it's a waste of time and money for police to check the legal status of arrested criminal suspects. She would rather see the county invest in fire department staffing, affordable housing and schools.