Ezra's blog

It was only last year that People For the American Way Foundation helped represent parents in Odessa, Texas against a school board determined to use public schools to promote a particular religious doctrine. “HA! Take that you dang heathens!” the school district’s curriculum director wrote triumphantly after the board voted to use the Religious Right-backed National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools program. The board settled the lawsuit by dropping NCBCPS.

So it’s natural that advocates of church-state separation would be skeptical of the Texas State Board of Education’s decision last week to approve Bible courses statewide, without providing specific educational or constitutional guidelines.

Mark Chancey, associate professor in religious studies at Southern Methodist University, has studied Bible classes already offered in about 25 districts for the Texas Freedom Network.

The study found most of the courses were explicitly devotional with almost exclusively Christian, usually Protestant, perspectives.

It also found that most were taught by teachers with no academic training in biblical, religious or theological studies and who were not familiar with the issues of separation of church and state.

"Some classes promote creation science. Some classes denigrate Judaism. Some classes explicitly encourage students to convert to Christianity or to adopt Christian devotional practices," Chancey said. "This is all well documented, and the board knows it."

On the other hand, the Religious Right is gung-ho about the move. Decrying “[e]nemies of the First Amendment,” Rod Parsley’s Center for Moral Clarity (a supporter of the unconstitutional NCBCPS curriculum) wrote, “We’re glad legislative and educational leaders in Texas have ignored the shrill arguments of the anti-faith fringe, and we hope other states follow suit.”

Jonathan Saenz of the Liberty Legal Institute and the Free Market Foundation similar predicted that “Texas is going to be seen as a leader on this issue,” and also characterized skeptics as fanatical opponents of religious freedom:

"There are enemies of religious freedom all across our state of Texas and across the country, and they'll do anything and stop at nothing to restrict academic freedom and restrict the religious rights of students," Saenz contends. "They simply do not want kids, even on their own choice, to be able to look at the Bible." The State Board of Education is discussing this week how to develop the proposed new courses.

And Gordon Robertson, Pat Robertson’s normally soft-spoken son, compared efforts to prevent the government from proselytizing in the classroom to outlawing Christmas and Thanksgiving:

Given the Religious Right’s steady efforts over the years to push campaigns like NCBCPS, Robertson shouldn’t be surprised that advocates of church-state separation insist on a distinction between teaching about the Bible objectively and promoting a particular brand of faith.

Organizers of “The Call,” a kind of youth-oriented spin-off of the Promise Keepers on the National Mall in 2000, said the D.C. location wasn’t about influencing politics but about “fasting and prayer for the benefit of the nation.” But as “The Call” continued over the years as an itinerant stadium show, that apolitical evangelism attitude apparently wore off. Founder Lou Engle described his goals for an August 16 rally on the National Mall to OneNewsNow:

There is good reason to make a plea for heaven's intervention, he says. "Just to see what's taking place in California: redefinition of marriage -- [and] the next thing is transgender marriage," Engle laments. "This is part of what's going on, let alone with DC and the elections coming up."

He includes an election-related issue that surfaces now and then -- judicial appointments. "I believe it's a defining moment of who the next judges are," says Engle. "Those judges are going to help shape the future of America unless something happens. We desperately need heaven right now."

Engle told the Christian Post that he’s not making any endorsements, but he made clear what the presidential election boils down to:

We don’t purposely hold gatherings before elections, but this one I felt was so critical because the ideologies that are being promoted through different candidates have the implications just like in 2000.

The implications are huge for the issues of abortion, issue of marriage, or the kind of judges that don’t keep opening the door to the legality of every kind supposed freedom – which is really no freedom. It is really licensing to break away from the foundational moral principle upon which society will really flourish.  …

We will not be praying for any candidate or against any candidate. But our declaration is that abortion is not a political issue, it is a moral issue and we are praying that God will raise up candidates that will hold high values on the life of the unborn. And so we will cry out, “Give us judges, give us a candidate, give us a president who will stand for life.” And obviously some of the statements that these candidates have made really are…we are really in a defining moment.

While Engle is unlikely to come close to the 400,000 people organizers claimed attended the 2000 rally, he will have the help of Mike Huckabee, as Sarah Posner reported. Posner also noted that Engle is taking his act on the road with a 40-day fast in California culminating in another stadium rally days before the election. Engle told the Christian Post that this will be about “the salvation, for the deliverance, and healing of the homosexuals”:

We are not coming pointing the finger with anger at the homosexuals, but we do believe that what is taking place here with these bills is fueled by another realm. It is a spiritual realm of power of darkness.

Spiritual power of darkness seeking to release ideologies that destroy lives, families, nations, [sic] and on that day, Nov. 1, we are going to pray and resist with the power of the cross – God hold back these power that’s seeking to be released. We are standing and saying God have mercy, hold these things back so that the definition of marriage can be sustained in this nation for our children and our children sake.

Will John McCain and Barack Obama’s joint appearance next month at Saddleback Church be a friendly forum or a firing line? “Purpose Driven” megachurch pastor Rick Warren is a superstar among evangelicals, but he still drew heavy criticism from some Religious Right activists when he invited Obama (along with right-wing stalwart Sen. Sam Brownback) to a global AIDS conference at his church back in 2006.

“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?” wrote Kevin McCullough, a radio talker now affiliated with the Family Research Council. “Obama's policies represent the antithesis of biblical ethics and morality,” complained Rob Schenck of the National Clergy Council. “Having Senator Barack Obama speak on issues of social justice is like having a segregationist speak on civil rights,” said Patrick Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition, who added that Warren “should realize the terrible signal he is sending by inviting a speaker who tramples on the historic teachings of Christianity and the Bible.”

But Saddleback Church defended that 2006 invitation, saying that the goal of the conference was “to put people together who normally won't even speak to each other” towards the goal of fighting AIDS. Although Warren retains positions against abortion and homosexuality, his emphasis on compassion and comity has been touted by some as a sign of a new evangelical politics.

As for the upcoming presidential forum, Warren seemed to suggest it will follow along the same lines. From the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow:

The author of The Purpose Driven Life says he does not believe the biblical gospel is compromised when he teams up with non-Christians in efforts to promote the "common good."

"Now, I don't happen to agree with Muslims and I don't happen to agree with Jewish people," states Warren, "and I don't even agree with all of the things Catholics believe. But I...can work with them on doing something like stopping AIDS because we all believe sex is for marriage only."

But what about issues where he doesn’t agree? Warren will be asking Obama and McCain questions about domestic policy, too, and the example he cited in OneNewsNow comes straight from right-wing talking points:

Warren says he plans to focus on issues that political reporters often ignore, including how the candidates view the Constitution. He suggests questions on that topic: "Is it a quote 'living document' that can be changed, that can be reinterpreted with each generation as things change? Or is it a truth written in granite that is a standard by which we evaluate everything else, and you don't change it unless we amend it?"

It appears we spoke too soon when we declared Alan Keyes’s presidential hopes over in April. Keyes had failed to make any headway in the Republican primary, and when he quit the GOP to become the nominee of the Constitution Party—the Howard Phillips fringe group that won James Dobson’s protest vote in 1996—he discovered that the activists at the Constitution Party convention didn’t care for him too much, rejecting him 3-to-1 in favor of Chuck Baldwin.

Keyes is no stranger to political failure, having lost (by similar margins) three Senate races in two states, along with two previous presidential runs. This year he waxed philosophical: “I kind of represent, in political terms, the abortion. You're invited in, but they kill you. You're invited in, but they kill you.”

But somehow, Keyes has found a way to continue his quixotic race. An article in FrontPage magazine (which described Keyes as “the Energizer Loser”) detailed how disgruntled members of California’s Constitution Party delegation (known there as the American Independent Party) broke away from the national party after it rejected Keyes.

And now it seems that the California Secretary of State is recognizing the breakaway faction. So, barring any further legal action, Keyes is going to be a real presidential candidate in November. At least in California. Why, Keyes’s presence on the ballot may even siphon enough far-right votes from John McCain to tip the state’s electoral votes to Barack Obama.

While this must be an exciting moment for the Keyes camp, one has to wonder: If Keyes “represent[ed], in political terms, the abortion” before, what does he metaphorically represent now?

When James Dobson decided to begin a radio broadside against Barack Obama’s religious faith, he responded to criticism that he was “throwing stones” by repeating his attack—even implying Obama is “deceitful” when claiming to have become Christian—all while expressing outrage that anyone might take issue with his pronouncements.

Now Gary Cass, a former lieutenant of the late D. James Kennedy, is trying out the same reverse-umbrage. Cass started a group last year called the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission, which clumsily tried to equate gay-rights legislation, a TV report on the Religious Right, and a killing spree at a Colorado church under the general rubric “Christian-bashing.”

But Cass really seemed to hit his stride when he fine-tuned his “Christian-bashing” concept to focus on attacking the faith of his political opponents, starting with Mitt Romney’s Mormonism. He launched a “True Christian VP” campaign last month to advance the notion that those who disagree with his position on abortion and gay marriage are not “real Christians.” That included Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Responding to Dobson’s attack on Obama, Cass reiterates his claim that Obama is not Christian—and makes Obama out to be the “bully”:

"Like a typical playground bully, Obama takes the first swing then get's angry when the victim of his attack tries to defend themself.[”]

According to Cass, Obama’s “first swing” was to say he is Christian.

"In a calculated ploy to strip away votes from Christian pro-life / pro-family conservatives, Obama has made a concerted effort to make his faith a campaign issue. But when his faith and ethics are scrutinized and revealed not to be Christian, Obama then claims he is a victim of conservative Christians like Jim Dobson and organizations like CADC.

"If Obama is a victim, he is a victim of his own radical theology and policies. They are so radical in fact that faithful Christians cannot simply stand by and let Obama defame and attempt to redefine the Faith by associating it with his wildly aberrant beliefs and radical policies. …

"To the extent that Obama wants to make headlines by making his faith an issue, he should be required to define and defend his beliefs and actions. The mainstream media cannot or will not do it. Thank God for Dr. Dobson and others who will not sit back and watch the Christian faith be defamed by being associated with Obama's most radical beliefs and policies.

"CADC pleges be there to defend those who will oppose any politican like Obama who seeks to exploit the Faith by distorting and attacking the scriptures."

After Pat Robertson ranted about People For the American Way and other groups that listen to him and tell other people what he said—a process Robertson referred to, ironically, as the “squelching” of his speech—his guest applied the same argument to the culture war in general. “Americans who believe in traditional values are being forced to whisper,” intoned the CBN reporter introducing South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint. According to DeMint, the Religious Right is losing its “freedom of speech.”

I’ve really seen a lot of intimidation around South Carolina and around the country. People are afraid to say certain things are wrong and to make value judgments because they have been told that that’s hateful and it’s intolerant. …

Before the sixties, we knew abortion was wrong, and sex outside of marriage, and unwed births, pornography, homosexuality. Yet if you look now, the official or at least implicit position of the government [is] that all these things are right. And if you say they’re wrong, you’re going to be called down in the media, in the schools, and even in the churches. …

What we’re losing is our freedom of speech.

And just because our position might have a faith component, or a connection to some religious belief, that doesn’t mean we don’t have a right to speak it. And it shouldn’t mean that public policy shouldn’t reflect good ideas just because they have a religious connection.

DeMint’s charges of censorship and intimidation will come as a real surprise to readers of this blog, as we have quoted extreme statements by Religious Right activists, writers, and politicians at length on a daily basis for years. The senator seems to be arguing that his far-right opinions and legislation ought to be immune from criticism, and that disagreement with him or his allies (“calling him down,” as he put it) is the same thing as censorship. Does it really need to be said other people have the same freedom of speech he has—even those who disagree with him?

It’s also hard to credit DeMint’s claim that political arguments from religious faith are being suppressed, given how often both major presidential candidates talk about their personal faith or how Christian values should be reflected in public policy.

From the state that brought us Sally Kern comes yet another elected official who believes gays are conspiring against him. Embattled Oklahoma County Commissioner Brent Rinehart is facing felony campaign finance charges, but his re-election campaign is in full swing, distributing a crudely drawn comic book explaining to voters how he stood up to "the homosexuals, the good ol' boy politicians, and liberals"--not to mention a cartoon Satan:

(Via Reason.)

As Media Matters and Americans United reported, Pat Robertson accused them and People For the American Way of trying to “squelch” his speech. Our method of “stifling” his freedom of expression? We broadcast his own words. From Tuesday’s “700 Club”:

Well our next guest and our next story I know about personally. There’s an organization called People For the American Way. They have camped on this program for decades. They record every single word that I say. If there’s any possibility that they can catch something or change it and then feed it to the AP, they do, and so the next thing you know it’s a big story.

Then, added to them is one of [the] ACLU operatives who started an organization called Americans United for Separation of Church and State. They have people assigned to monitor every word, and then to take those words, change them often, take connectives out of them, change the sense of it, and then feed it to a willing agent in the Associated Press. Then, on top of that, there’s another group, which has backing from somebody like George Soros, called, what is it, Media Matters.

So there are three of them trying to stifle the speech on this program and to embarrass those who make it.

Now, monitoring and responding to the Religious Right has been part of People For the American Way’s mission since 1981, so it’s true that we have been watching Robertson and other televangelists as they have sought to expand their political influence. And while it’s been years since Robertson’s 1988 presidential run, when he finished second in the Iowa caucus and birthed the Christian Coalition, he remains the head of an enormous media and religious empire, including the Christian Broadcasting Network, the “700 Club” (which contractually remains on the mainstream ABC Family channel), Regent University (whose low-ranked law school placed a number of graduates in the Bush Justice Department), and the affiliated American Center for Law and Justice (whose head, Jay Sekulow, played a key role in picking Bush’s judicial nominees).

Given Robertson’s continuing political clout, it shouldn’t be surprising that folks pay attention to him and even criticize him. As for “embarrassing” him, well, he does enough of that himself. Like when he and guest Jerry Falwell blamed us for the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Get the Flash Player to see this video clip.

In the past, Robertson has complained about being “misquoted”—like when he said Ariel Sharon’s debilitating stroke was divine punishment for “dividing God’s land.” But given that we provided the full transcript and video of his comments, the claim did not hold up to scrutiny.

Even more absurd, however, is Robertson’s complaint that we are trying to censor him. In fact, it is completely the opposite. We bring Robertson’s message—in his own words—to a whole new audience.

As California prepares to vote in November on whether to keep same-sex marriage, the Massachusetts legislature is reconsidering the Jim Crow-era law restricting out-of-state gay couples from marrying if their home state prohibits it. Repeal of the 1913 law passed the state Senate Tuesday with no objections. And the far Right is furious.

Brian Camenker of MassResistance called yesterday’s voice vote “cowardly” and “sleazy,”  claiming that gays had taken over the state:

[Camenker] watched his state senate in action and described it as "completely orchestrated" by homosexual activists.

"It was horrible," he said. "It was as if the gays were playing them like a violin."

The voice vote, "was just a sort of murmur and that was it," he said.

"I'll tell you there's no more democracy in Massachusetts, no constitutional government. They were completely being run by the homosexual lobby," he said.

Camenker warned that repeal of the restriction would “cause havoc” for other states, and Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality called it “a recipe for chaos.”

"Obviously, what the homosexuals are trying to do is to create a tidal wave for homosexual...marriage, build up a number of states [that] are allowing either civil unions or homosexual...marriage, and then have a favorable case before the Supreme Court, which grants this nationally," explains the pro-family activist, noting that only a Defense of Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution could prevent the court from doing that.

When Randall Terry, founder of the militant anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, recently sued Troy Newman over the use of the name, he certainly opened up a can of worms.

A number of former OR activists issued a statement on Newman’s behalf, calling for Terry’s repentance for “unbiblical lifestyle decisions”; “[W]e can no longer remain silent while Mr. Terry continues to fleece unsuspecting pro-life people out of hundreds of thousands of dollars for his personal and selfish gain,” they added. Terry responded with his own list of supporters vouching for his character.

And Flip Benham, who runs Operation Rescue/Operation Save America, put aside his distaste for Terry (“Giving more money to Randall Terry is like giving booze to an alcoholic,” he has said) to attack both Newman and the former OR activists who criticized Terry. “These are the same ones who would not stand with Operation Rescue leadership in the fall of 1993 and call the premeditated shooting (murder) of abortionists, sin,’” wrote Benham, recalling the darkest period of the militant anti-abortion movement.

But while Flip Benham’s Operation Rescue and Troy Newman’s Operation Rescue remain locked in their bitter name dispute, there is at least one thing they can agree on: Barack Obama.

Newman’s OR called for anti-abortion activists to descend upon an Obama appearance at the National Council of La Raza convention in San Diego this past weekend:

“Abortionists are famous for targeting minority communities and those who are most vulnerable. When Obama throws his support behind the abortion industry, he is also tacitly supporting the exploitation of Latinos and African Americans,” said Operation Rescue spokesperson Cheryl Sullenger. “Operation Rescue urges all pro-life supporters in the San Diego area to let their voices be heard in protest of Obama’s extremist abortion policies, and his tacit approval of the abortion industry’s despicable pattern of racial exploitation.”

Meanwhile, Benham’s group is conducting an anti-abortion campaign in Atlanta, which doesn’t seem to have much to do with Obama. But in announcing a church OR plans to picket, the group adds:

According to their bulletin, this is a UCC church which will host the Human Rights Campaign Gospel Concert. The HRC is the largest group advocating gay & lesbian rights and the UCC is the denomination of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Barak Obama. For the first time in the history of our nation, we have a man running for president who is neither a Christian nor a patriot.

Lest John McCain get too excited about this new source of support, they don’t have a whole lot of nice things to say about him, either. Benham wrote back in October, “[T]here is no way we true evangelical Christians will support Giuliani, McCain, Thompson, or Romney.”

And Randall Terry, who led a small band of protesters against GOP candidate Rudy Giuliani over the winter, recycled the same language (“an enemy inside your camp”) for McCain in an interview with Playboy:

Q: What impact would a John McCain presidency have on the pro-life agenda?

A: If McCain would appoint judges who would overturn Roe, it could be a huge boon. I don’t think we have any assurance that would happen. Justices Anthony Kennedy, David Souter and Sandra Day O’Connor were all appointed by Republican presidents who did not do their homework. If presidents Reagan and Bush Sr. had done what they said they would do, we would already have overturned Roe because we wouldn’t have had Kennedy, Souter and O’Connor. There’s a very strong movement afoot in the conservative wing of the Republican Party to deny McCain the White House. Their attitude is, an enemy outside your camp makes you vigilant and unites you, but an enemy inside your camp makes you dead because he can cut your neck in the night or poison your food by day.

After James Dobson’s decision to launch an ill-tempered and tendentious attack on Barack Obama’s faith (with follow-up broadcasts), the Focus on the Family founder couldn’t have been surprised to hear criticism—even from his own side. “If Christian conservatives want to be taken seriously, they need to make serious arguments and speak with intellectual integrity,” wrote Peter Wehner of the right-wing Ethics and Public Policy Center. “In this instance, Dobson didn't. He has set back his cause and made some of us who are evangelicals and conservatives wince.”

But Dobson mustered an impressive showing of umbrage against a pro-Obama ad from a group called Matthew 25 Network. “You know it’s an election year when certain people start grabbing headlines by attacking the faith of presidential candidates,” the ad says. “With all these stones being cast at Senator Obama, it can be hard to know what to believe.” The ad then quotes Obama describing the power of faith, without discussing politics or particulars: “Kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt that I heard God’s spirit beckoning me.  I submitted myself to his will and dedicated myself to discovering his truth.”

Dobson, taking the ad to be directed at himself, responded with a segment at the beginning of his radio show yesterday.

DOBSON: For one thing, nobody is trying to grab headlines. Who needs ‘em? I get ‘em without even trying, even if I wanted them. And we are also not throwing stones at Senator Obama for his faith. That’s off the wall. We are responding to his comment about the Bible and about us and about the Constitution and that was the point of what we had to say.

TOM MINNERY: And it’s also true that the Bible has other things to say about how people speak, and the, the tongue, the tongue can be deceitful, and people don’t always speak the truth, and there’s some reasons to doubt what it is we’re about to hear.

According to Minnery, a vice-president at Focus, Obama’s description of his conversion is “deceitful” because the senator is “one left-wing liberal on the issue of abortion.” Furthermore, Minnery said “we have to question whether he’s even sincere as he speaks so lovingly about religion.”

Now, it may sound like Dobson and Minnery were once again directly denying the validity of their political opponent’s profession of Christianity. But Dobson, seconds later, took personal offense at such a notion:

DOBSON: Well we need to get to the program that we prepared for today, but we did want to make this statement, because we don’t want to leave it on the record that we’re throwing stones at Senator Obama to grab the headlines. That’s very offensive to me personally, and I’m sure it is to you as well.

MINNERY: And I appreciate your wanting to defend the evangelical beliefs in the Bible.

In case you thought the anti-immigrant fever of 2006 had broken, restrictionist think tanks are still promoting restriction, states are still passing immigrant crackdowns, and  there are still plenty of hard-core cranks across the country. A story from CBS 13 in Sacramento, California featured one man ennobled by his passion for confronting day laborers with a trailer-mounted billboard saying “DEPORT THEM ALL.”

[Davi Rodriguez] drives the sign up and down the streets of Sacramento where day laborers wait for work, sometimes videotaping the reactions and uploading them to YouTube. Workers we talked to say they feel harassed, and they're losing jobs.

(The CBS 13 site has video of the report.)

Harassment of day laborers is a common tactic of local anti-immigrant vigilantes. Rodriguez’s billboard directed viewers to go to the website of Save Our State, the group that wrote the blueprint for local immigration crackdowns in Hazleton, Pennsylvania and dozens of other cities. Two years ago, Save Our State founder Joseph Turner described his method of “saving” California from becoming a “Third World cesspool”:

"With as little as five people you can shut down a day-laborer center," says Mr. Turner, because employers will be too intimidated to stop and hire them. Contractors have been deterred from hiring from these sites during the protests and in several days that followed. Home Depot declines to comment on Mr. Turner.

As Turner explained then in another interview, this is all a way of expressing himself as a “proud nationalist”:

"I believe this country is superior and I believe our culture is superior to all others," he declared.

He sees illegal immigrants as the pre-eminent threat to that culture.

Now that a large group of Religious Right activists have come forward in support of John McCain, the candidate might be tempted to sit back and relax. But as McCain learned from his experience with televangelists John Hagee and Rod Parsley, it’s not easy to be both a beloved “maverick” and a right-wing champion.

McCain was happy to campaign with Hagee and Parsley, until the media started to pick up their extreme views—thus risking McCain’s “moderate” image among many independent voters.

So what happens if and when people start hearing about McCain’s new friends? If Hagee and Parsley are too much for McCain, voters may begin to wonder, what about these right-wing activists, some of whom are even further out there?

Does McCain endorse David Barton’s partisan pseudo-history of America as a “Christian nation”? Does McCain share Phil Burress’s view that Ohio’s anti-gay marriage amendment should have invalidated the state’s domestic violence law? What are McCain’s thoughts on Tim LaHaye’s warning that “Brilliant Jewish minds have all too frequently been devoted to philosophies that have proved harmful to mankind”? Does McCain believe, like Phyllis Schlafly, that women cannot be raped by their husbands, that the U.S. government is secretly plotting to merge with Mexico and Canada, or that Mexican immigrants are “invading” the U.S. and spreading disease? (For that matter, does this mean Schlafly has successfully “worked over” McCain?)

McCain will be tempted to ditch them, as he did Parsley and Hagee, but that only managed to anger the Religious Right. Mat Staver, who organized the recent pro-McCain meeting, complained of McCain’s abandonment of the televangelists he’d courted, “He threw them under the bus.” Right-wing strategist Mark DeMoss called it a “slap in the face to evangelicals who are already somewhat suspect of Senator McCain.” But keeping his Religious Right friends along may be a slap in the face to his poll numbers.

After a private meeting with John McCain, Ohio Religious Right icon Phil Burress remained a little ho-hum about the candidate he felt obligated to support, but soon enough—after McCain announced his support for California’s anti-gay marriage amendment, anyway—Burress was bubbling over with excitement:

He says McCain was courteous and took detailed notes on what the six had to say about issues such as the sanctity of life, marriage, and judges. "It was so refreshing to me because he was so different than any other politician that I have ever met," describes Burress. He says McCain is not swayed like other politicians. …

"...[I] left there a changed man," he admits.

Burress wrote to his supporters that after the meeting, “40 Ohio Pro-Family Forum leaders … have decided to move forward and start working to educate Ohio Values Voters about the vast differences between McCain and Obama.”

I was once one of those people who said "no way" to Senator John McCain as President. No longer. The stakes are too high. And if Obama wins I need to able to get up on November 5th, look at myself in the mirror, and when I pray, say, "Lord, I did all that I could."

And today, Burress joined a hundred other activists—including far-right heavyweights Phyllis Schlafly and David Barton—in Denver to commit to campaign for McCain:

"Collectively we feel that he will support and advance those moral values that we hold much greater than Obama, who in our view will decimate moral values," said Mat Staver, the chairman of Liberty Counsel, a legal advocacy group, who previously supported Mike Huckabee's candidacy. …

The group included leaders like Phyllis Schlafly, the long-time leader of Eagle Forum; Steve Strang, the publisher of Charisma magazine; Phil Burress, a prominent Ohio marriage and anti-pornography activist; David Barton, the founder of WallBuilders and Donald Hodel, a former secretary of the Interior, who previously served on the board of Focus on the Family. Jim Dobson, the head of Focus and an outspoken critic of McCain, did not attend. The McCain campaign was also not directly represented at the meeting.

A second person who attended the event, but asked not to be named, said that the group was motivated principally by a desire to defeat Barack Obama. "None of these people want to meet their maker knowing that they didn't do everything they could to keep Barack Obama from being president," the participant said. "You've got these two people running for president. One of them is going to become president. That's the perspective. That that's the whole discussion." …

On a recent swing through Ohio, McCain met with a group of religious leaders and activists, including Burress, who has previously been critical of McCain's lack of outreach to Christian conservatives. According to two participants at the Tuesday meeting in Denver, Burress spoke out strongly in favor of uniting behind McCain's candidacy.

Staver said the McCain campaign was making progress but still had more work to do. "I think that the outreach to the community has to increase significantly," he said. "There is a clear enthusiasm."