Family Research Council

It is almost time again for the annual Values Voter Summit, the political conference sponsored by the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, American Values, and others where right-wing activists gather to rant and rave, attack homosexuals, and suggest that the anti-Christ is gay while Republican presidential candidates fall all over themselves to pander for votes.   

Heading into this year’s event, FRC unveiled a new ad urging right-wing activists to attend or risk “losing America”:

Are we losing America? Radical activists redefine marriage. Your tax dollars put towards abortion providers like Planned Parenthood. Your parental rights erased. Your religious liberties expunged. Your basic freedoms eliminated. Are we losing America? Unless we act now, the answer is YES! That’s why this year’s Values Voters Summit in Washington, DC is so vital. This September, you’ll discover how you can make a difference. We’ll equip you to protect the tradition of marriage, the innocence of your children, and the sanctity of your faith. Join leaders like Newt Gingrich, Bill Bennett, Chuck Colson, and others for the Values Voters Summit September 12-14 in Washington, DC … Are we losing America? We don’t have to.

While the Values Voter Summit is one of the Religious Right’s premier political events filled with pomp and professionalism, the same cannot be said for the 9th Annual Freedom21 National Conference, which is taking place right now in Dallas, TX.  Whereas FRC can boast of heavy-hitters like Gingrich, Sen. Sam Brownback, and James Dobson, the best Freedom21 could do was land the likes of Rep. Michele Bachmann, Jerome Corsi, Phyllis Schlafly, and third party presidential candidate Chuck Baldwin … and with third-rate entertainment and lackluster attendance such as this, it is not hard to see why:

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?"

A gathering led by Niger Innis of the Congress of Racial Equality, Bishop Harry Jackson of the High Impact Leadership Coalition, and the new group Americans for American Energy held a press conference yesterday demanding increased “American Energy” production.  Their contentions were twofold: that high energy costs disproportionately harm low-income families, and that increased domestic oil drilling would solve the problem.  Standing in the way: the “elitist Volvo-driving” environmentalists. Watch:

Although CORE was once a prominent civil rights group, after Niger Innis’s father, Roy, took control in 1968, he led it to the far right, honoring Karl Rove at its Martin Luther King dinner, backing extreme Bush judges, and defending oil companies. According to a Mother Jones article, “Innis has been accused by founder James Farmer and other black leaders of renting out CORE’s historic reputation to corporations like Monsanto and ExxonMobil. (CORE even mounted a counterprotest to environmentalists picketing an ExxonMobil shareholders’ meeting.)”

For CORE, this event was no different. Niger Innis proclaimed his coalition to open up domestic drilling to be “very much like the civil rights revolution in its diversity and in its moral passion.”

Early in the press conference, Harry Jackson defined the enemy: “The fact is that we have environmental groups who are basically elitist, they are trying to dramatically change our lives, they are basically saying that they want to have a wholesale transformation of our culture and society.” Limiting drilling in ANWR, he said, is “a huge problem.”

While he once again claimed to be a Democratic voter, Jackson is a frequent spokesman for groups and causes on the Religious Right, and he’s apparently expanding his portfolio to issues of the economic Right. Jackson took the time yesterday to hawk the new book he co-wrote with Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, which included a chapter on anti-environmentalism as a “faith” issue.

A long series of Congressional Republicans followed, extolling the virtues of American energy, gleefully leading the crowd in chants of “Stop the War on the Poor,” and continuing the assault on environmentalists. A representative of Americans for American Energy, Colorado State Sen. Bill Cadman, called out the “environmental racists, environmental terrorists.” Democrats were also a favorite target.

While President Bush conceded yesterday that any short-term effects of new drilling would be “psycholog[ical],” a poster prominently displayed throughout the event promised that Republican policies would lower the price of gas to $2.13 a gallon. The Democratic plan, according to the poster, would only reduce the price of gas by five cents. Cost estimates were attributed to “various sources.” 

Oil companies were mentioned only once, by Leland Hogan of the Utah Farm Bureau, who asserted that they make their decisions “by what the political climate is,” not “business decisions.” Hogan and his compatriots evidently hoped that the political landscape would change enough to allow the white knight of the poor, Big Oil, to roll over the “extreme environmentalists” and roll out $2.13 gas.

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.

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.

As we have noted over the last several weeks, the Religious Right’s response to the California marriage ruling has been noticeably over-the-top, even for them.  Throwing out everything from Nazi metaphors and warnings that the end of the world was upon us to hateful language and ridiculous scare-tactics, the Right’s response has consisted almost entirely over rhetorical over-reaction. 

But now that same-sex marriages have begun in California, the Right appears to be transitioning from over-reaction to action and begun ramping up its organizing efforts to amend the California Constitution to “provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized.” 

Just yesterday, the Los Angeles Times reported that Focus on the Family dumped a quarter-million dollars into the effort:

The initiative campaign proposes to amend the state Constitution to define marriage as being between a man and a woman. It received $250,000 this week from an evangelical group, Focus on the Family, and declared that the debate about same-sex marriage "is not over." Focus on the Family, led by James C. Dobson, posted a statement on its website declaring that California's "judicially imposed social experiment has hastened the demise of religious freedom across the U.S."

Today, the Family Research Council sent out an email seeking to have its own quarter-million dollar investment be doubled by a matching grant for the fight in California and across the nation:

I'm writing to ask you to give a generous donation to Family Research Council's MARRIAGE CAMPAIGN.

Your donation and others will be doubled by a Matching Grant up to $250,000!

Traditional marriage is now in grave peril across the nation due to the outrageous decisions by activist judges and radical legislators in Massachusetts, California, Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Oregon. With reckless disregard for logic and law, these threats open the door to:

    * Counterfeit marriage being imposed on states with marriage amendments
    * Erosion of traditional morality as homosexuality is normalized
    * Schools teaching that homosexual behavior and homosexual "marriage" are social goods
    * Restriction of religious freedom and free speech

In response to the marriage crisis, FRC has launched our Marriage Campaign.

Our initial goal: raise $2 million immediately to educate the nation on the centrality of marriage, respond to threats and lies across the country, educate leaders and pastors, and register voters.

The crisis is so great that FRC has been given a $250,000 Matching Grant to help fight this battle and others

FRC plans to use the money is raises to, among other things, “Educate the grassroots and government leaders, Launch paid advertising and press events, Alert and inform FRC's powerful network of churches and Flood TV, radio, newspapers, and the Internet with FRC experts doing eye-opening interviews.”

FRC plans to use the money is raises to, among other things, “Educate the grassroots and government leaders, Launch paid advertising and press events, Alert and inform FRC's powerful network of churches and Flood TV, radio, newspapers, and the Internet with FRC experts doing eye-opening interviews.”

The group through which FOF and FRC will presumably channel their money and efforts is ProtectMarriage.com, a who’s who of right-wing organizations and individuals.  ProtectMarriage itself appears to kicking its efforts into high-gear, beginning with what they seem to be billing as the single most important conference call ever:

Dear Pastors, Friends and Christian Leaders,
 
We have labored to make this letter as short as possible.  However, the gravity of this moment caused us to need to share several critical items.  Please read carefully – at least this first page.
 
The landscape of California will change dramatically as of Monday, June 16 at 5:01 PM.  Every Bible believing pastor and church will be affected.
 
Please join with pastors and Christian leaders all across California who are coming together at 43+ locations for a statewide Pastors Strategic Conference Call, Wednesday, June 25, at 10 AM.
 
For the location list, please see www.protectmarriagesd.com.
 
If you, as a pastor, are willing to host a gathering of pastors and Christian leaders at your church, or you know of a pastor who will host, please contact Chris Clark at pastor@eastclairemont.com  or 858-395-7136.  You need to have speaker-phone capability that can be adequately amplified, along with PowerPoint capabilities for visual purposes.
 
Additionally, please forward this email to as many pastors and Christian leaders as you can or email reply with the email addresses of pastors and Christian leaders so that we can keep them informed of future developments … Be assured that the information shared will be extremely beneficial for the future of the cause of Christ in California.  Saying it another way, it is worth canceling all other appointments in order to be present at one of these locations.

The conference call looks like it is tied to the organization’s efforts to use churches to register thousands of new voters before the November election:

The church in California is being called upon to turn out the vote for the November election, in which voters will vote on a constitutional amendment to nullify a recent court decision legalizing homosexual "marriage" in that state.

ProtectMarriage.com has already signed on a thousand churches to work to increase voter registration and turnout. As spokesman Ron Prentice notes, the church is seen as one of the keys to victory. "[In] many elections, only 50 percent of those church members register to vote," he says. "And so we know that our success hinges on getting out as many votes as possible -- and the church community is available and willing."
 
Prentice explains that as a follow-up to voter registration materials, his group will provide church leaders with specific sermon content on the subject of biblical marriage -- "and then we'll be working with them to get out more and more of their congregation to vote," he adds.

It seems as if it has finally dawned on the Right that a loss in California on the marriage issue could do serious damage to their efforts to pass a federal marriage amendment and permanently deny marriage equality to men and women throughout the nation and they look set to pull out all the stops in an effort to ensure that that does not happen.  As AFA’s OneNewsNow put it: “History has shown that what happens in California affects the rest of the country, so Prentice is calling on people to pray for victory."

In its most recent “Washington Update,” the Family Research Council appears to be trying to call out John McCain on the fact that his website just isn’t religious enough:

A quick tour through the candidates' official websites may do more to predict who our next president will be than months of polling data. On one nominee's site, visitors can select from featured articles called, "When Faith Is Front and Center," "Reconciling Faith and Politics," and "Strengthening Families." In another section, they can scroll through the priority issues of "ethics," "faith," and "family" and read excerpts from speeches, watch video clips, and peruse editorials devoted entirely to this senator's religious conviction. If you attributed that content to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), guess again. The site belongs to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), whose party is vying for the "values void" created by the GOP's near-silence on its core issues. Unlike Obama's site, McCain's homepage is dedicated to "energy security," "global competitiveness," and "Iraq." Nowhere is faith or family referenced. With the exception of a blurb on human dignity, found on the bottom half of his issues menu, McCain's commitment to and record on social values are glaringly absent … Is it any wonder then that the gap of support between McCain and Obama is shrinking in the religious community? As of Friday, McCain was leading by only five percent among those who said that religion is an important aspect of their everyday life. The GOP's silence on marriage, particularly at this critical juncture in California, is deafening.

Oddly, if you actually bother to compare the two candidate’s websites, they don’t seem nearly as different as FRC makes them out to be.

Obama does have a “Faith” page consisting mostly of a link to a speech he delivered to Call to Renewal's Building a Covenant for a New America Conference in 2006 and a link to a document entitled “Barack's Faith Principles. Other articles FRC cites look to be run-of-the-mill campaign issues - concerns about the issues such as “Ethics” and “Family” certainly are not unique to the so-called “Values Voters” FRC claims to represent and the "When Faith Is Front and Center” article they cite is basically a link to an op-ed by Obama supporter Douglas Kmiec.  

It’s not clear why FRC is so high on Obama’s website relative to McCain’s. FRC praises Obama for having a “Family” page even though it contains proposals for a bunch of things FRC loathes, such as providing a living wage and universal healthcare. On McCain’s site, what FRC dismisses as a “blurb” is actually a long “values” page dedicated to Human Dignity and the Sanctity of Life which is chalk full of the issues FRC and its ilk care about and even starts off by pledging to overturn Roe v. Wade which, for groups like FRC, has long been its top political priority:

John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand that courts should not be in the business of legislating from the bench.

The page goes on to set out McCain’s views on the importance of protecting marriage, protecting children from internet pornography, and restricting stem-cell research. It concludes with a declaration that “decency, human compassion, self-sacrifice and the defense of innocent life are at the core of John McCain's value system and will be the guiding principles of a McCain Presidency."

McCain’s website also contains articles such as “John McCain: Keeping Faith, On His Own Terms” as well as others about his efforts to reach out to the GOP’s conservative Christian base and even the text of his remarks to FRC’s own Values Voter Summit.

FRC’s one-sided review of the websites seems to be an exercise in pressuring McCain into publicly discussing his faith more openly. As FRC’s Tony Perkins explained back in February:

“[McCain] must make social conservatives feel that he, No. 1, understands their issues; No. 2, believes in their issues; and No. 3, will advance them as president.”

Apparently, the only way McCain can do that, despite all the pandering he has already done, is to spend a lot more time talking about religion in a manner that FRC deems acceptable.

Not surprisingly, the Religious Right is upset at the failure of an effort to block California’s recent same-sex marriage decision from going into effect. “[N]ationwide legal chaos,” predicted the Alliance Defense Fund. The decision “abolishes the meaning of motherhood and fatherhood,” opined Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. A “further extension of their judicial activism,” said Pacific Justice Institute’s Brad Dacus.

At the same time, readers of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Times were confronted with an enormous advertisement urging them to “join the Crusade” of “conscientious resistance” to “the homosexual ‘moral revolution.’”

An obscure but well-heeled group called the American Society for Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) ran ads today covering two full pages in those newspapers, warning of the threat of same-sex marriage. The ad echoes the now-common Religious Right theme that equality for gays and lesbians would lead to the “persecution” of Christianity, but with 4,600 words in some of the most expensive print around, TFP apparently tried to make the argument in the least succinct way possible, discoursing on Nazism, the definition of truth, various Vatican publications, and Joan of Arc.

By legalizing same-sex “marriage,” the State becomes its official and active promoter. It calls on public officials to officiate at the new civil ceremony, orders public schools to teach its acceptability to children, and punishes any state employee who expresses disapproval. …

Left unchecked, this anti-Christian trend will become an unprecedented assault on the First Amendment and our American way of life that we do not hesitate to call persecution. …

As the homosexual revolution’s anti-Christian intolerance makes itself felt through increasingly persecutory measures, a terrible problem of conscience arises in any who resist: Should we follow our consciences? Should we give in?

For Catholics like ourselves, the condoning of same-sex “marriage” would be tantamount to a renunciation of Faith. …

This is a battle for the soul of America. The so-called Cultural War is gradually becoming a Religious War.

Tradition, Family and Property is an unusual group. Founded in 1973 after the anti-Communist writings of a Brazilian dissident Catholic activist, TFP brought a unique style of protest—serious young men with red capes, heraldic banners, and brass bands—to issues ranging from abortion, homosexuality, and contraception to anti-Communism, water subsidies, flag burning, and the Gulf War. While the group doesn’t have the name recognition of the more media-savvy Catholic League, it still brought in $6.8 million in donations and sales in 2006.

Not surprisingly, the Right’s reaction to last week’s ruling by the California Supreme Court in favor of equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians was swift and negative.

Former Rep. Ernest Istook, now of the Heritage Foundation, evoked Nazi metaphors to blame those who supported civil unions as a compromise: “By trying to appease homosexual rights activists, those who have refused to stand up for traditional marriage helped to create this court ruling.  They are the Neville Chamberlains of the cultural wars.”

Barrett Duke of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission said he was "saddened for the people of California" but "especially for the children of that state."

"The California Supreme Court ruling not only overruled the very clear will of the people, it also proposes to overrule God's design," Duke said. "These judges may think they know more about marriage than the rest of us, but I am confident they don't know more about marriage than God. Marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Children need that environment to give them their best chance to fulfill their great potential. That's not only my opinion and the opinion of most of the people in this country, it's God's opinion, and His opinion overrules the opinion of any judges.

Indeed, the Right emphasized this “activist judges” angle; Gary Bauer, attacking the “four unelected robed radicals,” wrote:

It was an egregious exercise in judicial activism – of judges wielding raw political power to redefine our most basic values. But that is how the Left has succeeded. It cannot achieve its goals through the democratic process via the elected legislatures, so it ignores the people and goes to the courts, where it relies on political activists cloaked in black who answer to no one. The Left succeeds by using the most undemocratic methods possible.

Of course, Bauer may not realize that, while appointed at first, justices on California’s Supreme Court face voters at the next general election; each of the justices in the majority for this case has been retained by voters at least once. Bauer is probably aware, though, that the “elected legislature” in California passed marriage equality in 2005 and 2007, only to have it vetoed both times by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Nevertheless, right-wing activists hoped the decision would energize opponents of gay rights into action. “The good news is that I believe this will re-ignite the debate over a federal constitutional amendment,” according to Concerned Women for America’s Matt Barber. Jan LaRue called on Californians to recall members of the state’s Supreme Court in the way they recalled the governor several years ago. “Are you going to sit by and do nothing while four black-robed despots take away your right to govern yourselves?”

Meanwhile, the effort to put on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage on the California ballot continues—now, apparently, with more funding.

And, in spite of a beleaguered GOP’s effort to keep a low profile on social wedge issues during this election cycle, the Right is hoping the decision will push John McCain to “speak out more strongly in support of defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman,” as Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council put it.