Culture War

Were you disappointed that you were unable to add your name to the newest Religious Right manifesto so that you could do your part to save America from its descent into Nazi-like totalitarianism?

Well, have we got good news for you - now you can:

This Friday, November 20, 2009, at the National Press Club in Washington D.C., a seminal statement signed by over 125 Evangelical, Orthodox, and Catholic leaders will be released. Known as the Manhattan Declaration, this document addresses the necessity of defending and advancing the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty.

Click here after noon on Friday, November 20. There you can read the Declaration and sign on in support of the statement. The goal is to have one million signatures by December 1.

FRC President, Tony Perkins, is a part of the core group which formulated the Manhattan Declaration and he is encouraging every pastor and church member in our network to sign it as well. Our friend Chuck Colson declares that this historic declaration of religious conscience is "probably the most important document I've ever signed."

We trust that you and your church members will join this movement to declare our absolute commitment to the defense of life, marriage, and religious liberty. Again, visit our website to sign the Declaration and please forward this message to your friends in ministry.

So if, like the original signers of this Declaration, you think that reproductive choice has lead to things like genocide and AIDS, then be sure to add your name: 

Our concern is not confined to our own nation. Around the globe, we are witnessing cases of genocide and “ethnic cleansing,” the failure to assist those who are suffering as innocent victims of war, the neglect and abuse of children, the exploitation of vulnerable laborers, the sexual trafficking of girls and young women, the abandonment of the aged, racial oppression and discrimination, the persecution of believers of all faiths, and the failure to take steps necessary to halt the spread of preventable diseases like AIDS. We see these travesties as flowing from the same loss of the sense of the dignity of the human person and the sanctity of human life that drives the abortion industry and the movements for assisted suicide, euthanasia, and human cloning for biomedical research.

Or if, like the original signers of this Declaration, you feel you must oppose marriage equality because otherwise it'll lead to incest, polygamy, and the destruction of your religious liberty, then be sure to add your name:

We understand that many of our fellow citizens, including some Christians, believe that the historic definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is a denial of equality or civil rights. They wonder what to say in reply to the argument that asserts that no harm would be done to them or to anyone if the law of the community were to confer upon two men or two women who are living together in a sexual partnership the status of being “married.” It would not, after all, affect their own marriages, would it? On inspection, however, the argument that laws governing one kind of marriage will not affect another cannot stand. Were it to prove anything, it would prove far too much: the assumption that the legal status of one set of marriage relationships affects no other would not only argue for same sex partnerships; it could be asserted with equal validity for polyamorous partnerships, polygamous households, even adult brothers, sisters, or brothers and sisters living in incestuous relationships. Should these, as a matter of equality or civil rights, be recognized as lawful marriages, and would they have no effects on other relationships? No. The truth is that marriage is not something abstract or neutral that the law may legitimately define and re-define to please those who are powerful and influential.

And most importantly, if, like the original signers of this Declaration, you will never, ever surrender in your opposition to America's descent into Godless-immorality, then by all means be sure to add your name:

Therefore, let it be known that we will not comply with any edict that compels us or the institutions we lead to participate in or facilitate abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide, euthanasia, or any other act that violates the principle of the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of every member of the human family.

Further, let it be known that we will not bend to any rule forcing us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality, marriage, and the family.

Further, let it be known that we will not be intimidated into silence or acquiescence or the violation of our consciences by any power on earth, be it cultural or political, regardless of the consequences to ourselves.

Political Research Associates has released a new report, written by PRA Project Director Reverend Kapya Kaoma, entitled "Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia" [PDF] which explores how figures like Rick Warren and Scott Lively and organizations like the Institute on Religion and Democracy have been promoting "an agenda in Africa that aims to criminalize homosexuality and otherwise infringe upon the human rights of LGBT people while also mobilizing African clerics in U.S. culture war battles."

From the PRA press release:

[T]he U.S. Right – once isolated in Africa for supporting pro-apartheid, White supremacist regimes – has successfully reinvented itself as the mainstream of U.S. evangelicalism. Through their extensive communications networks in Africa, social welfare projects, Bible schools, and educational materials, U.S. religious conservatives warn of the dangers of homosexuals and present themselves as the true representatives of U.S. evangelicalism, so helping to marginalize Africans’ relationships with mainline Protestant churches.

The investigation’s release could not be timelier, as the Ugandan parliament considers the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009. Language in that bill echoes the false and malicious charges made in Uganda by U.S antigay activist and Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively that western gays are conspiring to take over Uganda and even the world.

"We need to stand up against the U.S. Christian Right peddling homophobia in Africa," said Kaoma, who in recent weeks asked U.S. evangelist Rick Warren to denounce the bill and distance himself from its supporters. "I heard church people in Uganda say they would go door to door to root out LGBT people and now our brothers and sisters are being further targeted by proposed legislation criminalizing them and threatening them with death. The scapegoating must stop."

While the American side of the story is known to LGBT activists and their allies witnessing struggles over LGBT clergy within Protestant denominations in the United States, what’s been missing has been the effect of the Right’s proxy wars on Africa itself. Kaoma’s report finally brings this larger, truly global, picture into focus.

“Just as the United States and other northern societies routinely dump our outlawed or expired chemicals, pharmaceuticals, machinery, and cultural detritus on African and other Third World countries, we now export a political discourse and public policies our own society has discarded as outdated and dangerous,” writes PRA executive director Tarso Luís Ramos in the report’s foreword. “Africa’s antigay campaigns are to a substantial degree made in the U.S.A.”

Via Pam's House Blend, I see that Matt Barber has finally fessed-up to the fact that his new "book" is nothing but a collection of previously published columns: 

"The Right Hook – From the Ring to the Culture War" is a select collection of Matt Barber’s greatest hits: incisive and deeply thoughtful culture war commentaries he’s penned over the past few years. The book also recounts the fascinating series of events that launched Matt as one of America’s rising conservative stars. Barber – a former undefeated professional boxer and current Liberty Counsel attorney – pulls no punches. His thought provoking though often hysterically funny writing style tends to delight those who agree and infuriate those who do not. Liberals beware; you just may be the next conservative convert after reading “The Right Hook.” (Foreword by David Limbaugh.)

Of course, there is still no need for anyone to actually buy Barber's book, because all of the columns are readily available on-line, as are the "fascinating" introduction by Barber and foreword by Limbaugh.

Why anyone would drop $30+ for a collection of Barber's inane columns when they can easily get the entire thing for free is beyond me.

Yesterday, I wrote a post taking issue with right-wing outlets that were claiming that people were giving Matt Barber's new book, "The Right Hook: From The Ring To The Culture War," negative reviews without have read it, claiming that the book isn't even going to be released until next week.

As I noted, I already received a copy that I ordered from Amazon last week.  But now that I've started to read it, I made an interesting discovery: namely, that anybody who has read his columns doesn't need to actually read the book before they review it ... because they have literally already read it, since the book consists entirely of his republished columns! 

Nowhere on the publisher's website or the Amazon page is there any sort of disclaimer that this "book" is really just a collection of Barber's past columns.  Had that been made clear, I certainly would have saved myself the $32.00 I spent on this bound edition of his inane columns.

So, to save prevent anyone else who was thinking of buying this "book" from getting conned and ripped-off, here is the entire Barber book in links:

Over the last few days, we've seen articles cropping up on right-wing news sites claiming that people have been "fraudulently" reviewing Matt Barber's new book, "The Right Hook: From The Ring To The Culture War" without having read it. 

Both WorldNetDaily and OneNewsNow have run these articles recently:

Reviewers are being highly critical of a book on the culture war -- a book they couldn't possibly have read yet.

The book entitled The Right Hook - From the Ring to the Culture War is authored by Matt Barber, who is well known for his analysis of the homosexual agenda. Although the book is on Amazon.com, it will not be available until November ... "The homosexual activist blog has turned people loose doing fraudulent reviews, negative one-star reviews of my book, ostensibly to try to discourage people from buying the book and reading it," reports Barber.

According to the author, this is taking place even though the book is one they could not have read in advance.

Well, I ordered the book from Amazon late last week ... and guess what just showed up in my mail today:

One interesting thing to note is that while the publisher's website contains a glowing blurb for Barber's book from Mike Huckabee, the blurb from him does not appear anywhere on the book jacket itself, though it does contain blurbs from other right-wing leaders like Tom DeLay, Newt Gingrich, Joseph Farah, and Mat Staver.

Anyway, stick around for the next few days as I plow through Barber's book and bring you all the highlights.

I spend a lot of time here mocking Religious Right groups and activists for their views of homosexuality, but as Jeremy says about these audio clips he posted the other day, "this 'culture war' is all fun and games until someone wants to execute you."

And he's not joking. Just listen to these rants from Steven L. Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, AZ, explaining to his audience how gays are out to rape their children in order to recruit them and says that the only way to stop them is to kill them:

You want to know who the biggest hypocrite in the world is? The biggest hypocrite in the world is the person who believes in the death penalty for murderers and not for homosexuals. Hypocrite. The same God who instituted the death penalty for murderers is the same God who instituted the death penalty for rapists and for homosexuals - sodomites, queers! That's what it was instituted for, okay? That's God, he hasn't changed. Oh, God doesn't feel that way in the New Testament ... God never "felt" anything about it, he commanded it and said they should be taken out and killed.

You know why God wanted the sodomites in the Old Testament to be killed? You know why every good king of Israel, the Bible says they got rid of the sodomites in the land? You know, the good kings that came after the bad kings who had allowed the sodomites to infest their land, they had infiltrated ... King Asa got the sodomites out of the land, Jehoshaphat exterminated the sodomites that were left from the days of his father, Asa. Why? Because the sodomites are infectious, that's why. Because they're not reproducers, that goes without saying, they're recruiters.

How are they multiplying? Do you not see that they're multiplying? Are you that blind? Have you noticed that there's more than there were last year and the year before, and the year before that? How are they multiplying? They're reproducing right? No, here's a biology lesson: they're not reproducers, they're recruiters! And you know who they're after? Your children. Remember you dropped off your kids last week? That's who they're after. You drop them off as some daycare, you drop them off as some school somewhere, you don't know where they're at. I'll tell you where they're at: they're being recruited by the sodomites. They're being molested by the sodomites. I can tell you so many stories about people that I know being molested and recruited by the sodomites.

They recruit through rape. They recruit through molestation. They recruit through violation. They are infecting our society. They are spreading their disease. It's not a physical disease, it's a sin disease , it's a wicked, filthy sin disease and it's spreading on a rampage. Can't you see that it's spreading on a rampage? I mean, can you not see that? Can you not see that it's just exploding in growth? Why? Because each sodomite recruits far more than one other sodomite because his whole life is about recruiting other sodomites, his whole life is about violating and hurting people and molesting 'em.

So how many sodomites is one sodomite going to produce? A lot, and that's why it's just exploding. The only way to stop it, you say "how do we stop it?" ... You want to know why sodomites are recruiting? Because they have no natural predators.

Amazingly, that is the more sane of the two clips Jeremy posted - I'm not even going to bother transcribing this second clip in which Anderson screams about the "faggots running this country" because you simply have to listen to it: 

Pam's House Blend has more.

Yesterday, I wrote a post, based largely on this post from Dan Gilgoff, about James Dobson and company lamenting their relative inability to influence the political culture at the moment, now that Democrats are in control of both the White House and the Congress.

There is certainly a sense of panic gripping the Religious Right at the moment, but I think that Gilgoff is reading a bit too much into Dobson's admission that his forces can't stop things like hate crimes legislation and urging his followers to simply pray:

[I]t's important to note that Dobson is entirely serious about prayer as a real strategy to effect change, as are tens of millions of other American Christians. That's why I wrote that Dobson has surrendered politically for the moment, not that he's surrendered entirely.

But to encourage Christian disengagement from politics, at least until Republicans return to power in some branch of the federal government, is no small thing. That's especially true because evangelicals had been politically disengaged for much of the 20th century. Their return to the political arena in the late 1970s was a hard-won victory for culture warriors like Paul Weyrich and Jerry Falwell.

To encourage evangelical Christians to sit on the political sidelines until a better day arrives sounds like a call to return to that previous era, when the public humiliation of 1925's Scopes "monkey trial" scared evangelicals out of politics for the next half century.

...

Is he just facing the facts about the Democrats' monopoly in Washington? Or has he given up too easily?

Dobson is, if anything, a political realist and while I suspect that he is genuinely alarmed by the current political environment, he's not about to give up - and he certainly isn't calling for his followers to "disengage" from politics.  In fact, he has made that abundantly clear in recent weeks, and his organization's action center is still working on everything from hate crimes to executive nominations.

It must be remembered that, during the eight years George W. Bush was in office, Dobson was hailed as king of the "values voters," he was hobnobbing with Senate leaders like Bill Frist and Rick Santorum, his organization had easy access to the White House, and he was being personally courted by the administration when it came to things like generating support for Harriet Miers.

Once upon a time, Dobson had a seat at the right hand of the President of the United States:

But those days are over and now, with Obama in the White House and Democrats in control of Congress, Dobson's influence in Washington DC has plummeted, he's being shut out of events he used to control, and he's reduced to sharing his program with right-wing back-benchers like Reps. Louie Gohmert and Steve King.

Dobson realizes that his influence, and the influence of his movement as a whole, is at its nadir at the moment and that, given the lack of allies they have in power, all that they can really do is pray.

But this is not any sort of call for "disengagement" on the part of those who share his views, a point he made very clearly just a few weeks ago when the last round of "is Dobson calling it quits?" punditry was taking place:

It would not be accurate not to admit that we lost the White House, we lost the House, and we lost the Senate, and we probably will loose in the courts, and we lost almost every department of government with this election. But the war is not over - pendulums swing and we'll come back. We're gonna hang in there and, you know, it's not going to be a surrender.

It was, after all, just two years ago that Gilgoff himself was writing about "how James Dobson, Focus on the Family, and Evangelical America are winning the Culture War."

As a person who has spent years covering the Right, Gilgoff ought to know better than anyone that Dobson is not the kind of man who throws in the towel on these issues, no matter how dire the prospects may seem at the moment.

The latest issue of Americans United's "Church and State" has a lengthy cover story by Rob Boston analyzing just who might step up to lead the Religious Right in the years to come, now that many of its well-known leaders have passed away and others are aging and scaling back their workloads.

Boston takes a look at a variety of potential candidates - including Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Tony Perkins, Rick Warren, Rod Parsley, and Rick Scarborough - but he starts off his list with Newt Gingrich:

The idea of Newt Gingrich as the next leader of the Religious Right is not as odd as it sounds. During his tenure as speaker of the House of Representatives, Gingrich was known mainly for his promotion of small government, low taxes and libertarian ideas, but a lot has changed since 1999; in recent years Gingrich has increasingly been stressing Religious Right themes.

The new push began in 2006 when Gingrich published a book titled Rediscovering God in America: Reflections on the Role of Faith in Our Nation’s History, a tome that promotes a “Christian nation” history that’s always popular with the Religious Right.

In a recent interview with Dan Gilgoff of U.S. News & World Report, Gingrich talked about his desire to unite conservative evangelicals with traditionalist Roman Catholics in support of a broad conservative agenda.

Gingrich, Gilgoff reported, is traveling around the country speaking to clergy on behalf of David Barton, a Religious Right pseudo-historian who has written books promoting the theocratic “Christian nation” viewpoint.

“In the last few years I’ve decided that we’re in a crisis in which the secular state, if allowed, will fundamentally and radically change America against the wishes of most Americans,” Gingrich told Gilgoff. “You’ve had such rising hostility to religious belief that I wanted to reach broadly into the country and dramatically raise public awareness of threats to religious liberty.”

The ex-speaker added, “It’s time to challenge head-on secular domination in the West.”

Gingrich has formed a new organization, Renewing American Leadership, that partnered with the Rev. Donald Wildmon’s American Family Association to sponsor anti-tax rallies around the country on April 15. Although taxation is not traditionally a Religious Right issue, the push is a good example of Gingrich’s efforts to add to the “culture war” agenda and unite the various factions of the conservative movement.

I'd like to second Boston's assertion that Gingrich could very well become a leading figure within the Religious Right and I'll offer this recent email from the American Family Association up as evidence:

We fully expect someone like Huckabee to gladly associate himself with people such as Barton, Staver, Engle, and Falwell, becuase he has done so before and they were all big supporters of his presidential bid.

But, until recently at least, one person you would never see at a third-tier Religious Right event such as this was Gingrich.  His partnering with the AFA and Barton and now his participation in events like this all suggest that Gingrich is making a serious play to establish himself as a respected and influential player within the Religious Right, perhaps as part of his effort to unify the conservative movement ahead of his own potential presidential run.

This morning, anti-marriage equality activists will be rallying in Washington DC to protest the D.C. Council's decision to recognize gay marriages that have been performed in other states and introduce its own marriage equality bill.

The main organizer behind this effort is Bishop Harry Jackson, who is declaring that DC's move "will launch the Armageddon of the marriage battle in this country" and is vowing to do all the he can to stop it:

The rally, according to lead organizer Bishop Harry Jackson of Hope Christian Church in Bowie, "will launch the Armageddon of the marriage battle in this country."

Jackson predicts that about 1,000 church members and 100 pastors will show up to argue that the apparently unanimous support among D.C. Council members for recognizing same-sex marriage is an affront to Washingtonians and especially to blacks.

"There's a sense that the latte-drinking crowd is doing an end run around the regular people," Jackson told me. "It's a race and a class struggle on this. If 51 percent of the people in D.C. are African-American and you have a unanimous vote by the city council on this, somebody's not listening to the people."

Jackson will be joined by several other anti-gay leaders, including the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, which comes as no surprise because, as we explain in our new in-depth report on Jackson, entitled "Point Man for the Wedge Strategy," over the last several years Jackson has emerged as the face of the Religious Right’s outreach to African American Christians: 

In recent years, Religious Right leaders have made a major push to elevate the visibility and voices of politically conservative African American pastors. The star of that effort has been Bishop Harry Jackson. Jackson, the pastor of a congregation in Maryland, has been ushered into the Religious Right’s inner circle since he announced in 2004 that God had told him to work for the reelection of George W. Bush. Since then, Jackson has become somewhat of an all-purpose activist and pundit for right-wing causes – everything from judicial nominations to immigration and oil drilling -- but his top priorities mirror those of the Religious Right: he’s fervently anti-abortion and dead-set against gay equality. And he has enthusiastically adopted the Right’s favorite propaganda tactic: he routinely portrays liberals, especially gay-rights activists, as enemies of faith, family, and religious liberty.

Jackson has big ambitions. He sees himself as a game changer in the culture war, someone who can help conservative Christians “take the land” by bringing about a political alliance between white and black evangelicals. Religious Right leaders see him that way, too, which is why they’ve helped Jackson build his public profile.

...

Religious Right leaders have long dreamed of forging lasting political alliances with socially conservative African American Christians. More than a decade ago, then-Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed launched the Samaritan Project, an effort to build working relationships with African American churches around issues like school vouchers. Many clergy looked askance at Religious Right leaders’ record on civil rights and economic issues, and the Samaritan Project fizzled.

More recently, Religious Right leaders have turned to conservative African American clergy to help lead attacks on gay rights, especially on marriage equality but also on hate crimes legislation and laws to protect against anti-gay discrimination on the job. Jackson has been willing and eager to play that role, denouncing those efforts as threats to the church and the black family.

It’s useful to the Religious Right to have African American pastors at the forefront of their anti-gay campaigns. It puts equality activists in the position of challenging black pastors who are accusing them of “hijacking” the civil rights movement. And it gives people opposed to equality for gay Americans assurance that their prejudice is acceptable, not something akin to racism. And it is particularly useful to the Right to elevate someone who so readily denounces traditional civil rights leaders and organizations as well as gay-rights groups.

Jackson’s profile has been boosted significantly by his alliance with Religious Right leaders James Dobson, Tony Perkins, and Lou Sheldon. They’ve invited him into insider leadership circles like the Arlington Group. They’ve made him a regular speaker at Religious Right events, where he builds his public profile and raises money from white evangelicals. At a Values Voter Summit he told white evangelicals something they don’t hear very often – the notion that racism is a continuing reality in America and it’s their responsibility to do something about it. He told the whites in the room that the olive branch of peace has to be put forward by white churches: “If you don’t do it, the blacks aren’t coming.”

The report covers Jackson's rise to prominence, his anti-gay and anti-choice activism, his efforts to promote domestic oil drilling under the guise of helping the poor, and many other issues, so be sure to check it out.