From: WAND_M@gold.colorado.edu
Subject: Christian Right Maps Route to Power...
Followup-To: amend2-discuss@cs.colorado.edu
Originator: doherty@ucsu.Colorado.EDU
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Distribution: usa
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1993 03:30:55 GMT

in Efforts At the Local Level to Oppose Homosexual Rights

The Wall Street Journal

By James M. Perry, Staff Reporter

WASHINGTON--Political activists from the Christian right think they finally 
have found the right way to win power.

They have turned to a new strategy, building a powerful organization at the 
grass-roots level, and sounded a new call to arms, battling what they perceive 
to be the spread of homosexuality in the U.S.

"That's the new issue," says Arthur Kropp, president of People for the American 
Way, a liberal oganization that monitors the political activities of 
evangelical Christians.  "It's all you're going to hear about the next few 
years."

President-elect Clinton is unintentionally filling the Christian right's 
direct-mail coffers by vowing to remove the ban on homosexual men and women in 
the armed forces.  "In the pews in these evangelical churches, the talk is all 
about gays in the military, and it sends a chilling message," says John Green, 
director of the Ray Bliss Center of Applied Politics at the University of 
Akron.

Work Pays Off
The grass-roots organizational work is already paying off.  On Nov. 3, 
according to People for the Amerian Way, candidates backed by Christian right 
organizations won 40% of th 500 races they entered.  The Christian right was 
active in yesterday's special election in Georgia, a Senate runoff between 
incumbent Democrat Wyche Fowler and Republican Paul Coverdell.  The state' 
Christian Coaliton, part of a national network headed by television evangelist 
Pat Robertson, vowed to distrbute a million pamphlets that favored Mr. 
Coverdell.  The pamphlets said that Sen. Fowler supports "homosexual rights" 
and Mr. Coverdell opposes them.

Homosexuaity is becoming the major issue that drives the concerns of white 
evangelical Christians, who represent by most accounts as much as 20% of the 
voting population.  In the recent election, these were Mr. Bush's most loyal 
supporters; he won about 61% of their votes.  But that was a big drop from 
1988, when exit polls which are never completely reliable in screening the 
evangelical vote, suggested Mr. Bush won 80% of this constituency.  The 
Christian Coalition's Mr. Robertson conceded the worrisome state of the 
nation's economy diverted many of his followers and led them to vote for Mr. 
Clinton or independent Ross Perot.

But, in a number of significant votes around the country, the power of 
homosexuality as a campaign issue was vividly on display.

In Colorado, voters approved, by a margin of 54% to 46%, an amendment to the 
state constitution that prohibits legal claims of discrimination by homosexuals 
and rescinds anti-discrimination laws in three cities.  Opponents of the 
measure said they would challenge the result in court.  In Tampa, Fla., voters 
repealed an ordinance that prohibited discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Evangelical Christians, led by the Christian Coalition, played a key part, too, 
in the defeat of an Iowa initiative that would have created a state version of 
the Equal Rights Amendment.  The margin there was 52% to 48%.

Defeat in Oregon
In Oregon, voters rejected an amendment to the state constitution that would 
hnav required public schools to teach that homosexuality is "abnormal, wrong, 
unnatural and perverse."  The vote against the measure was 57% to 43%.  
Supporters of the measure said they would seek to place a less-sweeping version 
similar to the one passed in Colorado on the ballot in a future election.

"We're likely to see the Colorado and Tampa battles replicated across the 
country," says Mr. Kropp of People for the American Way.  The organization says 
19 states and more than 100 cities or counties now have laws or executive 
orders on the books protecting gays and lesbians.

Roman Catholic conservatives also are preparing for battle on the issue.  "The 
fem/gay alliance sees the Church (and rightly so!) as The Enemy," Says the Nov. 
20 issue of Catholic Eye, a newsletter published by the National Committee of 
Catholic Laymen.  "There is no way to avoid the coming confrontations..Fasten 
your seat belts, it's going to be a rough ride."

Ralph Reed Jr,, the Christian Coalition's tough-talking, 31-year-old executive 
director, says the group's first major victory,defeating a gay-rights ordinance 
in Broward County, Fla., in 1990, couldn't have been achieved without the help 
of Catholic parishes.

Any revival in the fortunes of the Republican Party needs to recognize the 
important role of Catholic conservatives and evangelical Christians.  They are 
the party's foot soldiers.  GOP leaders seeking a unified party will be 
required in the months and years ahead to walk a tightrope, trying to soothe 
the increasingly militant and well-organized evangelicals on the one hand and 
reaching out to more moderate voters on the other.

Most party leaders dismiss the notion that the Christian right could take over 
the party.  Retiring Congressman Vin Weber says the GOP's lack of a central 
economic message during Mr. Bush's four years in office meant that the cultural 
issues raised by the Christian right were "the only reasons to get involved in 
the party."  He urges that the party get back to its basic economic message and 
watch the voters flock to its colors.  Anway, Mr. Weber argues,when evangelical 
Christians do become involved in party and governmental affairs, "they become 
good, solid Republican activists.  They become deal-cutters themselves."

Maybe, but they aren't cutting deals yet.  They've already taken over some 
local and state parties, and they could take over more.  In a party in 
disarray, these are the people who still are willing to come out on cold winter 
nights to attend meetings and elections.  They can cause pragmatic GOP leaders 
immense aggravation.

Unlike Jerry Falwell's now-defunct Moral Majority, which specialized in raising 
money and getting media attention, the Christian Coalition and its allies are 
willing to perform the tedious work that actually elects people to office.

"The pro-family movement focused on the Oval Office for a decade, says the 
Christian Coalition's Mr. Reed. "We achieved mixed policy results and we became 
a target of the national media. Now we're working at the local and state level, 
where fewer people are watching."

Mr. Reed estimates that 5,000 Christian Coalition members have received 
political training at the group's headquarters in Virginia Beach, Va.  He hopes 
to train 5,000 to 10,000 more this year there and at new training centers to be 
opened around the country.  The whole idea, he says, is to elect evangelical 
Christians to school boards and state legislatures.  "That's where the future 
is," he says.  "That's where the decisions on gay rights, on abortion, on drugs 
and street crime will be made."

Mr. Reed "is very smart," says the University of Akron's Mr. Green.  "He really 
understands coalitional politics.  This is a sophisticated bunch of operatives."

A decade ago, Mr. Reed was the executive director of the College Republican 
National Committee.  One evening, he says, drinking with friends at a Capitol 
Hill bar called Bullfeathers, he had a religious experience in which he saw 
death awaiting him and his beer-swilling friends if he didn't quickly mend his 
ways.  He rushed to a telephone and called the first church he ran across in 
the Yellow Pages.  "My conversion was pretty dramatic," he says. "Now I'm where 
I think God wants me to be."

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