The Moral Majority and Fandom

The Moral Majority was an American right wing evangelical Christian political and social movement between 1979-89. 
Formally founded in 1979, it had its origins in 1976 when Baptist minister Jerry Falwell Sr. began a series of "I Love America" rallies across the country to raise awareness of social issues important to him, things that he felt were adding to the moral decay of the United States and the world. It was disbanded as an organization in 1989, but its footprint and influences in fandom are still prevalent today. 
From a 1985 ad for newsletter: 
==Similar Groups==
* Warriors for Innocence
==The Term: Moral Majority==
The use of the term "moral majority" was used by many, including fans, as a all-encompassing catchword for a group of people who want to enforce conservative religious beliefs on everyone. This means while the similar proselytizing by Anita Bryant and Phyllis Schlafly in the late 1970s isn't formally connected, they are certainly part of the context; fans often made reference to both women (as well as Falwell) and conflated their similar agendas as they discussed fanworks and navigated their anti-gay, anti-feminist and other controlling statements and actions.
While the original "Moral Majority" no longer exists, the term is still used as a catch-all. One example from a fan in 2009: 
From another 2009 comment: 
==Fandom, Political Climate, and The Moral Majority==
The early 1980s in the United States were rife with political and social turmoil and the Moral Majority and its tenets were prevalent in fandom, a reflection of the larger world. 
Modern readers should keep in mind that in the late 1970s, the anti-porn, anti-slash view in Star Trek fandom reflected that of most people in mainstream American culture. Homosexuality was viewed as a pathology, associated with child molestation. In psychiatry being gay was a mental illness with a specific diagnostic code. In the wake of the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s, heterosexual pornography was becoming tolerated, but literature and film describing homosexual relations, even if not explicit, was considered to be pornographic and indecent by the general public. It was illegal to send such works -- fanzines included -- through the U.S. Mail. In many states, including Michigan, sodomy laws prohibiting homosexual acts were still in place, although several gay politicians had been elected to city councils in Ann Arbor and East Lansing. The passing of a gay rights ordinance in Dade County, Florida that year had sparked a nationwide anti-gay backlash led by conservative gadfly Anita Bryant.(See Daniel Tsang, "Gay Ann Arbor Purges," Midwest Gay Academic Journal 1 (1977): 13-19, cited in the by Henry Ablove (1993)). 
LucasFilm had hopped into the fray with Open Letter to Star Wars Zine Publishers by Maureen Garrett in the summer/fall of 1981, an event that had a cooling effect on sex, explicit and otherwise, in fannish works. Two examples of these fanworks were the 1981 slash zine, Code 7, an underground zine published with all of the authors' removed, and Pushin' the Odds, a 1983 zine came that with a sheet of red plastic the reader was to put over the page to make it legible. The editor of "Pushin' the Odds" also required a signed "statement of compliance," numbered the copies, and used coded hole-punches on the pages, supposedly to identify the purchaser of any copy that "fell into unauthorized hands.
The 1985 The Great Australian 1985 Radio Show Fiasco generated a 1987 comment from, Dovya Blacque, one of the slash writers mentioned in that fannish reveal: 
In 1990, Beauty and the Beast (TV) fans had to contend with the Family Channel and its dictates concerning airing any hint of Vincent Wells and Catherine Chandler kissing each other on the mouth, and worse -- the presence of a baby without the depiction of a wedding. In November 1990, a fan, Beth Blighton, wrote a long letter to the letterzine, Once Upon a Time... Is Now #27, encouraging fans to resist censorship in all forms in the broader world and included comments about "The Family Channel's" involvement with Reverend Wildmon. Throughout the late 1970s, Wildmon, a conservative Christian, actively protested television series that he thought promoted immoral lifestyles. Beauty and the Beast fans were specifically affected by Wildmon's crusade as he was a "consultant" on "The Family Channel's" handling of the series.
==Context and Precursor to "Anti"==
 
==Fanworks Directly Inspired by The Moral Majority==
===Fiction===
* Forbidden Fruit by C.C. Cain (A story so crude that even Anita Bryant-haters felt it went too far.) (1978)
* Showfolk by Karen Mercer, a Professionals story in Fantazine #6 ("It's the Twenty-third Century. Earth has colonised a hundred light years of the galaxy, and far, far across the stars ... one still can't escape The Moral Majority! Driven out of the homeworlds, the MM'ers have taken their message of 'a return to family values' to the colonies, and they still can't win an election on fairly. [...] Rival candidates keep getting assassinated, and in every colony where it happens, the starship Troubadour is found. It's crew is a very bad touring theatre company, regularly rubbished by the critics... and a misfit. An ex-Imperial Marine named Bodie. The ship arrives on Borax is during an election campaign and ex-Sergeant Bodie is in big trouble. He's the prime suspect of the Imperial! But he's in luck...the officer in charge of the local ISC is an old friend, one Raymond Doyle. Science Fiction merges with hilarious comedy.") (1995)
* For Anita Bryant Fans, or, Kirk and Spock Get Theirs by Jo (in Obsc'zine #3 in 1978, reprinted in Relay #1 in 1980)
===Essays===
* The K/S Concept: A Feminist Perspective -- A Personal Statement by Judith Gran (1981)
==Fan Comments==
Clipper Trade Ship #31 (1981)
Jundland Wastes 5/6 (1981)
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==References==
Category:Relationships Glossary