Thoughts on the religious right in the election (Score 1)

This is a essay that Dan Hoak, a physicist currently in Irvine, wrote this morning. I thought it sums up the feelings many people have about the politics of the 2004 election, and have included it here:

"America, Have You No Decency?

It has become clear after reading articles and listening to NPR that the factor this year was the Christian right. I would like to claim that this occurred to me even before the CNN analysts started pointing it out. Gore up by 500,000 votes in 2000, Kerry down by three and a half million in 2004. Florida not even close. Where does this silent majority come from? Well, in between, Karl Rove built a database of four million frequent churchgoers, the Bush administration pandered to voters who would follow him even if they disagreed with the war in Iraq, and conservative groups put gay-marriage questions on the ballot in eleven states. Coupled with a strong effort to remind these people to vote, and bingo bango, the biggest concern of voters wasn't Iraq, it wasn't the economy, it wasn't education. It was moral issues. And on and on; you can read about it in Newsweek.

The gay marriage proposals went down by large margins in all eleven states, including Ohio. Some of these states were battlegrounds and shouldn't have been, like Oregon and Michigan. Others weren't battlegrounds and should have been, like Arkansas.

Survey says: Americans don't like gays, or at least not enough to treat them with dignity. To a very liberal American like myself, who just watched Tony Kushner's play "Angels in America" and thoroughly enjoyed it, this is disheartening. But it is not the last word: the gay rights movement is still in its infancy, and has gained much ground in the few decades it has been active. Forty years ago, would any politician have been openly gay? Any movie star? Now they can marry in Massachusetts and vote for Barney Frank. The world has failed to end. No fire and brimstone have rained down from heaven. The efforts for gay rights will move forward.

Far more troubling is the continued ability of the religious right to act as kingmaker in American politics. This has been going on, dramatically, since Reagan, and it doesn't look like it will stop soon. Karl Rove has clearly demonstrated to Republicans that if they want to win, they must choose candidates that speak to frequent churchgoers. It's been shown that candidates like Bob Dole and John McCain don't energize this base, and lose. Moderate candidates like Giuliani will likely have an uphill battle if they want to run for national office. The effect of this demographic on policy is clear and long-lasting. The Supreme Court already leans more conservative than the general population, and will likely lean more after the next four years. Legislative attempts to erode abortion rights are ongoing, as are attempts to teach creationism in schools. The conservative movement behind these two issues in particular is tenacious and in for the duration. Their strategy is to pass many small laws in lots of states, often using confusing and misleading language. They seek to win the battle in steps, over time.

When Americans talk of religious fundamentalism, they are referring to Islamic extremists. But when Europeans talk of religious fundamentalism, they're referring to both Islamic extremists and the Christian evangelical movement in the United States. This kind of religious upsurge in this country is not unprecedented. Between 1800 and 1845, the United States experienced the Second Great Awakening, during which time the number of preachers per capita tripled. Alexis de Tocqueville found in the 1830s that "There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains greater influence over the souls of men than in America." Mormonism, Universalism, Unitarianism, and the African- American church all emerged during that period. Policy was affected, especially views on race and ethnicity; many of the prominent American naturalists of the time firmly believed that the Anglo-Saxon race was designed by God to be superior to all others (the American Association for the Advancement of Science was founded to protect this belief). Eventually, this sectarian fervor gave way to a period of philosophical and scientific reexamination in America, brought on in part by the Civil War and in part by Darwin's books on evolution. It would be the last time that superstition and theology acted as the dominant themes of American thought.

But the effects of the rampaging religious movement of the early nineteenth century are still around, and we are now met with a somewhat less visible (but still potent) religious movement in our own time. This movement amounts to an attack on intellectualism and secular life. It seeks to ban controversial books and music, discredit science, and has no qualms about passing legislation on the American libido. What should liberals do, cornered as we are in the blue-tinted edges of the country?

We must go forth and multiply. In the short term, liberals can declare war on the religious right, or we can force compromises on legislation, but in the long run we can only win by outnumbering them. And we do that by teaching, by writing, by making movies or plays or art, by voting or running for office, by turning everything we do, whether in science or humanities, into a statement that people should think with their brains and that leaders should govern with their hearts and minds. These should be the primary sources for policy; not Scripture. We have spent our lives in academia, and most of us will have a direct hand in educating the next generation. Get mad! Get moving! Go teach high school in Ohio or Missouri or Colorado. If not that, turn your cubicle into a bully pulpit for using your brain. This is the war for ideas in America, and you are not allowed to go AWOL and run off to Amsterdam if a battle is lost. Your country is here, and it is in trouble. Fight for it."