U.S. fundamentalists target lesbians and gays
Internationa/ Viewpoint #264 MARCH 1995
RIGHT WING ORGANIZING has a long and inglorious history in the United States. The latest incarnation of the religious right is rooted in Barry Goldwater's unsuccessful presidential campaign of 1964. The contacts made during this campaign laid the foundations of organisations which later became key elements of the Religious Right, including the Heritage Foundation, the Rutherford Institute and the Christian Broadcasting Network. The Goldwater campaign was the first to generate massive mailing lists of right-wing sympathizers. Such lists have been a central tool of the radical and religious right ever since.
The ideological underpinnings of the radical right is to create a theocracy inspired by the old testament of the bible. Federal government would be reduced and eventually eliminated, to be replaced by churches and private institutions. Of course, the outward work of the religious right is not based on a discussion of theocracy and capitalism in the 1990s. Instead, the right has identified a number of sensitive social issues around which they can mobilize a broad constituency, and assert sole moral authority to speak out. Gender and sexuality have proved particularly effective flash points.
To take one example, abortion has been a vigorously opposed issue in the United States ever since our right to choose was established by the Roe v. Wade court decision in 1973. Visual, noisy and aggressive blockades of health clinics have been a central tactic in the right's attack on reproductive rights. Five clinic workers have been murdered since these confrontations heated up in the 1980s.
These high-profile attacks have been coupled with new laws restricting state funding of abortion. Michigan eliminated state funding of abortions after a ballot initiative of the right in 1988. And self-styled 'feminist' groups like Women Exploited by Abortion (WEBA) exploit concern about the impact of abortion on women to increase the psychological pressure.
All this shows how the radical right has adopted multiple attacks on the issues it has identified for itself. Legislation, publicity campaigns, "divide and rule', even adapting the strategies and rhetoric of the civil rights and women's movement to their own racist and sexist goals.
The radical right has begun to see the exhaustion of the fund raising potential of abortion rights among the faithful. This is one of the reasons for their increasing targeting of lesbians and gay men. Homosexuality and bisexuality have been identified as a 'wedge' social issue with which they can continue to fund-raise, mobilize and win elections.
Two strategic advances have already been made by the religious right on these new questions. First of all, they have developed the use of ballot initiatives to suggest that they have popular support for their hateful ideas. And secondly, they
ESBIANG
UNITE
Plague on the bigots! The Christian right organisation Exodus International claims to have "cured" 100,000 gays and lesbians of their homosexuality since 1976. They run 75 "ex-gay ministries" across North America. This made them an appropriate target for the San Francisco-based direct action group Lesbian Avengers. On 8 February this year five Lesbian Avengers stormed Exodus' headquarters and released 1,000 live locusts to shut down the organisation. According to Lesbian Avenger Liz Harris, "If anyone deserves a plague of biblical proportions right now, its the Radical Right." Lesbian Offenders can be contacted via International Viewpoint * have succeeded in dividing traditional moderate and radical voting blocks.
Starting in Oregon and Colorado states, the religious right has attempted to organize and win local referenda on propositions to restrict the civic rights of lesbians and gays, or even to pass legislation specifically excluding nonhetrosexuals from anti-discrimination and civil rights legislation. Few of the ballots have been successful, and Colorado's Supreme Court overturned one "victory" for the right as unconstitutional. Nevertheless, the campaigns multiply and relum.
Just as the abortion issue was used to cultivate Catholics as a voting block, the sexuality issue is being used to chip away at other groups of voters. The right does not just attack lesbians and gays as perverse, or disease-ridden. They also feed the new argument that lesbians and gays are seeking 'special rights' and 'minority rights' which will somehow disadvantage the moral majority. This twisted rhetoric is dangerous in two ways. Not only does it diminish support for civil rights of all kinds, but it also allows the radical right to make allies among people of color to oppose lesbian and gay rights.
Women and fundamentalism
Plenty of other issues are under attack by the religious right. Public education, multiculturalism, single parents, immigration, books, libraries, the arts, the environment and crime are all grist for the religious right's mill. Gender and sexuality may still be a fulcrum of these attacks on all of us, but nationalism and xenophobia are increasingly returning to the surface.
If the religious right has had successes in defining a disturbing new social policy, their economic perspective is also increasingly accepted by the newly-elected Congress. The left needs to propose its own answers to the difficult economic and social realities of our times. We need humor and analysis, resilience and resistance, as we organize to counter the religious right. *
Julie Enszer co Solidarity, 7012 Michigan Ave., MI 48210
Detroit, fax (+1- 313) 841 8884
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