comment is free

The religious right redux

Churches' influence on policy is as strong as ever, as debates over the place of abortion in Obama's healthcare reforms show

When Barack Obama was elected president, conventional wisdom had it (once again) that the religious right was dead. If it was still thriving, how could Obama have vanquished the movement's chosen one, Sarah Palin, with such a decisive victory? Religion reporter Dan Gilgoff even speculated that Obama had "defanged" the religious right.

A year later, as the dogma of the Catholic church and hard-right evangelicals has taken centre stage in the debate over abortion coverage in healthcare reform, those predictions seem ludicrous at best. Although Republicans no longer control Washington with a congressional majority or their man in the White House, meddling clerics are still issuing edicts equating sexual freedom with the downfall of civilization and threatening to bring down the republic should the laws not conform to their theology.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was on the phone to the Vatican on the eve of passing a historic health care reform bill last month – because she had to assure the papacy that any coverage for abortion (even paid for privately, as it turns out) would be eliminated from the bill. She needed the votes of the Vatican's loyal soldiers in Washington, who had rounded up 64 anti-choice Democrats threatening to kill the whole bill. Many of those representatives were recruited to run for office by the Democratic party precisely because they are anti-choice, and were needed (the party believed) to woo conservative Catholics and evangelicals.

Democrats continue to give in to ecclesiastic intimidation. How far will they let it go?

Instead of questioning how religion – exclusively the conservative variety – became so intertwined with politics in a secular democracy, Democrats decided to embrace it themselves. Candidates now need the imprimatur of a Bible verse to have credibility with "religious" voters. Democrats must abandon their supposedly strident views on reproductive choice to satisfy pastors who essentially campaign from their pulpits. Candidates now feign embarrassment that they once spoke at a Planned Parenthood dinner. The party believes it must recruit candidates who are "pro-life," even if they oppose providing basic health services for women, and participate in misinformation campaigns designed to portray coverage for abortion as complicity in genocide.

The "new" and avowedly more "centrist" evangelicals and Catholics sought by the Democrats claimed to care about global warming, poverty, and healthcare reform. Yet some of them have signed onto the Manhattan Declaration, which too compares abortion to genocide, and elevates gender and sexuality issues above all others. This constituency may indeed care about those other issues. But when it comes down to the wire, the abortion issue matters to them most.

Democrats need to decide what matters to them: winning elections by compromising the freedoms of American women, or standing up to church bullies.


Most popular