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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIt Wasn’t Abortion That Formed the Religious Right. It Was Support for Segregation.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/05/29/the_religious_right_formed_around_support_for_segregation_not_against_abortion.htmlAs Balmer shows, feelings about Roe v. Wade were mixed in the conservative Christian community in the early 1970s, with quite a few evangelical leaders agreeing with the court that abortion is a private matter. Desegregation, however, was a different issue altogether. Anger about forced desegregation of private schools galvanized conservative Christians. Bob Jones University stalled and resisted admitting black students, forcing the IRS to strip its tax exempt status in 1976, an event that spurred evangelical leaders to action. Jerry Falwell and Paul Weyrich, two conservative activists who had been seeking a way to marshal evangelicals into a Republican voting bloc, pounced. Balmer writes:
Weyrich saw that he had the beginnings of a conservative political movement, which is why, several years into President Jimmy Carters term, he and other leaders of the nascent religious right blamed the Democratic president for the IRS actions against segregated schoolseven though the policy was mandated by Nixon, and Bob Jones University had lost its tax exemption a year and a day before Carter was inaugurated as president. Falwell, Weyrich and others were undeterred by the niceties of facts. In their determination to elect a conservative, they would do anything to deny a Democrat, even a fellow evangelical like Carter, another term in the White House.
The argument they used to defend school segregation will sound familiar to anyone following the lawsuits against mandatory contraception coverage in health insurance plans or the battles over whether businesses have a right to refuse gay customers: "religious freedom."
shenmue
(38,506 posts)Wella
(1,827 posts)The Catholic Church was both against abortion and for civil rights. Devout Catholics followed suit.
KamaAina
(78,249 posts)Hell, Pat Robertson once said "We all have the right to worship in this country: Christians, Catholics, and Jews"!
Wella
(1,827 posts)And are placed with the Christian right on these social issues.
Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)societal progress. They create so much difficulty and unnecessary drama.
MH1
(17,604 posts)Well, that and contraception, and other women's rights.
And they will survive, at least for a while yet, because they deliver votes for the very wealthy.
kelliekat44
(7,759 posts)Warpy
(111,352 posts)put back into the public schools and spreading it outside the south.
I saw them start to form down there over that very issue when the wall of church/state separation finally came down around the public school system.
Segregation came later.
gollygee
(22,336 posts)And white supremacy was a cornerstone of them.
The editor's brother wrote a book called The Clansman upon which the movie Birth of a Nation was based.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)DeSwiss
(27,137 posts)rurallib
(62,448 posts)Bortman33
(102 posts)created some most loathsome creatures the world has ever seen. One can vote their disgust for these living dead creatures that thrive off the subjugation of women and children at Urban Dictionary.
Here are a couple of real horrors that give vampires a bad name. You see, vampires only kill to survive, these creatures kill for their "market" fantasies and for political and personal power and wealth. They have no redeeming value!
[link:<a href=".html" target="_blank"><img src="" border="0" alt=" photo da485476.jpg"/></a>|
LuvNewcastle
(16,858 posts)was about race. The GOP was willing to do anything to get Southern evangelical support for their party. Before Nixon's time, there were plenty of Republicans who were pro-civil rights, just as there were many Democrats who were opposed to the Civil Rights Movement. Southern white support for the GOP is finally becoming a liability for that party now, however. The vicious attitudes of teabaggers toward immigrants are endangering the future of the Republican Party.
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)They didn't want to see the women they counseled wind up dead.
SheilaT
(23,156 posts)Roe v. Wade happened in 1973, and there simply wasn't organized opposition to legal abortion for a decade or more.
But Lyndon Johnson was almost right when he said that passing the Civil Rights Act (1964) would lose the South to the Democratic party for a generation. Alas, he underestimated how long the South would cling to its racist ways.
Those of you who live in the South and are not racists don't need to chime in. We know you're there, but unfortunately there are not enough of you.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)Youdontwantthetruth
(135 posts)the Religious Reich into the GOP and ALL the Racists in both parties and the Religious Reich heard the dog whistle of states rights spew from the mouth of Rancid Ronnie and they all swooned and it is where were are at today
greatlaurel
(2,004 posts)Divide and conquer is the preferred strategy to continue the subjugation of the American middle and lower classes. It is much cheaper for the oligarchs to confuse us into subjugating ourselves by voting in the very people who work to take away what little the middle and lower classes accumulate.