Fault Lines

by Kevin M. Kruse

  As religious conservatives put aside their denominational differences and rallied around the common cause of opposing abortion, they found themselves able to force a shift in both policy and politics. In 1976, Congress adopted a measure that Republican congressman Henry Hyde of Illinois had introduced to ban the use of all federal Medicaid funds for abortion. Because Medicaid provided the only real access to medical care for low-income families, the Hyde Amendment significantly undercut access to abortion for the working poor. For its supporters, the measure represented a significant triumph. Before its passage, roughly 30 percent of all legal abortions had been financed with Medicaid money; but when that source of funding stopped, so too did roughly 300,000 abortions a year. Meanwhile, in electoral politics, the new National Pro-Life Political Action Committee (NPLPAC) and related pro-life groups worked to make abortion an important campaign issue. Their strategy was to focus narrowly on people who felt most passionately about the issue, mobilizing local citizens to campaign and producing extensive public relations material focused exclusively on abortion. Seeking to deliver a small slice of the electorate in a small number of races—3 to 5 percent of the vote in several dozen congressional elections—they hoped to transform the national debate.4 And indeed, conservatives soon found themselves facing a pro-life litmus test, while liberals were targeted for past support for abortion rights. These efforts found quick success, as pro-life activists succeeded in defeating the incumbent Iowa senator Dick Clark, a pro-choice Democrat, in the 1978 midterms. Two years later, they would help end the political careers of leading Senate liberals like George McGovern of South Dakota, Frank Church of Idaho, and Birch Bayh of Indiana, the champion of Title IX.5

  As conservative Christians came together in opposition to abortion, feminism, and homosexuality, they created a new movement for social conservatism that served as a visible counterpoint to the nascent movements for feminism and gay rights. Notably, in 1977, the two sides simultaneously staged rival rallies in Houston that dramatized their differences and inflamed passions on all sides. Two years earlier, the United Nations had proclaimed International Women’s Year (IWY), prompting a bipartisan group of feminists to secure $5 million in funding for a massive conference on the status of women in the United States. Held in November 1977, the IWY National Women’s Conference attracted nearly 20,000 women, including Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Margaret Mead, Coretta Scott King, and three First Ladies, whose presence garnered a great amount of media attention for the event. (“I never seen so many women in one place in my life,” a Houston cabbie marveled. “How come their husbands let them come?”) In the end, the delegates passed a strongly progressive platform that endorsed reproductive rights, federal child care programs, state ratification of the ERA, and civil rights protections for gays and lesbians. The support for gay and lesbian rights in particular represented a significant turning point in the course of feminism. Prominent leaders of women’s rights organizations like Friedan had long shied away from such steps, but in Houston, she threw her support to the proposed plank and helped it win passage. When it did, excited lesbian activists shouted out: “Thank you, sisters!” 6

  Not everyone, of course, was thrilled with the National Women’s Conference. Phyllis Schlafly denounced it as “a front for radicals and lesbians” and helped stage a counterdemonstration held in Houston at the exact same time. Pointedly titled the “Pro-Family Rally,” the event drew in a conservative crowd that equaled the one at the liberal conference in both numbers and energy. “They came with their Bibles, their flags and their signs,” a journalist noted. “They came to show their disgust for the lesbians, the perverts and the baby-killers meeting across town.” When another reporter asked an attendee about a button she wore that read “God’s Way,” she explained it meant “that homosexuality is a sin, that God meant for a woman to take care of the family, and that every child that was conceived was a life that could not be taken.” Not surprisingly, the Pro-Family Rally passed a set of resolutions that opposed virtually all of the recommendations made by the National Women’s Conference across town. “The issues that divide the two groups are important,” reported a Time bureau chief, “but the thing that binds them is their commitment to militant action. Houston taught all women that the world can be compelled to watch.” 7

  The Pro-Family Rally in Houston signaled the rise of a new wave of activists who would advance social conservatism with the attractive frame of “family values.” In 1977, Dr. James Dobson founded his Focus on the Family organization in the suburbs of Los Angeles. A devout evangelical and noted child psychologist, Dobson led the charge against sex education in local public schools and, through his popular radio program, rallied statewide opposition to gay and lesbian rights as well. Meanwhile, Beverly LaHaye, the wife of a fundamentalist minister in the San Diego suburbs and author of The Spirit-Controlled Woman, founded Concerned Women for America (CWA) in 1979. Although CWA never received as much popular attention as its liberal counterpart, the National Organization for Women, it consistently boasted of both a larger membership and a bigger budget.8

  The media emerged as a key target of the new “family values” crusade, sparking several new activist organizations of social conservatives. In 1977, Rev. Donald Wildmon of Mississippi launched the National Federation for Decency, later rebranded as the American Family Association. The group established itself as a media watchdog, standing on guard against gratuitous displays of sexuality and positive portrayals of homosexuality. The organization gained national attention between 1977 and 1981, as it amassed millions to lobby local stations and threaten national television and advertising executives through boycotts. Focusing on programs that celebrated promiscuity or homosexuality, such as Soap and Three’s Company (1976–1984), Wildmon’s group singled out major advertisers like Sears, prompting them to drop advertisements from the shows.9

  At the same time, religious conservatives advanced alternative programming of their own. Rev. Pat Robertson, the politically savvy son of a former US senator and a Southern Baptist minister, led the way. In 1961, he began by airing religious programs over a small UHF channel in coastal Virginia. Then, in 1977, Robertson purchased a local leased-access channel and rebranded it as the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). Robertson himself became the face of the network, hosting The 700 Club, aptly described by one reviewer as a “soft-sell program, which offers penetrating interviews, fervent prayers for 1.25 million callers annually and an upbeat ‘Top 40’ in gospel tunes.” With personal religious testimony from celebrities ranging from former Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver to Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry, the program offered a friendly face for evangelical Christianity. Though Robertson often recoiled from the term himself, he created a powerful new form of religious broadcasting—“televangelism”—that rapidly transformed the world of broadcast media. Countless others followed his example. Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, who started on CBN, soon launched a satellite network of their own, the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), which likewise brought conservative religious programs like their Praise the Lord show to the masses in digestible form.10

  The most significant “pro-family” development on the right, however, was the creation of the Moral Majority. Founded in 1979, this new coalition of religious conservatives was led by Rev. Jerry Falwell, a Baptist minister from Lynchburg, Virginia. Like many conservative Christians, Falwell had long argued that religious leaders should play no role in national politics. But the social revolution wrought by feminism and the gay rights movement persuaded him—and many like him—that they could no longer stand idly by. In 1978, for instance, Falwell delivered his first sermon against abortion, which he began decrying as “America’s national sin.” Feminism, which he blamed for a wide range of problems, also stood at the root of the abortion crisis, he insisted, because most of the women who sought them had “been caught up in the ERA movement and want to terminate their pregnancy because it limits their freedom and their job opportunities.” The ERA, he charge
d, was a “delusion” and a “definite violation of Holy Scripture.” At the same time, Falwell emerged as an outspoken opponent of gay rights. In 1978, for instance, he campaigned for the Briggs Initiative in California and later proclaimed that the murders of Milk and Moscone were simply God’s judgment against homosexuals.11

  Having made connections with like-minded Christian conservative leaders, Falwell resolved to bring them together in a national coalition. In May 1979, they founded the Moral Majority, which they described as a “pro-life, pro-family, pro-moral and pro-American” organization. In doing so, they sought to strengthen not only the political clout of religious conservatives but also their self-image as a representation of the majority’s will. Repeatedly, these leaders insisted that their entry into politics was a defensive reaction to the state’s meddling in matters of faith. “We believe the government has intruded into areas of morals,” explained Rev. Tim LaHaye, “and if we don’t speak out on moral issues, the government will conclude by our silence that we won’t care how immoral they get.” Waving away the traditional reluctance that ministers had about political matters, Falwell now said that preachers had three obligations to their flocks: “Get ’em baptized, get ’em saved, and get ’em registered to vote.” Speaking to a thousand ministers at a Florida church rally during the 1980 election, the leader of the Moral Majority insisted there was nothing they could not accomplish together if they worked hard enough. “What can you do from the pulpit?” he asked rhetorically. “You can register people to vote. You can explain the issues to them. And you can endorse candidates, right there in church on Sunday morning.” 12

  As the 1980 election season began, another new organization—the Religious Roundtable—led a campaign to “coordinate Christian leaders from around the nation who are willing to fight in the political arena for pro-God, pro-family, pro-America causes.” They connected the organizational structure of their movement to the grassroots activists and leaders who would be central in mobilizing the final vote. In seminars and workshops, the Religious Roundtable taught ministers how to mobilize their congregations on behalf of conservative causes and candidates. The most significant of these gatherings, the National Affairs Briefing, brought over ten thousand ministers together in Dallas in August 1980. Rev. James Robison, head of the Roundtable, estimated that between the ministers’ own congregations and the wider audiences on their many radio and television programs, the conference’s message would likely reach between 50 and 60 million voters in all. The event featured a number of prominent religious conservatives, including Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Phyllis Schlafly, and the head of the National Right to Life Committee. But Ronald Reagan stole the show, winning over the audience with a line that had been scripted specifically for him by his hosts. “I know this is non-partisan, so you can’t endorse me,” the Republican nominee noted, “but I want you to know that I endorse you.” 13

  While the union of the Religious Right and the 1980 Reagan campaign was a significant development, the larger arrival of religious conservatives to the national political scene was even more so. Believing that the movements for feminism and gay rights had willfully distorted the natural order of life and the national order of politics, these conservative Christians argued that they were merely responding in kind to set things right once more. In their eyes, they were simply protecting tradition from dangerous new changes. “I am sick and tired of hearing about all the radicals and the perverts and the liberals and the leftists and the communists coming out of the closet,” James Robison thundered at the National Affairs Briefing. “It’s time for God’s people to come out of the closet!” Conservative Christians were convinced not only that they should fight against the liberal forces they saw arrayed against them, but that they would win in the end. “We have enough votes to run the country,” boasted Pat Robertson. “And when the people say, ‘We’ve had enough,’ we’re going to take over the country.” 14

  The New Right

  As the Religious Right gained ground, they found ready allies in a more secular movement that styled itself as “the New Right.” In the words of former Nixon strategist Kevin Phillips, the Old Right had been an elitist establishment aligned with “high church religion” and opposed to mass culture or the concerns of the common man. The New Right, he argued, was more aligned with a populist agenda that “puts principal emphasis on domestic social issues—on public anger over busing, welfare spending, environmental extremism, soft criminology, media bias and power, warped education, twisted textbooks, racial quotas, various guidelines and an ever-expanding bureaucracy.” 15

  While the New Right distinguished itself with distinct themes, its innovative tactics were even more important. Conservative activist Richard Viguerie, for instance, helped pioneer a new form of grassroots mobilization known as the direct-mail campaign. Using the millions of names he’d acquired from people who had sent in donations to the presidential campaigns of Barry Goldwater and George Wallace, Viguerie compiled a massive list of conservative voters across the country. He put the information, then stored on punch cards, into a giant computerized database, sorted according to the various concerns and complaints of these voters. He could then send direct-mail solicitations to these voters, solicitations that were tailor-made to their concerns. This revolutionary approach enabled conservative activists to reach out to their core supporters, mobilize their anger with focused appeals, and receive financial contributions in return. Direct-mail appeals were provocative and to the point. As one Republican operative put it, “the shriller you are” in these appeals, “the easier it is to raise money.” They reframed political debates in stark terms and presented socially conservative issues in ways that politicians would’ve been scared to do from the campaign trail. For instance, one direct-mail appeal urged recipients to “stop the baby killers! These anti-life baby killers are already organizing and raising money to re-elect pro-abortionists. Abortion means killing a live baby.” Recipients were urged to send their donations and their votes to the conservative candidate in order to stop it all.16

  Another key organizer of the New Right was Paul Weyrich, whose main contribution was the creation of new conservative foundations and think tanks. He established close relationships with a number of wealthy conservatives, such as Joseph Coors, head of the Coors beer empire, and Richard Mellon Scaife, the heir to the vast Carnegie-Mellon fortune. Drawing on their funding, Weyrich established the Heritage Foundation in 1973. Coors donated a quarter-million dollars to start the foundation, and in the following years, it received generous funding from the founders of the Amway Corporation and conservative philanthropists at the Bradley, Olin and Scaife foundations. Heritage quickly emerged as one of the leading conservative think tanks of the modern era. It led the way in popularizing conservative thought, publishing various materials and sponsoring conferences to advance its probusiness and antigovernment policies. Heritage was also directly involved in the legislative battles on Capitol Hill, where it provided advice and assistance to conservative legislators on a wide variety of issues. While traditional think tanks produced thick policy papers, the Heritage Foundation pioneered the practice of coming up with short, slick, and direct publications called “Heritage Backgrounders” that could be read by politicians on the go. Unlike earlier think tank papers, which were laden with academic-style analysis, Heritage’s output resembled op-ed essays in newspapers, meant to make an easily digestible point. Other foundations—most notably the American Enterprise Institute, the Hoover Institution, and the Cato Institute—also moved forward aggressively to pressure congressional figures to join the New Right and, more broadly, to popularize the arguments of conservative and libertarian intellectuals.17

  Business interests made their presence increasingly felt in Washington, too. Hoping to discard the New Deal infrastructure of the 1930s and angry over the vast expansion of workplace and environmental regulations put into place in the 1960s and 1970s, corporations converged on the capital to set up sophisticated congres
sional lobbying operations. Washington’s K Street soon filled with firms representing individual business as well as particular sectors of industry that were eager to remove as much of the government burden that they faced as possible. These businesses relied on the intellectual firepower of libertarian authors and foundations, but they also used the power of the purse. Notably, spending by corporate political action committees (PACs) on congressional races increased fivefold between the late 1970s and the 1980s.18

  As with the Religious Right, the most effective messenger for the New Right was Ronald Reagan. After barely losing in the Republican primaries in 1976 to President Ford, Reagan had continued to hone his political skills through the radio. The medium had become the home to many conservative talk show hosts like Bob Grant in New York, who took to the airwaves to hammer away at progressive taxes, welfare, Communists, and illegal immigration. Reagan followed suit, taking a similar hard line but in smoother tones. In daily syndicated radio addresses, he reached somewhere between 20 and 30 million people on over three hundred stations.19 Like many conservatives of the decade, Reagan used this medium both to express his arguments and expand his constituency, circumventing the seeming liberal dominance of the mainstream press and presenting the country with a political perspective that contrasted sharply with the Democratic dominance in Washington. Reagan took pride in developing the addresses himself, writing and revising repeatedly, carefully crafting every sentence and adjusting each word so that it would have maximum impact. In particular, he railed against taxation and Communism, rejecting the notion that most Americans agreed with liberal values and refuting any claim that persons living under Communism actually liked the system they experienced. “Maybe we should drop a few million typical mail order catalogues on Minsk & Pinsk & Moscow to whet their appetites,” he said in one broadcast.20