In theory, America's Religious Right should be basking in the warm glow of power and success — after all, political leaders who sympathize with them occupy many of the most important positions of authority in the United States, including the presidency. Yet, for some reason, things simply aren't going as planned. Why, for example, is sodomy now legal? Why is the prospect of gay marriage becoming more real than ever before? Why hasn't the conservative religious revolution achieved real victory in America?
These are the sorts of questions that religious conservatives, evangelicals, and fundamentalists are asking themselves these days — and the questions are prompting a reconsideration of their overall social and political strategy. They are, in the words of Rev. D. James Kennedy, "losing the culture war."
There is real frustration among the leaders of the Religious Right over this state of affairs. Their movement was launched more or less officially almost 25 years ago when Jerry Falwell took the helm of the Moral Majority; yet in that time, just how much have they accomplished in terms of substantive change on America's political, social, and religious landscape?
Not enough, as far as they are concerned. They haven't been impotent, and it seems likely that, at the very least, they have retarded the nation's movement to the left when it comes to many social issues involving things like sexuality and privacy. That's not enough for them, although their frustration may be good news for everyone else.
On the other hand, it isn't a sign that everyone else should simply start to relax. The Religious Right was energized once by abortion — could they become re-energized by gay marriage ?
Perhaps — it's unlikely, though, because the rhetoric against abortion allows for the claim that abortion involves the murder of an innocent human being, an idea which is much more inflammatory than the idea that a marriage between two men or women somehow threatens heterosexual marriages.
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