So about that abortion thing..

[giblets]

If you think politics in the US would be secular like in Europe if not for Roe v. Wade I think that's a fantasy.

[giblets]

Reading Wikipedia...

In Thy Kingdom Come, Randall Balmer recounts comments that Paul M. Weyrich, who he describes as "one of the architects of the Religious Right in the late 1970s", made at a conference, sponsored by a Religious Right organization, that they both attended in Washington in 1990:[92]

In the course of one of the sessions, Weyrich tried to make a point to his Religious Right brethren (no women attended the conference, as I recall). Let's remember, he said animatedly, that the Religious Right did not come together in response to the Roe decision. No, Weyrich insisted, what got us going as a political movement was the attempt on the part of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to rescind the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University because of its racially discriminatory policies.
—Paul M. Weyrich

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_right#Race_and_diversity

Interesting...

[regexcellent]

Obviously the religious right was, always has been, and always will be a force in American politics. What really galvanized them, though, is abortion. If that had just been quietly settled then it wouldn't have been part of the massive wave that swept Ronald Reagan to power. It would be more split between Republicans and Democrats, most likely.

[Imran Siddiqui]

If you think politics in the US would be secular like in Europe if not for Roe v. Wade I think that's a fantasy.

Who said anything about secularism? Evangelicals retreated from politics after the Scopes trial - basically became like Anabaptists. You'll find that they really didn't do much at all during the Presidencies of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, even in the face of court decisions outlawing displays of Christianity in the public square, etc.

And Weyrich is self-described ethnic nationalist. The ringleaders of the Religious Right (ie, Robertson, Reed, Dobson) came to the fore in the 1970s due mostly to the Roe decision (and was very influential in Reagan's election).

[giblets]

Who said anything about secularism? Evangelicals retreated from politics after the Scopes trial - basically became like Anabaptists. You'll find that they really didn't do much at all during the Presidencies of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, even in the face of court decisions outlawing displays of Christianity in the public square, etc.

And Weyrich is self-described ethnic nationalist. The ringleaders of the Religious Right (ie, Robertson, Reed, Dobson) came to the fore in the 1970s due mostly to the Roe decision (and was very influential in Reagan's election).

For some reason Weyrich doesn't agree with what is supposedly a consensus among historians. This "the religious crazies only took an interest in politics because of abortions" story seems more like a myth people came up with after the fact to make them look better.

[regexcellent]

"Religious crazies?"

[Imran Siddiqui]

For some reason Weyrich doesn't agree with what is supposedly a consensus among historians.

How wonderful. And he likely doesn't agree with the consensus among scientists that evolution is a reality... going to cite him for that as well?

[giblets]

How wonderful. And he likely doesn't agree with the consensus among scientists that evolution is a reality... going to cite him for that as well?

No, because on that matter he is nothing resembling a 'primary source'.

[Felch]

But it upset a lot of men that they don't get to make decisions about women's bodies.

A fetus is not a part of a woman's body.

[giblets]

A fetus is not a part of a woman's body.

I guess that will be a salient point when someone invents an artificial womb that a fetus can be relocated to.

[Imran Siddiqui]

No, because on that matter he is nothing resembling a 'primary source'.

He isn't really here either. You just plucked one religious right person to try to pin views on the rest of them. It'd be like looking at the statements of Malcolm X and saying this is what the Civil Rights movement is really all about.

[giblets]

He isn't really here either. You just plucked one religious right person to try to pin views on the rest of them. It'd be like looking at the statements of Malcolm X and saying this is what the Civil Rights movement is really all about.

If Malcolm X had said something about why the civil rights movement was founded that would certainly be interesting. I don't see what's so implausible about political participation motivated by a desire to maintain tax-exempt status.

[Imran Siddiqui]

You mean, aside from the fact that the vast majority of the religious right had no care for Bob Jones University, nor did they push for any racial laws?

[giblets]

A number of prominent members of the Christian right, including Jerry Falwell and Rousas John Rushdoony, have in the past supported segregation, with Falwell arguing in a 1958 sermon that integration will lead to the destruction of the white race.[89][90] He later changed his views.[91]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_right#Race_and_diversity

Is Jerry Falwell also a minor figure? Or is he exonerated because he later "changed his views" when supporting segregation was too inconvenient?

The conclusions of a review of 112 studies on Christian faith and ethnic prejudice were summarized by a study in 1980 as being that "white Protestants associated with groups possessing fundamentalist belief systems are generally more prejudiced than members of nonfundamentalist groups, with unchurched whites exhibiting least prejudice."[86] The original review found that its conclusions held "regardless of when the studies were conducted, from whom the data came, the region where the data were collected, or the type of prejudice studied."[87] More recently in 2003, eight studies have found a positive correlation between fundamentalism and prejudice, using different measures of fundamentalism.[88]

It certainly looks to me like the "vast majority" of people in the religious right would support racist laws if they thought they could accomplish that.

[self biased]

A fetus is not a part of a woman's body.

apparently, you're about as fashionably late to this party as Oerdin is.