A tax law ruling on segregation, not Roe, catalyzed the Religious Right

Evidence

The real catalyst for the Religious Right was a court decision, but it was not Roe v. Wade. It was a lower court ruling in the District Court for the District of Columbia in a case called Green v. Connally. On June 30, 1971, the court ruled that any organization that engaged in racial segregation or racial discrimination was not by definition a charitable institution, and therefore it had no claims on tax-exempt status. — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 100

Categorization

• XREF: Directly challenges the standard Roe=origin narrative; parallels readings that demote 1973 as the pivotal date in conservative religious politics. — connects to: Segregationist schools’ tax-exemption fight catalyzed the New Right movement — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 251; The Religious Right’s religious-freedom framing masked its defense of segregation — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 112; The IRS’s challenge to segregated schools, not abortion, birthed the Religious Right — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 23 (+10 more)
• QUESTION: I should verify how standard the Roe-origin story is in secondary literature and how it got entrenched against evidence like this.

Broader Connections

• The IRS’s challenge to segregated schools, not abortion, birthed the Religious Right #corroborates (0.95) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 23
• The Religious Right began as reaction to IRS desegregation of Christian schools. #corroborates (0.95) — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 312
• Forced desegregation of Christian schools, not abortion, sparked the Christian Right #corroborates (0.95) — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 530
• The Religious Right’s origins lay in defending racial segregation, not opposing abortion #corroborates (0.93) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 140
• The Religious Right’s foundation is racial exclusion, not abortion opposition. #corroborates (0.92) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 167
• The Religious Right’s abortion politics predate Roe and were chosen for strategic reasons #contradicts (0.85) — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 222
• The Religious Right adopted abortion only after racial segregation failed to rally voters #qualifies (0.82) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 121
• The Religious Right’s founding narrative claims Roe v. Wade roused evangelicals from political passivity #complicates (0.80) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 89
• The Religious Right fabricated an origin myth linking its birth to Roe v. Wade #corroborates (0.78) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 87
• Evangelicals adopted anti-abortion politics six years after Roe for political gain #contradicts (0.78) — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 255
• Conservative Christians originally welcomed Roe v. Wade as advancing religious liberty #corroborates (0.75) — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 267