Evangelical antigay activism grew from gender-role anxiety, not longstanding doctrine.

Evidence

Bryant, a popular singer, beauty pageant winner, and, for a time, Florida orange juice spokeswoman, based her own book Bless This House on Morgan’s teachings. She then went on to become the spokeswoman for evangelical antigay activism. Within evangelicalism itself, this activism is often depicted as an expression of long-standing opposition to same-sex relationships triggered by the gay rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, but the virulence with which conservative Christians opposed gay rights was rooted in the cultural and political significance they placed on the reassertion of distinct gender roles during those decades. Same-sex relationships challenged the most basic assumptions of the evangelical worldview. — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 146

Categorization

• XREF: This is the book’s central method in microcosm — explaining political positions as continuations of a consumer-gender culture rather than doctrinal lineage — directly relevant to the reader’s contestation of the continuity thesis. — connects to: The abortion myth obscures the segregationist origins of evangelical activism. — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 166