Proposed rallying issues for the Religious Right included gay rights before abortion

Evidence

Several operatives offered suggestions. Robert Billings, a Bob Jones University alumnus who formed the National Christian Action Coalition to protest IRS actions directed at evangelical schools, thought that opposition to gay rights would energize evangelical voters. “We need an emotionally charged issue to stir up people,” he said. “I believe that the homosexual issue is the issue we should use.” — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 120

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Religious Right needed a rallying issue besides racial segregation — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 119; Forced desegregation of Christian schools, not abortion, sparked the Christian Right — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 530; The Religious Right’s abortion politics predate Roe and were chosen for strategic reasons — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 222 (+13 more)

Related

• The Religious Right strategists first favored gay rights over abortion as a mobilizing issue (similarity 0.94)
• The Religious Right needed a rallying issue besides racial segregation (similarity 0.90)
• The Religious Right adopted abortion only after racial segregation failed to rally voters (similarity 0.89)
• The Religious Right’s abortion politics predate Roe and were chosen for strategic reasons (similarity 0.87)
• The religious right’s founding coalition was initially indifferent to abortion. (similarity 0.85)
• Abortion was not a key evangelical voting issue before 1979. (similarity 0.85)
• Abortion was adopted as a rallying issue because it could unite disparate cultural conservatives (similarity 0.85)
• Forced desegregation of Christian schools, not abortion, sparked the Christian Right (similarity 0.85)
• Operatives treated the 1978 election as a test of abortion’s mobilizing power (similarity 0.84)
• Anti-abortion was chosen after other rallying issues were rejected (similarity 0.84)
• Early Moral Majority insiders confirm abortion was not its founding issue (similarity 0.84)
• Politics, abortion, and school prayer failed for two decades to rouse evangelicals (similarity 0.84)
• Abortion failed for years to mobilize evangelicals before the IRS ruling (similarity 0.83)
• The abortion myth obscures the segregationist origins of evangelical activism. (similarity 0.83)
• Internal Religious Right correspondence celebrated abortion as an effective organizing issue (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Abortion was not a key evangelical voting issue before 1979. #corroborates (0.85) — Andrew L. Whitehead; Samuel L. Perry, Taking America Back for God, 246
• Evangelical opposition to abortion was initially uncertain and politically constructed #corroborates (0.80) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 160