The Religious Right strategists first favored gay rights over abortion as a mobilizing issue

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, 122

Categorization

• XREF: Direct echo of the book’s framing in his earlier chapter on Anita Bryant and the Dade County fight; note Billing’s Bob Jones link ties back to the segregation-schools origin story. — connects to: The religious right’s founding coalition was initially indifferent to abortion. — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 234; The Religious Right’s founding narrative claims Roe v. Wade roused evangelicals from political passivity — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 89; Proposed rallying issues for the Religious Right included gay rights before abortion — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the…, 120 (+2 more)

Related

• Proposed rallying issues for the Religious Right included gay rights before abortion (similarity 0.94)
• The Religious Right’s abortion politics predate Roe and were chosen for strategic reasons (similarity 0.88)
• The Religious Right adopted abortion only after racial segregation failed to rally voters (similarity 0.87)
• The religious right’s founding coalition was initially indifferent to abortion. (similarity 0.86)
• Early Moral Majority insiders confirm abortion was not its founding issue (similarity 0.86)
• The Religious Right’s founding narrative claims Roe v. Wade roused evangelicals from political passivity (similarity 0.85)
• The Religious Right needed a rallying issue besides racial segregation (similarity 0.85)
• Anti-abortion was chosen after other rallying issues were rejected (similarity 0.84)
• Operatives treated the 1978 election as a test of abortion’s mobilizing power (similarity 0.84)
• Abortion was adopted as a rallying issue because it could unite disparate cultural conservatives (similarity 0.84)
• Forced desegregation of Christian schools, not abortion, sparked the Christian Right (similarity 0.83)
• The New Right founders launched with grievances unrelated to abortion (similarity 0.83)
• Internal Religious Right correspondence celebrated abortion as an effective organizing issue (similarity 0.83)
• The abortion myth obscures the segregationist origins of evangelical activism. (similarity 0.83)
• Abortion failed for years to mobilize evangelicals before the IRS ruling (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Proposed rallying issues for the Religious Right included gay rights before abortion #corroborates (0.95) — Randall Balmer, Bad Faith, 120
• Evangelical opposition to abortion was initially uncertain and politically constructed #expands (0.82) — Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Jesus and John Wayne, 160
• The Religious Right’s abortion politics predate Roe and were chosen for strategic reasons #qualifies (0.80) — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 222