THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, May 23, 1995 TAG: 9505230005
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A15 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: MOLLY IVINS
DATELINE: AUSTIN LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
To read the Christian Coalition's Contract With the American Family is to wonder how well-intentioned people can come up with so many bad ideas. And then again to wonder what some of it has to do with either the family or Christianity.
What in the world do these people have against the Legal Services Corp.? That's the outfit that does routine legal chores for poor folks. Or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? A whole generation of Americans has now learned its ABCs from ``Sesame Street.'' What is anti-family about that?
The Christian Coalition wants prayer in the schools. Look, the simple test for religious freedom is not merely that every person or group be free to do what it wants but that such activity not be imposed on others. The issue is not prayer - it is coercion. Under the First Amendment, students are free now to meet with others to share, practice and discuss their religious views.
School choice always sounds like a good idea until you stop and think about it. Can anyone tell me how it would improve the ``public'' schools to suddenly start spending our tax dollars on ``private'' schools?
I do like the idea of IRAs for homemakers. Seems fair to me.
The peculiar relationship between the Republican Party and the Christian Coalition gets stranger and stranger. Ralph Reed, the cherub-faced executive director of the coalition, announced the Contract With the American Family while surrounded by Republican members of Congress. House Speaker Newt Gingrich promised to bring the coalition's contract to the floor of the House for a vote on each of its 10-point priorities. I've seen Congress run with legislation written by and for special interests before, but does anyone remember anything like this?
Reed proudly proclaimed that each of the contract's points had 60 percent or better support in a poll commissioned by his outfit. That is apparently why it does not go after abortion rights head-on but instead contains several provisions that would make it harder for poor women to get abortions. And the coalition still wants to cut off family-planning aid to international organizations.
The Christian Coalition distributed 33 million voter's guides during the last election. That's a lot of clout. But, as the American Jewish Congress stated in a reply to the contract, ``Differences with the Christian Coalition on issues such as abortion and sex education do not reflect a lack of concern or indifference to religion but genuine differences in moral perception.'' Calling the contract ``arrogant,'' the AJC statement said, ``We think no religious group has a monopoly on political wisdom or the solution for the problems confronting American families.''
It is often difficult, and then astonishing, to remember that the religious right's political activists say they are acting in the name of Christianity. They are making the nomination of Dr. Henry Foster as surgeon general into a litmus test, using language about Foster that is, to put it mildly, distinctly un-Christian. Foster - who has delivered 10,000 babies and whose ``I Have a Future'' program for teens was praised by President Bush as one of the Thousand Points of Light - is described by the religious right as ``a ghoul,'' ``Dr. Kevorkian,'' ``a man with blood on his hands,'' ``your worst nightmare come true,'' etc.
If you saw any part of Foster's nomination hearing, this will give a fair idea of how the religious right's rhetoric tracks with reality. Makes one wish we had more of our Canadian neighbors' phlegmatic temperament; their national motto is ``Now, Let's Not Get Excited.'' Our national habit is to get into a total tizzy before we've even collected the facts. Reminds me of the old political line: ``I'm not sure what I think, but I'm prepared to be bitter about it.''
Aldous Huxley wrote, ``Certainty is profoundly comforting, and hatred pays a high dividend in emotional excitement.'' Some of our fellow citizens are hooked on that emotional excitement.
The late Bishop Pope (Isn't that a great name? Almost as good as Cardinal Sin), Methodist of Dallas, used to say he'd preached to ``every tumbleweed and bob-war fence in Northwest Texas.'' Once, when ruminating on some un-Christian Christians, he said: ``I can't stand intolerant people.'' And then he laughed and laughed. MEMO: Ms. Ivins writes for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Her column is
distributed by Creators Syndicate, 5777 W. Century Blvd., Los Angeles,
Calif. 90045.
by CNB