THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 4, 1995 TAG: 9506020510
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY E.J. DIONNE JR., THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium: 96 lines
If you're ready to dismiss the Christian Coalition's ``Contract With the American Family'' as extremist nonsense, you are making a big mistake. This is a serious, if slick, document.
What it proves is that those whose views are at odds with the coalition's need to be a lot more serious in addressing the issues that Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed, the coalition's shrewd executive director, are trying to monopolize.
To begin with, there is nothing wrong with asserting that the health of America's families matters to the common good. You only have to look at the poverty rates among kids who grow up without fathers in the home to see that anyone who cares about social justice has to care about the well-being of two-parent families.
``The problems our nation faces are not all fiscal in nature,'' the document says. ``The American people are increasingly concerned about the coarsening of the culture, the breakup of the family and a decline in civility.'' That's simply true.
Nor should all the specific proposals here be dismissed out of hand. For example, the coalition endorses a bill introduced by Sens. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and Dan Coats, R-Ind., to establish 20 demonstration projects to provide school vouchers so low-income parents can send their kids to private schools. Even if you're a skeptic about school choice - and private-school vouchers are surely not the answer to all that ails the education system - what could be wrong with some experiments that might (1) help some poor kids get better schooling and (2) provide us with some good information so we can argue about this issue more intelligently?
Similarly, nothing is wrong in principle with tax cuts designed to give some relief to parents with kids. You can certainly argue that big tax cuts are unwise now, but for parents in the middle-income range, the tax code has become less friendly over the years.
The statement calls for a ban on late-term abortions and for allowing states to prohibit the use of public money for abortions. Agree or not, this isn't an ``extremist'' view. And then there's the coalition's ``Religious Equality Amendment'' to the Constitution to allow ``voluntary, student and citizen-initiated free speech in non-compulsory settings such as courthouse lawns, high school graduation ceremonies and sports events.''
Civil libertarians are right in seeing problems here. Religious minorities (including evangelical Christians in nonevangelical areas) have reason to worry that throwing open public spaces to all sorts of religious expression could give local majorities dominance over what should be neutral ground.
But it's not unfair for the coalition to ask why it makes sense for civil libertarians to fight (as they should) for the freedom of a high school valedictorian to do a public reading of Karl Marx or Kate Millett, but not of the Lord's Prayer. It's reasonable for the coalition to promote debate on this issue, even if its amendment could be dangerous.
If this were all the Christian Coalition were up to, one might welcome its suggestions, take issue with some and move on. But this document also shows what's wrong with the coalition - it is trying to use broad concerns about family life, shared among Christians and non-Christians, to promote a narrow ideological agenda.
The document does push the classic agenda of the right - cutting the arts and humanities endowments, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Planned Parenthood and the Legal Services Corporation, and abolishing the Department of Education. Whatever you think of these ideas, they reveal that the real point of this organization is to declare that ``Christianity'' and ``family values'' are synonymous with whatever the political agenda of conservatism happens to be at a given moment.
This approach was rightly castigated recently in a statement issued by a group of Christian leaders. Called ``The Cry for Renewal,'' it accurately criticized the ``almost total identification of the Religious Right with the new Republican majority in Washington.'' One has to ask if the coalition's real purpose is less the promotion of ``family values'' than the propagation of the idea that political conservatives are the only people who care about families. The organization's central role in conservative electoral calculations may explain why so many conservative leaders who know better have been reluctant to criticize Robertson's wacky conspiracy theories involving international bankers.
But while it would be admirable if more conservatives condemned Robertson's crackpot theories, that is not enough for moderates and liberals. For all its narrowness, the Christian Coalition has shown that a large constituency of noncrackpot Americans wants politicians to address ``the coarsening of the culture, the breakup of the family, and a decline in civility.'' If moderates and liberals evade those issues, Reed and Robertson will dominate the discussion. That can't be good for civility, our culture or the family. MEMO: Dionne is a member of The Washington Post editorial-page staff. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
If moderates and liberals evade the cultural issues raised by the
Christian Coalition's document, the voices of those like Ralph Reed,
top, and Pat Robertson will dominate the discussion.
by CNB