Why the New
Right Was So Wrong
Image Courtesy of New York Times
The
decades of the 60’s and 70’s provided our country with so much positive,
progressive change. A new generation of young Americans were demanding their
voice be heard and that it be heard equally. Women were gaining privileges they
never had before, African Americans and gays were having their voices heard and
were uniting for the cause of equality. It seemed that all was right and good
again in the greatest nation in the world.
And then, a bunch of whackjobs came in and tried to turn the progressive
bus right around and take us back decades, if not centuries! Who were these
people and where did they get their crazy ideas?
According
to US History.org, the New Right comprised itself of Christian leaders and
other conservatives, mainly from suburban and rural communities. Their claim
was that moral decay was ruining our nation and that sex was it’s biggest
offender. Christian leaders such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson preached
tirelessly about the Moral Majority and the moral decline of America.
Celebrities like Anita Bryant also took a moral stand against sex and
especially homosexuality. While its understandable that some people could be
opposed to some of the new and outrageous ideas some Americans had, a lot of
what they had to say was completely ridiculous. Speaking of Miss Bryant, her
big stance on homosexuality being wrong was that they were recruiting our
children to be gay! I suppose she
thought gay men and women were going around trying to convince children to do
the same. 40 years later we know that homosexuality is not a choice and that
you cannot recruit for it. Where did she even get such an idea? A good Bryant
quote states “If gays are granted rights, next we’ll have to give rights to
prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and nailbiters” (Gayrites.net) Nailbiters? Anita, do you have any idea what
you are saying?
Pat
Robertson was no better, he had plenty of distorted views on abortion and
feminism. In 1992, he told the Washington Post “The
feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist,
anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands,
kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become
lesbians." (Highbeam) Again, it is understandable to have differing views on
these issues but to say witchcraft and killing children? It is no wonder so many people think of
religious folks as crazy. There is no basis for this kind of accusation. Jerry Falwell, though, was the worst of them
all. Falwell founded, in 1979 an
organization called the Moral Majority, which at first reminds me of Nixon’s “Silent
Majority.” This “majority” was based on
the thought that cultural trends such as as non-marital sex, homosexuality, the
absence of prayer in schools and various others were ruining our nation and
destroying our young people. Some very special quotes from Falwell include "The ACLU is to Christians what the American Nazi
party is to Jews." and "If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a
human being." (SF Gate) I’m not sure about anyone else,
but these things are nothing but inflammatory and insane.
The problem was that enough
people believed them and enough people, though they were generally the folks
least exposed to things such as pornography and homosexuality, went along with
these New Right leaders in passing laws restricting homosexual practices,
teachings in sex education and trying to eliminate pornography. It is scary to
think what the New Right may have been able to accomplish if they had tactfully
tried to spread their message in some sort of reasonable voice. It is these
pig-headed comments that we can all laugh about that perhaps saved our country
from going too far backwards in terms on social freedoms and equalities. I
wonder what Falwell would say today, of the legalization of same sex marriage
and marijuana in certain states. He’s
probably rolling in his grave.
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