Flipping the dial through available radio stations there will blare out to any listener an array of broadcasts, 24/7, propagating Religious Right politics, along with what they deem to be 'old-time gospel preaching.' This is especially true of what comes over the airwaves in Bible Belt southern states.
The corporate right fires up the religious right against gay marriage and abortion and uses their votes to push their deregulation and tax cuts for the rich. It's an old trick. The House of Saud has the same arrangement with the Mullahs in Saudi Arabia.
Adherents of the new religious right reject the separation of politics and religion, but they bring no spiritual insights to politics.
Originally, I was against gay marriage because I was opposed to all marriage, being an old-fashioned gay bohemian. The straight people I knew in the sixties were very much opposed to it. I was, too, and it was never a possibility for gays, but when I saw how opposed the Religious Right was to it, I thought it a fight worth fighting.
The first reason for the preponderant influence of those Evangelicals who define themselves as advocates of Religious Right theological and political ideologies is that they have both the financial means and technological know-how to make widespread use of modern electronic forms of communication.
I think the moral majority and religious right have been shrinking and having not quite as loud a voice in America, and all of a sudden people are coming to their own realizations going, 'Joe down the street is gay and he's a great guy.'
In Lincoln's day a President's religion was a very private affair. There were no public prayer meetings, no attempts to woo the Religious Right. Few of Lincoln's countrymen knew anything at all of his religious beliefs.
Though claiming to represent a conservative form of Christianity, the Religious Right is politically a form of Protestant liberalism.
My Latin education teaches me that religion comes from religio, which means, 'to bind.' To bind with rope. And that's all it means. So whenever I hear somebody go, 'I feel so religious right now!' I'm like, 'Well, you're tying yourself up in knots, are you?'
The culmination of a long struggle was 2013, which could clearly be labeled the Year of the Gay. State after state had legalized gay marriage, despite intense opposition from the religious right.