FEBRUARY 24, 1995 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

COMMUNITY GROUPS

The high command gives the order, and Ohio troops move

by Bill Henderson

Third of a series on the new Radical Right. Who are the "troops" and who are the "commanders" in this "Cultural War" being organized by the new Radical Right?

Rev. Pat Robertson, according to his press relations department, meets weekly with the leaders of Concerned Women of America, the American Family Association, and Focus on the Family. These three groups teamed beside Robertson's

Bill of Rights. The ACLJ has 75 paid lawyers and a $9 million budget.

Robertson's political impact is magnified because his nationwide TV and radio broadcasts are aired several times daily. This megaconglomerate of publishing, media, phone bank and data operations is valued at over $1 billion.

The stated goals of the religious wing of

OUT Voice

Christian Coalition appear to have become the high command of the new Radical Right. National or regional executives of these four organizations are involved together in every statewide anti-gay initiative. Executives and trustees of these organizations also sit on the boards of most Radical Right groups.

As for the troops, in 1989 Pat Robertson asked his aide Ralph Reed to distill 175,000 key activists and donors from his list of 1.9 million names and addresses compiled during the 1988 presidential campaign. With this key list, Reed was directed to create and build the most powerful political force in American politics. We are, in six short years, already feeling the shock wave of the new Radical Right's assault.

At the end of the first three years, Reed had created an organization with 250,000 members and assets of $13 million. They had a presence of some sort in all 50 states. They are now, at six years old, organized down to county or precinct level nationwide. They use professional field organizers, have fulltime paid staff in more than half of our states, conduct candidate and activist training seminars, lobby at the local, state and national levels, and in March of 1994 they enrolled their millionth member-donor. They claim control or influence over the GOP in more than one third of the states. A priority of the Christian Coalition is to control more electoral district positions than Republicans or Democrats combined by 1996.

Pat Robertson has created Regent University, and through its law school he provides lawyers for new Radical Right organizations. The university is endowed by $200 million dollars of his personal stock in International Family Entertainment Inc. He is the founder, chairman and controls IFE, the holding company for the Family Channel and MTM Entertainment, the production company formed by Mary Tyler Moore.

Interestingly, syndication proceeds from Hill Street Blues, the Mary Tyler Moore Show, and many other sitcoms and made-forTV productions now fund Robertson's empire. This past year, he added the Ice Capades to IFE. He has also created the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) to counter gains made by the American Civil Liberties Union to assure the freedoms we have in the

the new Radical Right is the creation of a "Christian Values"based government ruled by the authority of God (as they conceive him) and according to Old Testament laws. This means, of course, laws specific to a culture predating the first democracies in ancient Athens!

Ralph Reed teaches Christian Coalition activists "to pursue an agenda of deception and chaos."

"I do guerrilla warfare," he says. "You won't know it's over until you are in the body bag until election night is over!"

Nationwide, they can now claim to have influenced the election of governors, congressmen, and senators; not just school, library and council seats as in the past. How far will the middle or centrist Americans, who voted as guided to by Christian Coalition organizers, allow that influence to spread? In the long term, Radical Right power will be more and more difficult to turn back as centrists accommodate their growing influence over the Republican Party.

Rev. Donald Wildmon's American Family Association of Tupelo, Mississippi, has an annual budget of $15 million and focuses on what it calls “morality in media” and control of school curricula. We're most familiar with Wildmon because of his boycotts and bashing of TV programming. This led Norman Lear to create People for the American Way in the 1980s. The American Family Association is one of the most active promoters of anti-gay ballot initiatives, and is well organized in Ohio.

In late February 1994, American Family Association and Christian Coalition officials met in Columbus with Ohio affiliated Radical Right groups to announce the creation of Ohio Pro-Family Forum. This new coalition has agreed to use the Christian Coalition precinct network to "out" candidates or officeholders they feel are too soft on the antigay civil rights issue or who openly get support from lesbian gay and bisexual groups. The goal of this "Project Spotlight" is to place their candidates and take over city councils to rescind anti-discrimination laws or to prevent them from being enacted.

The Christian Coalition's directors in Ohio are Ben Pollice of Mentor and Harry Smail of Columbus. Greg Cunningham of Lakewood is the Cuyahoga County coordinator, and ran unsuccessfully for council there in 1993. State Representative Mike Wise of eastern

Cuyahoga and Geauga counties is a Christian Coalition supporter and speaks at their candidate training seminars. State Representative Ed Kasputis of western Cuyahoga County takes ultra-conservative positions with Christian Coalition support.

State Senator Cooper Snyder of Hillsboro sponsors legislation proposed by the Ohio Pro-Family Forum. Radical candidates in Northern Ohio this past election cycle included Wise and Kasputis, both re-elected, and Randall Lundi, a Christian Coalition member and self-identified advocate of Pat Buchanan, who was defeated in a primary bid to unseat Eric Fingerhut. (Fingerhut was targeted by the Christian Coalition and lost to Steve La Tourette in November, however.)

Shawn Vallery, head of Right to Life of Medina County, bid in the primary to unseat Sherrod Brown in Congress. The Republican National Committee sought out Greg White, popular and successful Lorain County prosecutor, to oppose her in the primary. Eventually, he lost to Brown in November, one of several Ohio Democrats who retained his position in the statewide Republican sweep.

Conservative and anti-abortion candidate Mike Finn, running as a Democrat, was a big loser to Rep. Ralph Regula of Canton. Because of all this pressure from Radical Right groups, Regula asked not to be endorsed at all by lesbian, gay and bisexual organizations. In Toledo, "turncoat" Monica Urbanski-Holzmer, a moderate Republican, sought out Christian Coalition support against state senator Linda Furney, outspoken advocate for the rights of women and friend of the lesbian, gay and bisexual community. Rev. Joe Slovenec, former head of Operation Rescue in Northeast Ohio, with backing of Randall Terry and the radical U.S. Taxpayer Party, ran for U.S. Senate against Republican Mike DeWine and novice Democrat Joel Hyatt.

1994 was an off year for local school board elections. However, in Northern Ohio two seats on the Mentor board are now held by Christian "home-schoolers." Keeping their own children out of public schools while being elected "stealthily" to the board so that it can be hobbled from within is a requirement for those who follow the "Christian Reconstructionist" philosophy. This strategy has influenced the Christian Coalition which has managed to hobble boards in many cities.

As a priority the new Radical Right hopes to de-fund and so marginalize public schools and state boards that privatization of most education under Christian Right-led administrations is possible by the end of this decade.

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