New School Politics

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The country’s largest voting bloc, the Christian Right, seems to be at a crossroads.  Generations have preached the importance of family values, such as the abolition of abortion.  They also have succeeded in forcing politicians to block the passage of gay marriage amendments.  While these are among the most minor of their activities, they are the most public.  As such, the country has a right to hold their activities in high regard.

Recently, it seems as if some of their leaders have had trouble adhering to the very same standards they preach about.  The Reverend Ted Haggard, once the President of the National Association of Evangelicals, was found soliciting homosexual favors from a male prostitute.  Several weeks later, Haggard announced he was “reformed” and ready to lead again, having attended a re-education camp of sorts to rid him of his homosexuality, exactly what he preached against.  The movie Jesus Camp does an amazing job detailing his activities, and the Evangelical/Christian Right movement. 

Today, however, they’re back in the spotlight as the President of the Christian Action League was found soliciting sex from a prostitute in his hometown.  While not nearly as public as Ted Haggard’s confession and public conviction, this still should be taken seriously.  If Evangelicals can’t even hit their own moral targets, how can they expect others to?  The story’s Newsvine thread contains some rather entertaining comments about Privette’s actions.  The fact that he paid the prostitute with a check won’t help his case both in the eyes of the law, and in the eyes of the public. 

Once again, however, this isn’t an isolated incident.  If incidents like these keep popping up, will the Christian Right lose trust in their leaders?  These breaches in moral policy represent a growing problem for the Religious Right, and it’s something they’re going to have to examine further down the road as the movement becomes more and more important to American politics. 

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The Hypocrisy Reigns in the Christian Right by New School Politics, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.