Religious Right Watch - Wednesday 6/24/15

[cbayer]

Christian Right issues anti-LGBT manuals teaching legal discrimination

http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2015/06/christian-right-issues-anti-lgbt-manuals-teaching-legal-discrimination/

FREDERICK CLARKSON
Senior Fellow, Political Research Associates


AP

Christian Right leaders may be assuming they’ll lose their battle against equality for LGBTQ people, and they are hunkering down for what they foresee as a long siege against conservative Christian churches, businesses, and organizations.

Major Christian Right legal agencies have begun issuing manuals for conservative churches and other organizations to inoculate themselves against private lawsuits and government enforcement of civil rights laws.

more at link

Scott Walker just can’t win: How the religious right’s extremism is sabotaging his chances

http://www.salon.com/2015/06/01/scott_walker_just_cant_win_how_the_religious_rights_extremism_is_sabotaging_his_chances/

MONDAY, JUN 1, 2015 09:57 AM EDT

No matter how far to the right the Wisconsin governor goes, it will never be enough for a Republican base gone mad

HEATHER DIGBY PARTON


Scott Walker (Credit: Reuters/Yuri Gripas)

Scott Walker just can’t seem to make to his mind about anything. He says he’s for a path to citizenship for undocumented workers and then turns around and starts railing against “amnesty” and talking about closing the border to legal immigrants too. Where he once came out strongly against ethanol mandates, now that he’s campaigning in Iowa, he sees the good in them.

But considering his reputation as a hardcore social conservative, this particular flip-flop came as a huge disappointment to his base during the 2014 gubernatorial race:

He signed legislation defunding Planned Parenthood in the Badger State and requiring that women seeking abortions get ultrasounds first but then ran an ad in his 2012 gubernatorial reelection bid saying he backed legislation that “leaves the final decision to a woman and her doctor.

more at blink

Revisiting the immorality of the religious right’s ‘moral high ground’


http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2015/06/09/revisiting-the-immorality-of-the-religious-rights-moral-high-ground/

June 9, 2015 by Fred Clark

While looking for something else, I came across this post from just after the 2012 elections. Apart from the re-election of President Obama, that day also saw voters in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington state demonstrating their support for marriage equality.

This was a complete reversal from the context of the 2004 election just a few short years earlier. Back in 2004, Republicans in many states rushed to get anti-gay referendum questions on the ballot because, at that time, such measures were seen as a winning position and a winning strategy. They kept the focus on the so-called “moral” issues, and the conservative side had the advantage on such issues, where it could always claim the moral high ground.

more at link