Nat'l religious right focuses on Massachusetts

Nat’l religious right focuses on Massachusetts @ Bay Windows

With only a couple months to go until the expected May 10 constitutional convention, VoteOnMarriage.org is bringing in the big guns to turn up the pressure on lawmakers to support its amendment to ban same-sex marriage. From March 23 to 26 VoteOnMarriage will be holding four training sessions across the state for activists led by Chris Hupke, a political organizer for religious right powerhouse Focus on the Family (FOF). Hupke has a strong track record, having organized churches for FOF in support of two of the religious right’s most recent displays of political muscle, the successful campaigns to unseat Democratic Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle in 2004 and to confirm Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito earlier this year.

MassEquality campaign director Marc Solomon said that this is the first time he has seen FOF hold trainings in Massachusetts in support of the VoteOnMarriage campaign, but he said it was not surprising that the organization would get involved. Last September, during the midst of VoteOnMarriage’s signature collection campaign FOF founder James Dobson sent a personal appeal to FOF members urging them to contribute money to VoteOnMarriage.org. At the time an FOF spokesperson said it was unclear whether the letter went to FOF members across the country or only to local members. Solomon also said FOF staff provided support on the ground to local foes of same-sex marriage in the immediate aftermath of the Nov. 2003 Goodridge ruling that recognized marriage rights for same-sex couples. “To me this shows they are ramping up their field efforts extensively,” said Solomon. “We expect that our opponents will put forth an aggressive field effort to advance this new amendment. This amendment is the amendment that they want.”

The national religious right has been a key ally of local opponents of same-sex marriage during some of the most pivotal moments in the fight for marriage equality. The lead organization in VoteOnMarriage.org, Massachusetts Family Institute (MFI), is one of FOF’s 33 regional family policy councils, which according to FOF have no formal ties to the national organization but work towards the same goals. On January 23, 2004, in the run-up to a constitutional convention (ConCon) on an earlier marriage amendment that February and March, FOF placed a full-page ad in The Boston Globe calling same-sex marriage an “unproven social experiment” and citing research that allegedly showed that children raised in families headed by same-sex couples suffer compared to those raised by heterosexual married couples (in fact, looking at the fine print, most of these studies compared biological married parents with single and divorced parents, not same-sex couple parents). During the ConCon, Tony Perkins, president of FOF spin-off group Family Research Council (FRC) and other FRC staff became fixtures in the State House, working alongside MFI and other same-sex marriage opponents to help plan strategy and to do media interviews.

Pam Chamberlain, a researcher for the Somerville-based Political Research Associates (PRA), which monitors the political right, said that FOF and other religious right groups believe that a repeal of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts could be a major boost to their efforts around the country. “They’re interested in having this be a bellwether state for them to say that even in liberal Massachusetts they can show there is enough support for traditional family values,” said Chamberlain. “I think they’re depending on their collaboration with the Catholic Church here and also the growth in certain parts of the state of nondenominational evangelical churches.”

Chamberlain said PRA first began noticing a rise in new evangelical churches in Massachusetts in rural areas of the state, but through further investigation it became clear that churches were also springing up in the Metro Boston area, particularly in areas where there has been an influx of new residents.

“I think it’s been a slow growth over the past 20 years, but people haven’t noticed it until these churches mobilized for political ends,” said Chamberlain.

While this may be the first major training the religious right has provided to activists on the marriage issue, it is not their first time rallying activists in Massachusetts.

Holly Gunner, a current MassEquality board member, co-founded a grassroots organization from 1994-1995 called the Lighthouse Institute that tracked the work of religious right organizations to influence school health education policy and to win seats for supportive candidates on local school boards. She said the Lighthouse Institute found that throughout the early-to-mid-90s MFI’s predecessor, the Pilgrim Family Institute, and the Christian Coalition provided trainings to local activists working to develop campaigns to oppose comprehensive sex education and to run for school committee seats. An August 1993 Boston Globe story found that many of the local groups opposing sex ed relied on literature from FOF, Christian Coalition, and other national groups to make their case. Gunner said national religious right organizations exploited peoples’ fears over the hot-button issue of sex education, just as they are now rallying their coalition around same-sex marriage.

“Focus on the Family, the Pilgrim Family Institute, and the Christian Coalition exploited that fear in trying to create what the Christian Coalition called the foot soldiers in the battle ahead,” said Gunner, referring to their efforts to build a conservative Christian movement in Massachusetts.

Solomon said the work of Focus on the Family in support of the amendment means supporters of equality need to redouble their efforts in preparation for the May ConCon.

“The fact that Focus on the Family is coming to Massachusetts again needs to serve as a wakeup call to the community and our allies that we’ve got to be very serious over the next several months, that people who might have grown complacent need to reengage because our opponents are certainly engaged to advance this new draconian amendment,” said Solomon.