The Dispassion of the Christian Right

By Bill Berkowitz, WorkingForChange.com. Posted February 28, 2005.

They were livid over SpongeBob Square Pants' participation in a video advocating tolerance, and fuming about Buster the Bunny's visit to a lesbian household. So where's the outrage from the Christian right over the Jeff Gannon Affair? Despite a chunk of time having passed since the Gannon Affair was first uncovered, Christian-right organizations are still cloaked in silence. As of Feb. 24, there wasn't any news about the Gannon Affair available on the web sites of Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, or the Traditional Values Coalition. As best as I could determine, no special alerts about the Gannon Affair have been issued; and no campaigns have been launched to get to the bottom of the matter.

Curious about this wall of silence, I phoned several Christian-right groups on Tuesday, Feb. 22, hoping to find someone who could comment on the Gannon Affair. This is what I found:

• Dr. James Dobson's Focus on the Family: I filled out an interview form and waited to hear back. Several hours later, a FotF administrative assistant called me to say that no one there could answer my questions about Gannon. She said a lot of folks were out sick and no one was available. "Would someone be available tomorrow or Thursday," I asked. She pointed out that no one would be available the following day or the day after to talk about this issue. "Next week?" "No."

• The Family Research Council: I spoke with Amber Hildebrand, FRC's media director. She said "We haven't made any public comments about this. There have been other pressing issues that have taken precedent, although this came as a shock to FRC." Hildebrand said she would see if FRC's vice president of government affairs Connie Mackey, would talk with me. At press time (Thursday evening) Mackey has not called.

• The Traditional Values Coalition: I filled out an interview form and waited for a call back. As of Feb. 22, TVC Action Alerts are focused on the persecution and subsequent dismissal of charges against the "Philadelphia 5," a group of fundamentalists that disrupted a pro-gay activity in Philadelphia in order to preach "the Gospel to homosexuals," and on Columbia House for developing "a new subsidiary called Hush to market pornographic materials in association with Playboy and other pornography companies." At press time no one had returned my call. After making a second call, a TVC spokesperson told me that "no one is available to speak on that topic right now."

• The Free Congress Foundation: Over at Paul Weyrich's Washington, D.C.-based organization, Jill Farrell, the director of communications told me that she hadn't "heard anyone say anything at all" about the Gannon Affair.

The editors at Town Hall, the Heritage Foundation's one-stop shopping center for conservative ideas, and the Rev. Donald Wildmon's American Family Association, currently involved in trashing HBO's Bill Maher over recent remarks he made about religion, didn't return my calls. Charisma News Service and the Christian Response Network didn't respond to my e-mail questions about their lack of coverage of the Gannon Affair.

That was then ...

While waiting for callbacks, my mind's eye drifted back to the Clinton White House. Tim Bannon, a liberal activist, had made his way into a presidential press conference; Bannon had been attending press briefings for nearly two years, under the name Slim Cannon. No one seemed knew much about FallOnNews.com, the internet news service he worked with, but many suspected it was a front group for the Democrats.

Clinton had been taking a well-publicized beating over the Monica Lewinsky Affair. At the president's first press conference in quite some time, he called on Cannon, who asked the following question: "Mr. President, given revelations about House Speaker Newt Gingrich's serial affairs and the abandonment of his wife when she had cancer, and given that Congressman Bob Livingston has a similar record of perfidious peccadilloes, and given stories about the sexual shenanigans of a host of televangelists including Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart, could you please comment on whether the right-wing media, isn't selectively focusing on the Lewinsky affair, and doesn't want to deal with sexual scandals in its own backyard?"

Less than 24 hours later, a host of right wing web sites – suspicious that Cannon may have been planted by the White House – discovered that Slim Cannon's cannon was prominently featured on a number of gay porn sites, and that in his off hours he may have been a gay "escort." Intrepid researchers find out that Cannon had been privy to secret documents before any other duly accredited White House reporters.

"Clinton's gay consort" became the right's theme for the next several months.

Reality-based fans will recognize that the above scenario never happened. If a Tim Bannon, as Slim Cannon, had insinuated himself into the White House on President Clinton's watch, and lobbed softball question after softball question, all hell would have broken loose. Right-wing media, and the pulpits and newsletters of fundamentalist Christians, would have been ranting and raving: "Where's the outrage?" Bob Dole's mantra from his failed 1996 presidential campaign might actually have finally resonated. The mainstream media would have no doubt jumped on board.

Bill Berkowitz is a freelance writer covering right-wing groups and movements.

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