Rev. Moon's Conjugal Visitations

Among the trendier gripes about why liberals lack power in American politics is that there isn't enough tolerance for America's faithful. A big problem, Rabbi Michael Lerner recently sighed, is that "the Left's hostility to religion and spirituality has become such a major stumbling block to the chances that progressive forces will ever win enough power" to make a difference. So the new advice, from Hillary Clinton to the New Republic's Gregg Easterbrook, is: Stop making snickering remarks at Jerry Falwell's expense. Cheer the innovation of $2 billion in federal tax money carted off to religious groups last year. Drag the "Left Behind" series into your Amazon shopping cart.

And listen, I should add, to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, owner of the conservative mouthpiece the Washington Times and self-proclaimed Messiah. Moon's warning to America is that we must have sex the way he entreats us, in the positions he has designated, or else forfeit our "love organs," as he dubs them, to the dark lord Satan.

We all know the Right wants to decide what we can't do in the bedroom. But no one ever seems to ask what the Right wants us to do instead.

"After the act of love," read the instructions from the Rev. Moon's conservative Family Federation, "both spouses should wipe their sexual areas with the Holy Handkerchief. Hang the handkerchief[s] to dry naturally and keep them eternally. They must be kept individually labeled and should never be laundered and mixed up."

Maybe the best explanation of our widespread ignorance of the Washington Times owner's sex rites is liberal squeamishness. For those of you who suckled on secular humanism and feminist tracts (which Moon calls Satanic, by the way), these prescriptions from God might seem as off-putting as a Castro Street postcard storefront to Dr. James Dobson.

But in order to usher in a national dialogue on faith in the public square, it's important to look beyond stereotypes of the Right to understand the diverse philosophies behind public movements for state-enforced morality.

Rev. Moon, whose Washington Times is a crown jewel of the conservative media Death Star, offers the essential lessons. He's the last man most Americans would associate with Republican power circles, but is in his own secretive way as important a figure in the Christian Right as Jerry Falwell, who's still in business thanks to a $3.5 million bailout from Moon in 1995, or Tim LaHaye of the Council For National Policy, who took money to serve on the board of a group rehabilitating Moon's image, and once wrote a letter addressing Moon as "the Master."

Just how big is Moon's standing in the Right? The "Republican Noise Machine" is a mighty edifice built with $3 billion in gifts from various right-wing philanthropists. Moon's gift of the Washington Times to the conservative cause alone places him in the club as a charter member; the paper owes its existence to a staggering figure of over $2,000,000,000 since 1982 in donations in Moon's mystery money.

Moon also also controls United Press International, one of the world’s largest wire news services. In addition to having a hand in the creation of modern-day Christian Right politics, Moon has given huge sums to Richard Viguerie, the "founding funder" of the Reagan revolution; Terry Dolan, the pioneer of the "liberal bias" attack; and George W. Bush, who received $250,000 from Moon in 2004.

By 1989, U.S. News & World Report was reporting Moon had built "a network of affiliated organizations and connections in almost every conservative organization in Washington, including the Heritage Foundation," but that "conservatives ... fear repercussions if they expose the church's role." In 2004, a veteran Christian Right lobbyist, Gary Jarmin, arranged to have Moon coronated the "King of Peace" in a kitschy ceremony on Capitol Hill in which he wore a glittering crown and royal robes.