The end of the evangelicals

Ballot measures have mostly been a right wing affair; a mechanism for energizing voters mostly aware that their representatives are anything but:

We may not help you get or keep a job, keep you or your children out of wars, protect you from any number of dangers from disease to terrorism, but we can prevent gay people from getting married.

Writing in the Guardian UK, Alan Wolfe writes of the upcoming elections: "The question is not on any ballot but it is the question voters will be answering: has the religious right peaked?"

According to him, the answer is Yes:

Historically, evangelicals believed that religion and politics should be separate: one was holy, the other Satan's domain. But they put those convictions aside in the hopes that the Republican Party would change America's moral climate. It has not, and they are not happy.

It is precisely because conservative evangelicals pay more attention to issues involving sexuality than they do to economics or foreign policy that the Foley affair has become so important. It has become increasingly clear to many evangelicals that their alliance with the Republicans is not paying off: abortion is still legal (if more restricted); gays can still marry in one state and civil unions are spreading elsewhere; and opposition to stem cell research is a losing cause.