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Christian Conservatives Look to Re-energize Base
By David D. Kirkpatrick
WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 — Openly anxious about grass-roots disaffection from the Republican Party, conservative Christian organizers are reaching for ways to turn out voters this November, including arguing that recognizing same-sex marriage could also limit religious freedom.
Just two years after many conservative Christians exulted that their voter turnout efforts had pushed President Bush to re-election, organizers say their constituents are disengaged.
“There is disillusionment out there with Republicans,” said James C. Dobson, founder of the conservative Christian broadcaster Focus on the Family and the most influential voice in the movement. “That worries me greatly.”
At an election-season Values Voters Summit held here by the allied Family Research Council, some conservatives debated whether “maybe losing the Republican majority would teach us a lesson and get our movement back on track,” in the words of Representative Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana.
Mr. Pence argued that in the end, Republicans were still preferable to Democrats. Like many arguments, though, his was about picking the lesser of two evils.
“My first inclination was to sit this one out,” Dr. Dobson said in an interview, adding that he had changed his mind when he looked at who would become the leaders of Congressional committees if the Democrats took over.
Some were candidly gloomy.
“At the grass roots, among ordinary people, the enthusiasm is not there, and unless that changes in the next five or six weeks, the Republicans aren’t going to make it” to retain control of Congress, said Paul Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation and a founder of the modern conservative movement.
In addition to voicing more general complaints, Christian conservatives say President Bush and Republicans in Congress have not lived up to their expectations about advancing new abortion restrictions or a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
Even in this crowd of nearly 2,000 Christian conservative activists, some balked at one tactic recommended to turn out church voters. In a workshop, Connie Marshner, a veteran organizer, distributed a step-by-step guide that recommended obtaining church directories and posing as a nonpartisan pollster to ask people how they planned to vote.
“Hello, I am with ABC polls,” a suggested script began.
Some attendees complained that the script seemed deceptive, Ms. Marshner said in an interview afterward. She said that such disguised calls were a common campaign tactic, that it was just a suggested script and that she never recommended answering a direct question with a lie.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, who played host to the conference, said he was “upset” to learn of her instructions and condemned any deception.
The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of the liberal group Americans United for Separation of Church and State, called the tactic “disgraceful” and “a desecration of the church.”
Several organizers at the event lamented that opposition to same-sex marriage, a major catalyst for Christian conservative turnout two years ago, had lost some of its emotional resonance. Massachusetts remains the only state to recognize same-sex marriage. Sixteen states have passed constitutional amendments banning such unions, and eight courts have ruled against the idea.
“Sometimes success brings complacency,” Mr. Perkins said.
To revive some of the emotions around the issue, several organizers said they were taking up the argument that legal recognition of same-sex marriages would cramp the free expression of religious groups who consider such unions a sin — an idea much discussed at the conference.
“That is an issue that wasn’t around two years ago and one that is absolutely moving to the very forefront,” said the Rev. Donald Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association, a conservative Christian broadcaster and advocacy group.
Although that idea may seem far-fetched to many liberal or secular-minded voters, legal scholars across the political spectrum agree that authorizing same-sex marriages could present legal questions for some religious groups. A Roman Catholic group in Massachusetts, for example, recently stopped offering children for adoption rather than provide them to gay couples.
At the Values Voters conference, Mr. Perkins played a preview for an October telecast to Christian broadcasters that dramatized the conflicts in stark terms. He interviewed parents who are suing the town of Lexington, Mass., because its public school assigned their 7-year-old son a book called “King and King,” about two princes who marry.
“Get involved as the Lord leads before religious liberty is lost forever,” Mr. Perkins warned in the trailer.
Others looked abroad. In a pre-election letter to 2.5 million supporters, Dr. Dobson is breaking away from his traditional field of child psychology to argue that foreign terrorists are a threat to families.
The Rev. Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, looked ahead to 2008 and the possibility that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton might be the Democratic presidential candidate. Ms. Clinton’s nomination, Mr. Falwell said to laughs, would arouse even more evangelical opposition than Lucifer’s.
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