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Emil Fedotov
Emil Fedotov

Moral Majority !!BETTER!!


Paul Weyrich, cofounder of the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation and a man who helped to unite and strengthen the religious right, died yesterday. He was 66 years old. In the decade after Watergate, Weyrich was instrumental in empowering social conservatives and guiding the political platforms of the Republican Party. The phrase "moral majority" was coined by Weyrich, then adopted by Reverend Jerry Falwell and others as the name for a potent ideological movement. Weyrich also helped launch the movement known as the Christian Coalition. Terry Gross spoke to Paul Weyrich in 1995.




Moral Majority



Mr. WEYRICH: Well, liberals learned how to organize. They learned how to frame issues. They learned how to seize the moral high ground. They learned how to integrate the work of think tanks and politics inside the United States Congress with political action on the outside and so on. And all of this they did very, very well, because there was a time when liberals were also on the outside. I mean, the establishment, if you will, in the country was very conservative. And so, these people had to apply unique techniques in, say, the 1950s to get where they eventually got by the 1960s.


Mr. WEYRICH: Well, if you're a legislator - and the reason, by the way, that I founded Heritage along with Ed Feulner is because the two of us, one working on the Senate side, the other working on the House side, had the experience of having members of Congress that wanted to involve themselves in certain issues, but had no backup. There was no one capable on the staffs. At that time, the minority representation in the Congress was very low. So, if you weren't in control of the Congress, you maybe had - like, my senator was on Appropriations; we had one staffer for virtually all of the senators that were on Appropriations, and the majority had a lot of staffers, but we didn't. And so, you didn't have the opportunity to investigate. You didn't have the opportunity to gather data and so on. And so, we founded that to really assist members of Congress who wanted to fight battles and who wanted the intellectual backup and the data to do so, because it simply wasn't available in-house, for the most part. And that was the whole purpose of founding Heritage. Of course, it has now taken on a much greater role and now has a sort of national reach. But at the time, that was our objective.


The parties do not disagree about the facts but only about what inferences can be drawn from them as to the nature of the copyrighted work and the character of Falwell's use of the ad. From the point of view of Falwell, the "ad" was a searing personal attack that he had to take seriously because, as he stated in his deposition, "what Mr. Flynt has done has not attacked my philosophy to which I do not object but he has attacked me, my morality, my decency, my sincerity." Falwell claims he needed to send his followers a copy of the ad to give them information necessary to rebut the statements it contained, in case the faithful happened to be confronted by someone who had seen it. The appeal for money was no more than an ancillary motive, a regular request that would be made in the course of any such communication.


At the same time Falwell evidently seized upon the ad for use in a larger battle, his continuing campaign against assorted groups including publishers of pornography. In this sense Falwell's use of the ad parody was only as a focal point for his well-known brand of moral and social commentary. For example, in the course of his December 4, 1983 sermon on the Old Time Gospel Hour, Falwell made the following remarks:


*1536 First amendment considerations also enter into the court's assessment of the purpose and character of defendants' use. Although the first amendment does not provide a defense to copyright infringement, when an act of copying occurs in the course of a political, social or moral debate, the public interest in free expression is one factor favoring a finding of fair use. See Keep Thomson Governor Committee v. Citizens for Gallen Committee, 457 F. Supp. 957, 959-60 (D.N.H.1978) (political committee's use of a portion of rival candidate's musical composition amounted to fair use in light of public interest in full debate over election and absence of injury to plaintiff). Cf. Robert Stigwood Group Limited v. O'Reilly, 346 F. Supp. 376, 383-84 (D.Conn.1972), (priests' unauthorized copying of rock opera, "Jesus Christ Superstar," was not fair use where facts did not support defendants' contention that their performance was counterattack to original's "perverted" version of the Gospel), rev'd on other grounds, 530 F.2d 1096 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 848, 97 S. Ct. 135, 50 L. Ed. 2d 121 (1976).


In this case both the copyrighted work and the alleged acts of infringement involved appeals to particular moral and social viewpoints. The parody and Falwell's response were not an isolated exchange but part of a much broader, continuing debate over pornography and other social issues. Indeed, the "publisher's statement" by Larry Flynt in the November, 1983 issue protested purported attempts by conservative groups, including the Moral Majority, to censor the magazine for its unorthodox political views. Flynt wrote in part: "The First Amendment and the Bill of Rights belong to me and the people who read HUSTLER as much as they belong to Reaganites and the Falwellians of the world and their Moral Majority." The court believes that, in view of the context in which the parody appeared, the public interest in free expression would be served by facilitating an effective response by Falwell.


Starting in the mid-1970s, a resurgence of political activity began to develop among conservative Christians in the United States. Alarmed by what they perceived to be the moral decline of American society, they sought to introduce a new social agenda into American politics aimed at fighting the forces of secularization. They subsequently established a number of organizations to promote this agenda, the most prominent of which was the Moral Majority. Founded in 1979 by Jerry Falwell, an influential Baptist minister and televangelist, the Moral Majority joined with other political conservatives to promote the restoration of traditional moral values in American society. Falwell and his followers played a significant role in the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency in 1980, and in following years sought to focus national attention on the controversial topics of abortion, gay rights, pornography, the exclusion of prayer from public schools, and the Equal Rights Amendment. The Moral Majority also advocated conservative positions on a variety of more secular issues, such as a balanced budget and defense spending. In 1989 Falwell disbanded the group, claiming that it had fulfilled its original mission of introducing support for social reform into American politics. Since then, it has continued to serve as a model for political activism among religious conservatives in the United States.


The Moral Majority was established with the support of various religious and political groups wanting to counter the liberal trends that had emerged within American society during the 1960s and 1970s. By mobilizing conservative Christians, they hoped to produce a rightward shift in the balance of power in American politics. To strengthen the influence of the Moral Majority, Falwell also attempted to expand its constituency beyond its original core within the fundamentalist Protestant community. The group thus came to include a diversity of other religious groups, including Mormons, conservative Roman Catholics, and Orthodox Jews. In addition, Falwell did not establish official connections between the Moral Majority and any specific political party, on the grounds that the organization's agenda focused primarily on moral issues rather than politics. In its status as an independent organization, not tied to any party or religious denomination, the Moral Majority represented an extension of existing fundamentalist strategies in the United States, which since the 1920s had concentrated on creating new institutions rather than reforming existing ones.


Although Falwell asserted that the decision to disband the Moral Majority derived from its success in achieving its goals, a number of factors had contributed to a decline in the group's influence by the end of the 1980s. The Moral Majority faced extensive criticism from political liberals and moderates, who accused the group of trying to impose its own moral and religious views on America's pluralistic society. At the same time, some conservative Christians faulted the Moral Majority for its involvement in secular political issues, arguing that it should focus on its core religious message. Scandals involving televangelists Jim Baker and Jimmy Swaggart during the late 1980s also did much to discredit conservative Christian institutions; and the failure of televangelist Pat Robertson in the 1988 Republican presidential primary cast doubt on the continuing political strength of religious conservatives, at least at the national level.


Moral Majority and its allied organizations helped elect Ronald Reagan and a Republican-majority Senate in 1980, but the Religious Right still lacked the political clout and organizational savvy to win significant White House or congressional support for its conservative social agenda. Falwell remained loyal to Reagan, but financial problems with his television ministry and a rapidly expanding Liberty University, of which he was founder and chancellor, demanded his increased attention. In 1986 he quietly disbanded Moral Majority, clearing the way for the appearance of more sophisticated and effective grassroots organizations.


The essence of the Moral Majority was its religious fundamentalism, which insisted upon reliance on a strict interpretation of the Christian version of the Bible, a belief in God's moral authority as conveyed to people and imparted by the clergy, and an awareness of His close supervision of human deeds. The agenda was socially conservative, anticommunist, populist, and nationalist. It exuded pride in the traditional American heritage of freedom and piety, but also reacted against the perceived excesses of the 1960s often embodied in the Democratic Party. 041b061a72


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