As he introduced his organization's "Contract with the American Family" on May 17th, Christian Coalition executive director Ralph Reed exulted that conservative Christians "have finally gained what we have always sought: A place at the table, a sense of legitimacy." House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who shared the microphone with Reed during the Washington, DC press conference, stated unequivocally that the Republican Party is "committed to implementing the Contract with the American Family."

"The message of the election was clear," states the Contract's preamble. "The American people want lower taxes, less government, strong families, protection of innocent life, and traditional values." The Contract seeks to flesh out that skeletal mandate by offering a ten-point agenda:

• Restoring religious equality.
• Returning control of education to the local level.
• Promoting school choice.
• Granting restitution to crime victims.
• Ending tax penalties for mothers and homemakers.
• Protecting parental rights.
• Restoring respect for human life.
• Restricting pornography.
• Privatizing the arts.
• Encouraging support for private charities.

Reed puckishly referred to this platform as "the ten suggestions, not the Ten Commandments," and sought to assure the Coalition's critics that "this is a public policy document; it is not a theological statement." Furthermore, the text of the Contract With the American Family insists that the program represents "mainstream proposals" which "enjoy support from 60 to 90 percent of the American people."

The Coalition's document was developed through focus-group research and consultation with Republican pollster Frank Luntz, the creator of the GOP's "Contract With America." Furthermore, because the Coalition's Contract closely tracks the GOP's established legislative priorities, it is nearly guaranteed success. As the document itself observes, "More than half of the items in the Contract already have legislative sponsors, and several have already been passed by committee."

Ironic Approval

The new-found political legitimacy of the Christian Coalition has been recognized by many of the same Establishment commentators who denounced the organization as a threat to "democracy" mere months ago. Newsweek columnist Joe Klein, who rarely neglects an opportunity to execrate conservatives, approvingly wrote that the Coalition had "trimmed Dole-ishly with its surprisingly moderate Contract with the American Family." National Public Radio commentator Nina Totenberg, a reliable retailer of feminist and socialist prejudices, also noted the document's moderation, musing: "I'm beginning to think that Ralph Reed is more Republican than Christian Coalition. This is a very shrewd move." Even White House press secretary Mike McCurry offered qualified approval for the Contract's "moderate" tenor.

While the Christian Coalition's familiar critics expressed qualified approval for the Contract, some of the organization's traditional allies suggested that the Coalition has purchased its "place at the table" of Washington politics by selling out its principles, particularly with respect to the right-to-life issue. Bob Schenk, general secretary of the 3,300-member National Clergy Council (which combines Catholic and Protestant clergy), noted: "The abortion section [of the Coalition Contract] centers on taxpayer funding and limitations on late-term abortion. But there is a conspicuous absence of a clear moral statement about the injury that legalized abortion does to the family and the culture." American Life League President Judy Brown spared nothing in her criticism of the Coalition's pragmatism: "I am horrified. It's terribly disappointing. The outcome of such failed pragmatism will be more dead children. As a fellow Christian, I am appalled at their betrayal."

Republican presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan, who is arguably the most resolute defender of social conservatism among the GOP presidential hopefuls, lamented that the Christian Coalition's document "sets the hurdles too low." With both houses of Congress under Republican control, noted Buchanan, "We could defund Planned Parenthood, we could defund fetal-tissue research. We could defund U.N.F.P.A. [UN Fund for Population Activities] completely, without the approval of Bill Clinton. Let's go ahead and do it. We could put an end to Goals 2000, and outcome-based education, and shut down the Department of Education this year."

Embracing "Moderation"

Under Ralph Reed's leadership, the Christian Coalition has sought to play down contentious social issues in favor of "mainstream" concerns -- tax relief, education reform, and law-and-order issues. The August 14th, 1994 Washington Post commended Reed's efforts to shepherd the Coalition towards "respectability".

In the public mind, the Religious Right is associated with social issues primarily, most of them "below the belt," in political parlance. But sex is secondary in Reed's vernacular .... In speeches to the faithful, Reed talks about "protection for the unborn." At election time, though, the coalition often compromises on abortion, pushing stricter regulations and waiting periods rather than outright prohibitions. Nor does Reed talk much about homosexuality or pornography, and you will never hear him pushing Religious Right themes from the 1980s like "creation science," the purported conspiracy for one-world government, or America as a "Christian nation."

During last September's Washington, DC Christian Coalition conference, former "Drug Czar" William F. Bennett urged the movement to temper its devotion to moral issues even further. Bennett suggested that Christian conservatives should focus less on opposing the homosexual revolution and concentrate on the evil of divorce: "I understand the aversion to homosexuality. But if you look in terms of damage to the children of America, you cannot compare the homosexual movement, the gay rights movement ... to what divorce has done to this society."

The problem with Bennett's formulation, as Christopher Check of the Rockford Institute on the Family observes, is that it ignores the fact that "sodomy and divorce are really one concept: hatred of Christian marriage." While this was ignored by Bennett -- a self-appointed authority on "virtue" -- it was forcefully addressed at the conference by Boston Herald columnist Don Feder, an Orthodox Jew, in a speech which was heartily received. Significantly, it is Bennett's neo-conservative view, rather than Feder's unabashed biblical view, which is reflected in the Contract With the American Family.

This is not the first time the Coalition's leadership has parted company with its grassroots constituency regarding a high-profile debate: The Coalition was strangely quiescent during the tumultuous NAFTA and GATT debates. Although the Coalition did not take an official position regarding passage of the sovereignty-compromising treaties, Christian Coalition founder and President Pat Robertson endorsed both measures on his television program the 700 Club. Furthermore, the Coalition adopted a posture of what could be called "aggressive disinterest" during the NAFTA and GATT debates, in defiance of the visible and obvious sentiments of the Coalition's rank and file membership.

One Christian Coalition activist who spoke with THE NEW AMERICAN on the condition of anonymity recalled that during the Coalition's 1993 "Road to Victory" conference in Washington, DC, "Pat Buchanan received five standing ovations for his speech, and it was an anti-NAFTA speech." By way of contrast, Jack Kemp's pro-NAFTA remarks, which were offered in a speech at a subsequent session, "were met with thunderous silence." Kemp's pro-NAFTA speech was later reprinted in the Coalition's Christian America newspaper.

GOP Interdependence

Last December, Ralph Reed was chosen by Time magazine as one of the "50 men and women, age 40 and under, who ... will make a difference" in American society. (Time's record in offering such predictions is impressive: Similar lists have included such names as Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Marion Barry, Ted Turner, Sam Nunn, Lester Thurow, and H. Ross Perot.) The Time profile quoted Reed as saying that he wanted his Coalition to attain "the same prominence and status as unions, the feminists or the civil rights movement." Which is to say that he seeks to make the Christian Coalition part of the permanent constellation of special interest constituencies which help maintain Washington, DC's inflated influence in the life of the nation.

In the same fashion that unions, feminist groups, and the self-designated civil rights movement have battened on to the Democratic Party, the Christian Coalition has become an institutional appendage of the Republican Party. The Coalition began as an outgrowth of Pat Robertson's 1988 bid for the GOP presidential nomination, and was later aided with a donation of $64,000 in seed money from the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee. It has since grown into a 1.6-million member organization with an annual budget of $25 million. This year the Christian Coalition spent more than $1 million to promote the GOP's "Contract With America"; one quarter of that amount was used for advertising, direct mail, and phone bank efforts on behalf of the balanced budget amendment. All 50 of the Coalition's state chairmen flew to Washington on January 18th to lobby on behalf of the amendment.

In addition, the Coalition is developing substantial connections with Republican presidential hopefuls. Former Coalition staff members now occupy prominent posts in the presidential campaigns of Bob Dole, Lamar Alexander, Phil Gramm, and Pat Buchanan. David Kuo, a former speechwriter for Ralph Reed, now performs the same service for Dole, and Judy Haynes, the Coalition's former deputy executive director, is now deputy political director for the Dole campaign.

Curious Indifference

Many pro-family activists have observed that despite all of this influence, the Christian Coalition's Contract is surprisingly timid. As Gary Bauer of the Family Research Center observed: "It would be strange if millions of new voters get involved in the process for an agenda that turned out to be modest." But the most serious problem with the Contract is not that it represents a lack of ambition, but rather a curious indifference toward, and flawed understanding of, the Constitution. Much of the Contract With the American Family seems to proceed from the assumption that a "family friendly" federal government can be created through the adoption of reforms which ignore the Constitution.

Indeed, the only serious attention given to the Constitution by the Contract comes in a proposal to modify it through a "religious equality amendment." The first plank of the Contract, "Restoring Religious Equality," calls for a "constitutional amendment to protect the religious liberties of Americans in public places." Modification of the Constitution is necessary, according to the Coalition, because, "With each passing year, people of faith grow increasingly distressed by the hostility of public institutions toward religious expression." The Contract recites from the tragically large and consistently expanding canon of anti-religious public policies:

Nativity scenes are now barred from federal post offices, and from the lawns of public buildings unless accompanied by a non-religious display such as Santa Claus. Some courthouses are prohibited from displaying the Ten Commandments .... And landlords have been sued by the state for discrimination because they refused to rent to unmarried couples for religious reasons.

This tragic state of affairs, the Coalition correctly observes, is a product of "30 years of confusing and often quixotic jurisprudence in establishment clause cases" by a Supreme Court bent on imposing its secular prejudices upon American society.

After skillfully defining the problem, however, the Coalition prescribes exactly the wrong remedy. A religious equality amendment, according to the Contract, is the only reform which would redress decades of anti-religious judicial activism. The document seeks to reassure skeptics that the "Religious Equality Amendment would not restore compulsory, sectarian prayer or Bible-reading dictated by government officials. Instead, we seek a balanced approach that allows voluntary, student-initiated free speech in non-compulsory settings such as courthouse lawns, high school graduation ceremonies, and sports events." Curiously, the Coalition eschews a course of action which would be less potentially dangerous and more effective than a constitutional amendment -- namely, having Congress restrict the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, as outlined in Article 3, Section 2 of the Constitution.

Speaking on the May 21st edition of NBC's Meet the Press, Ralph Reed insisted that anything less than a constitutional amendment would be unsatisfactory. Referring to the High Court's recent Lee v. Weisman decision, which held that prayer at a high school graduation ceremony is unconstitutional, Reed opined: "The only way to overturn that is to either limit the jurisdiction of the courts, Which has never been done before on a First Amendment issue and we would be against, or amending the Constitution .... "(Emphasis added.) Reed did not explain why his organization would prefer to tinker with the Constitution rather than to use a constitutionally sound limitation of the Supreme Court's jurisdiction.

"Compelling Interest"

With respect to the issue of religious expression in public, there is little substantive difference between the Christian Coalition and the Clinton Administration. During an encounter on Meet the Press, Reed and Clinton adviser George Stephanopolous both praised the so-called "Religious Freedom Restoration Act," a measure which states that governments at both the state and federal level must define a "compelling interest" to justify policies which infringe upon religious rights. This agreement highlights a philosophical convergence between the position taken by the Christian Coalition and that of the Clinton Administration: They agree that religious "rights" must be established by government action. In fact, by seeking formally to federalize religious controversies through a constitutional amendment, the Christian Coalition's agenda is, in this particular, as radical as anything the Clinton Administration has attempted.

According to the May 25th Christian Science Monitor, a working group of ten religious groups have composed the following preliminary draft of a religious equality amendment:

Neither the United States nor any State shall abridge the freedom of any person or group, including students in public schools, to engage in prayer or other religious expression in circumstances in which expression of a nonreligious character would be permitted, nor deny benefits to or otherwise discriminate against any person or group on account of the religious character of their speech, ideas, motivations or identity.

The prolixity of this statement would doubtless serve as an irresistible lure for litigators. The draft invokes the constitutionally untenable concept of collective "rights." Furthermore, by setting standards for the religious policies of the separate states, this amendment would represent the consummation of the misguided jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, rather than its reversal.

The Bill of Rights -- including the First Amendment -- was a limitation on the powers of the central government, not on those of the states. Among the powers reserved "to the States respectively, or to the people" are those which deal with questions of public religious expression. It is only through the dishonest and constitutionally untenable doctrine of judicial "incorporation" that the Bill of Rights has been transformed from a limitation on federal power into a vehicle for federal micro-management of state policies -- including matters of religion. This is why a constitutionally sound response to the crusading secularism of the federal courts would be a congressional limitation on their appellate jurisdiction -- and a revival of the Tenth Amendment.

Parental Rights

Similar problems exist in the Contract's discussion of parental rights. Once more, the manifesto offers a perceptive summary of the problem:

The rights of parents ... are under increasing assault in modern day society.
 For example, state officials removed an eighth-grade girl from her home because she objected to the ground rules (regarding use of drugs, curfew hours, etc.) her parents had set. One mother's child was removed from her home because the mother refused to continue to take her first-grade child to therapy lessons for hyperactivity. And in 1992, a San Diego grand jury found that 35 to 70 percent of the country's foster children "never should have been removed from their parental homes." ...

The threat to the rights of America's parents is very real, as the movement to ratify the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child exemplifies.

This Contract plank elaborates on a few provisions of the UN Convention which would destroy family autonomy, undermine parental authority, and erode our national sovereignty. The Coalition is on unassailable intellectual ground when it declares: "It is clear that rejection of this treaty by the United States Senate would be in the best interests of American parents."

However, the same provision of the Contract endorses the creation and enactment of a federal "Parental Rights Act" which would supposedly "clarify that 'the right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children' ... includes overseeing their children's education, health care, discipline, and religious training" and would specify that "any governmental interference in the parent-child relationship be justified by 'clear and convincing evidence' that it 'is essential to accomplish a compelling governmental interest' and that it is applied in 'the least restrictive means' possible."

Versions of a federal "parental rights amendment" are being drafted in the House by Representatives Steve Largent (R-OK) and Mike Parker (D-MS), and in the Senate by Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Howell Heflin (D-AL). The Coalition contends, "Enactment of a Parental Rights Act will ensure that parental rights are not violated and ensure that parents have the foremost duty and responsibility to direct the upbringing of the children." Regrettably, it would do neither.

THE NEW AMERICAN has previously endorsed parental rights legislation at the state level (see TNA, January 23rd, page 14). This is because the power to provide a legislative statement regarding the primacy of the parental role in the upbringing of children resides within what Madison called the "numerous and indefinite" powers reserved to the states and the people, and the residents of the various states may properly examine proposed parental rights measures and adopt them if they see fit to do so. However, the federal government has no constitutional authority to entangle itself in the home, at any time, for any reason, and Congress has no right to legislate regarding such questions.

Essentially, a federal Parental Rights Act would do for parental rights what the so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act has done for religious liberties: It would codify the assumption that God-given, constitutionally protected rights may be imposed upon by the federal government when the government perceives a "compelling interest" in doing so. Like the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the parental rights legislation described by the Coalition would permit the federal government to define its own interests within the home, and to act as its own judge regarding "compelling interests" which would justify intervention. Lest it be forgotten, the bloody federal assault on the Branch Davidians has been justified by the Clinton Administration in quite similar terms. The poison gas assault which triggered the incineration of the Davidian children was ordered because Janet Reno saw a "compelling interest" in ending the siege -- to save the children, of course.

To prevent further abuse of parental rights, it is neither necessary nor advisable that the federal government condescend to "recognize" parents; it is necessary to discontinue unconstitutional federal activities and programs.

Mixed Signals

The Contract With the American Family offers a mixed message regarding education, privatizing welfare, and law and order -- urging devolution of power from Washington in one phrase, only to endorse continued federal entanglement in the next:

• The plank calling for "Returning control of education to the local level" contains sensible criticism of "the federal choke hold on local schools" and concludes: "The time to return federal education control to parents and local communities through elimination of the United States Department of Education is long overdue, and a good first step would include repealing Goals 2000 legislation." These are sentiments and objectives which supporters of true federalism will endorse.

However, beginning with the very next page of its Contract, the Coalition proposes federal entanglement in education in the name of promoting "school choice" by endorsing S. 618, the "Low Income School Choice Demonstration Act," co-sponsored by Senators Dan Coats (R-IN) and Joseph Lieberman (D-DE). This legislation would establish "up to 20 demonstration projects that would provide financial assistance to low-income parents to help them send their children to the school of their choice, whether public or private." In short, the proposal amounts to an unconstitutional federal entitlement program dressed up as education reform.

• With respect to welfare reform, the Contract observes that private charities are far superior to bureaucratized welfare, and states that "the federal government should take steps to encourage donations to private charities which serve the needy." To accomplish this end, the Contract suggests legislation which would "allow individuals to designate on their income tax returns a limited amount of their taxes to qualified private charities. Another [possible reform] would be to create pilot programs through federal welfare block grants that earmark funding to encourage charitable giving and assistance to needy individuals through charities and religious organizations."

Incredibly, the Contract asserts that by infusing private charities with tax subsidies, "'private charities would compete on an equal footing with government welfare programs for the portion of the federal budget that is allocated to poverty programs,' thereby increasing competition." Of course, a "private" charity which receives federal subsidy is no longer a private charity. Furthermore, the Contract does not explain why competition between private charities and federal poverty programs is a more desirable alternative than an outright abolition of failed, profligate federal welfare programs. If enacted, this provision would essentially destroy private charities by breaking them to the saddle of the federal government, as federal control always follows federal subsidy.

• In the plank dealing with "Crime Victim Restitution," the Contract once again ignores the constitutional limitations on federal authority, specifically in matters of law enforcement. The document notes, "Today's prisons are not designed either to punish convicts or provide justice to victims .... Hard labor has been replaced in many prisons with recreational activities." For example, "In Pennsylvania, felons can receive in-cell cable TV. At a facility in Fallsburg, New York, outdoor weight training areas feature televisions prisoners can view as they work out."

To remedy this injustice, the Coalition proposes federally imposed "work and study requirements for prisoners" and provisions for monetary restitutions for crime victims. To provide the former, the Contract endorses another federal entitlement for prisoners, in the form of a taxpayer-subsidized literacy program. To ensure that these reforms would be enacted by the states, the Coalition urges Congress to condition "the receipt of federal prison construction funding ... on enactment of work and study requirements" -- yet another unconstitutional federal mandate.

Some Useful Suggestions

The Contract With the American Family does contain some sound proposals. For example, it calls for the repeal of the Clinton Administration's pro-abortion Medicaid guidelines, which require states to subsidize abortions in cases of rape and incest. The Coalition also calls for the withdrawal of federal funds from the United Nations Family Planning Agency and Planned Parenthood, stronger laws against pornography (which is also properly a state concern), and the privatization of the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Legal Services Corporation. The document also calls for "Family-Friendly Tax Relief" by eliminating the "marriage penalty," increasing the tax credit for children to $8,000-$10,000 per dependent child, and allowing a homemaker to earmark up to $2,250 a year for an Individual Retirement Account.

However, the preponderance of the Contract's provisions are gimmicky at best and dangerous at worst, and the approach they outline falls well short of the real solution to America's political ills: The creation of a constitutionally disciplined Congress which is held accountable by a constitutionally literate electorate.

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