Is this the end of the Christian Right?

Courtesy of The New Republic:

Yes, pious conservatives earned the underfunded Rick Santorum a virtual tie in the Iowa caucuses, and, last week, a large gathering of evangelical leaders nodded fervently in his direction. Every GOP candidate still in the race speaks of Planned Parenthood as if it were a band of terrorists and vows to stop the largest and oldest reproductive rights group in the country from winning even a dollar of federal funding—and all of them except Ron Paul has signed a firm pledge to support a constitutional amendment that would essentially ban same-sex marriage. As for the presumptive nominee Mitt Romney, who has earned the suspicions of many conservative evangelicals, he has worked tirelessly to ingratiate himself with the Christian Right. Pro-Romney robo-calls in South Carolina currently feature a right-to-lifer from Massachusetts who opens her pitch, “I know you have heard a lot of folks talking about Mitt’s record on life, faith, and marriage while governor of Massachusetts.” 

But, whatever their influence on the Republican primary, the Christian Right is fighting a losing battle with the rest of the country—above all, when it comes to abortion and same-sex marriage, the issues they care most about. A strong majority of Americans backs abortion in the early months of a pregnancy. If elected president, it’s exceedingly unlikely that Romney would ever sign legislation that could lead to the indictment of millions of women and tens of thousands of physicians for fetal murder. Last fall, even voters in Mississippi soundly rejected a bill that might have done just that. 

Meanwhile, support for gay rights is rising, quite swiftly. Same-sex marriage tops fifty percent in some recent polls, and the remarkably placid response to New York’s recent legalization of the practice will make it easier for other states to follow suit. With over two-thirds of Americans now endorsing the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the debate on that once controversial issue is now a matter for historians to analyze. 

More fundamentally, the right of privacy is now all but unchallenged. Almost half-a-century after Griswold v. Connecticut, not even Rick Santorum proposes outlawing birth control methods that nearly every heterosexual woman has used or will use at some point in her life. The news that the traditionalist Catholic ex-Senator from Pennsylvania had suggested that contraception “is counter to how things are supposed to be” was enough to bury under a heap of ridicule whatever slim chance he had to win the nomination. In the modern U.S., once a demand for justice gets widely accepted as an individual right, its victory becomes all but certain. As the woman suffrage, birth control, and black freedom movements triumphed, so will those who campaign for legalizing gay marriage. 

Put simply, the Christian Right is getting old. According to the largest and most recent study we have of American religion and politics, by Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, almost twice as many people 18 to 29 confess to no faith at all as adhere to evangelical Protestantism. Young people who have attended college, a growing percentage of the population, are more secular still.

As I have already pointed out in past posts, the new millenials are rapidly moving away from organized religions, the Fox News audiences are aging out of existence, and the world has grown far more progressive than the GOP is willing to comprehend.

It appears, unless there is some thus far unforeseen social upheaval, that the our children, and their children, will usher in a world of rapidly changing technologies, incredible scientific breakthroughs, and an end to the reliance on outdated superstitions to help them determine purpose in their lives.

I only hope that I live long enough to witness what may in fact be a utopian society.

Well at the very least, a world WITHOUT Fox News.