“Protect Marriage” comes first, and that’s the frame for the ongoing Christian Right campaign against basic human rights for gay men, lesbians, and anyone else who lives or supports alternatives to the “traditional” family built around patriarchy and heterosexism.

“Do not open unless you are deeply alarmed by President Obama’s plans for America, read the front of one direct mailing from the Family Research Council (2010). “The Hard-core socialists in control of our country are bent on advancing their damaging agenda regardless of what the American people thinks,” writes Tony Perkins, the group’s President.

According to Perkins, that agenda is “promoting homosexuality, rationing your healthcare, restricting your religious freedom, expanding abortion, and more.”

A similar issues list, but the body of the letter is built around homophobia. Perkins first claims credit for spending “at least $1 million in unbudgeted funds during the health care debate, which he says “slowed down the process, exposed some of ObamaCare’s worst features, helped shift public opinion, and set the stage for repeal.”

Perkins then explains the need for funds to continue exposing the “negative consequences” of Obama’s agenda:

• Lifting restrictions on open homosexuality in the military through the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT)
• Repealing the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)
• Passing the pro-homosexual Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA)

Perkins warns that after the fall elections a “lame duck” session might see Democrats “ram through repeal of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’" and other “unpopular policies.”

So send big bucks now!

The Glenn Beck rally last Saturday urged a marriage of economic libertarians, populist patriots, militarists, and Christian Right dominionists. Strange bedfellows indeed, but likely to stay together under the sheets in an attempt to block Obama’s policy agenda by electing more Republicans in the November elections.

The focus on gay bashing is undoubtedly a trial balloon by the lead organizations of the Christian Right; and the framing might be quickly revised if it does not resonate with the ground troops of reactionary angst. Abortion, liberal socialism, bigoted fears of Muslim world domination, White racial anxiety, Mexican immigrants, the New World Order—all are handy scapegoats that have mobilized action and raised funds in the past.

Pay attention to the fact that if we built a movement to defend human rights and peace across existing progressive boundaries, we could better confront the reactionary backlash of the Right, no matter what target it picks to scapegoat.

Fear-mongering about a so-called “Homosexual Agenda” however, has been successful in the past in getting the antigay Christian Right base to reach into their pants and pull out the dollars to slap them on the table.