[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 86 (Thursday, June 30, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 30, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                      THOSE TROUBLESOME CHRISTIANS

                                 ______


                           HON. DUNCAN HUNTER

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 30, 1994

  Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Speaker, in light of recent remarks regarding the 
religious right I wanted to urge my colleagues to read the following 
Review & Outlook article from today's Wall Street Journal. I found the 
article very interesting and believe my colleagues will also.

                      Those Troublesome Christians

       Call it whatever they may--the Christian right, the radical 
     religious right, conservative Christians--it's clear that 
     word of a vast new conspiracy against freedom, democracy and, 
     oh yes, tolerance, is getting to be big news. This process 
     oozed to a peak of sorts last week when Rep. Vic Fazio, head 
     of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, condemned 
     the ``religious right.'' Following his declamation came 
     President Clinton's attack on certain evangelical Christians. 
     How seriously are we supposed to take these people?
       We'll leave it to Mr. Clinton to get to the bottom of 
     whether his own staff or the press were violating the Seventh 
     Commandment in the bathrooms of the USS George Washington. 
     But here is Mr. Fazio on the one hand carrying on about 
     activist Christians and their ``secretiveness'' and 
     describing them, confidently, as ``what the American people 
     fear the most.'' This is the same Rep. Fazio who last 
     February refused to vote for a resolution condemning Khalid 
     Muhammad, aide to Minister Louis Farrakhan.
       Mr. Muhammad, recall, had been out on college campuses with 
     this message of fellow-feeling: ``We kill everything white. . 
     . . We kill the women, we kill the children, we kill the 
     babies. . .  we kill the faggot, we kill the lesbian, we kill 
     them all.'' And something about the ``cracker'' pope. When 
     time came to vote, Rep. Fazio rose to attest that while he 
     deplored Mr. Muhammad's views, it was also true that we now 
     had a President ``who values the diversity that is America.'' 
     Moreover, Mr. Fazio declared, he did not think it Congress's 
     job to ``evaluate'' expressions of bigotry. Possibly the 
     author of these virtuous pronouncements can tell us whether 
     there is any room in ``the diversity that is America'' for 
     those Christian activists he has just described as a 
     ``peril'' and ``what the American people fear the most.''
       Details of the threats posed by the Radical Religious Right 
     can now be heard--and read--every day. On the New York Times' 
     opinion page, columnist Frank Rich accuses the Christian 
     Action Network of mounting an assault in the tradition of 
     Senator McCarthy and of attempting to spread ``homophobic 
     panic.''
       The cause of Mr. Rich's excitation had to do with the 
     questions being raised, once again, about funding by National 
     Endowment for the Arts. Its beneficiary, performer Ron 
     Athey--an artist at the cutting edge of sorts--caused a 
     ruckus during a theater performance when he sliced into 
     another man's back. Mr. Rich earnestly explained that this 
     performance was a way of dramatizing the homosexual artist's 
     struggles and that, anyway, the blood produced by this piece 
     of artistry was HIV negative. He took the occasion, further, 
     to commend new NEA head Jane Alexander for her stalwart 
     defense of artistic freedom.
       Ms. Alexander herself recently announced that true 
     Christians should speak up to counter the intolerance of 
     conservative Christians who targeted the NEA. The NEA head 
     went on to muse that she would have a hard time bringing 
     herself to approve of any project that had ``a terrible 
     racial or homophobic slur.'' Would that we could know whether 
     Ms. Alexander might have such trouble funding a work of 
     ``art'' like Serrano's ``Piss Christ''--consisting of a 
     crucifix dipped in urine.
       Meanwhile, of course, Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, 
     avowed opponent of those she describes as the ``un-
     Christian'' religious right, recites hymns to condoms and the 
     possibility of drug legalization.
       Also among those agitated about the Christian ``right'' is 
     the Anti-Defamation League, which recently produced a tome 
     outlining the various forms of menace posed by ``stealth'' 
     candidates of the Christian right. This massive study is--in 
     its complex drawings of vast secret conspiracies and ominous 
     interconnections--reminiscent of nothing so much as the work 
     of that fabled political star of the `50s, Senator McCarthy.
       There is something, it must be said, wonderful in the 
     spectacle of all these defenders of democracy and pluralism 
     now busy alerting the nation to the menace of ``the Christian 
     Right.'' For the menace, in their descriptions, all comes 
     down to the same remarkable charge: namely that Evangelicals 
     and other Christians have committed the crime of getting into 
     politics to make their views heard. In the strange view of 
     the defenders of ``pluralism'' getting into public politics 
     is equal to ``extremism.''
       The last time we looked, the Christians were winning--
     elections, that is. The Democrats, who control Washington, 
     our very own Rome, have been losing votes. We guess this 
     means that in a democracy, you don't always have to go meekly 
     to the lions.

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