Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 11:29:59 -0400 From: Maggie Heineman Subject: Two Voices of One Movement forwarded for Brian Gocial This rather lengthy document is well worth the read! Entitled "Two Voices of One Movement", it highlights the discrepancies between Ralph Reed's new book "Active Faith," and Pat Robertson's rhetoric. CHECK IT OUT & POST IT TO OTHERS YOU THINK WILL BE INTERESTED. Brian Gocial, People For the American Way, bgocial@pfaw.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------- May 23, 1996 -- For Immediate Release RALPH REED V. PAT ROBERTSON: CHRISTIAN COALITION DIRECTOR CALLS FOR CIVILITY AND TOLERANCE WHILE HIS BOSS RIPS OPPONENTS AND PREACHES EXTREMISM People For the American Way releases "Two Voices of One Movement" The opening publicity salvo for Christian Coalition Executive Director Ralph Reed's new book features his call for humility and tolerance in public debate; but the organization he leads is one of the nation's foremost practitioners of the rhetorical divisiveness and extremism he criticizes in others. People For the American Way today released a brief comparison of Reed's new book and the record of Christian Coalition President Pat Robertson and other spokespersons. "Ralph Reed's attempt to position the Christian Coalition as a champion of rhetorical moderation and tolerance is either the political season's most dramatic conversion story or its most brazen act of chutzpah," said People For the American Way President Carole Shields. "Reed's message, if sincere, is surely welcome. The American political dialogue could do with a dose of generosity and humility. But as long as his boss Pat Robertson is polluting the airwaves with ugly intolerance, Reed's gentle words will reek of pure political calculation." Shields noted that the Christian Coalition, Pat Robertson's powerful political group, has spoken with two voices for years. To members, activists and recipients of direct mail, the organization has employed stern, sometimes shrill rhetoric, righteously condemning political adversaries (including the President of the United States), openly hostile to gays and lesbians, vitriolic on abortion-related issues and more. Typically, that correspondence has been signed by Pat Robertson, the group's president. Similarly, on his daily television program, Robertson has routinely employed rhetoric that can only be considered extremist. To more mainstream audiences, however, the group has a much gentler voice, and it belongs to executive director Ralph Reed. Since embarrassing himself with quotes boasting of the group's "stealth" campaign strategies, Reed has reformed his rhetoric, and now is a study in how to describe an extreme agenda in mild tones. With the publication of his new book, Active Faith, Reed takes this strategy one step further: promoting himself as the champion of rhetorical moderation, he chastises his Religious Right colleagues for employing harsh rhetoric against gays, for personally attacking the President of the United States, and for seeking to impose their own moral principles on the rest of America. Ironically, his message might most usefully have been delivered to his own organization. The attached selections represent only a fraction of the Christian Coalition's long and well-documented record of intolerance. For more information, contact the People For the American Way's communications department at (202)467-4999. People For the American Way is a 300,000 member nonpartisan civil liberties organization that opposes the divisive agenda of the Religious Right political movement. -- 30 -- ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Ralph Reed vs. Pat Robertson Two Voices of One Movement Ralph Reed Christian Coalition executive director Pat Robertson Christian Coalition president "As a community of faith, we stand at a crossroads. Down one path lies the fate of many other great religiously-inspired political movements of the past: irrelevance and obscurity. It is a path defined by its spiritual arrogance and by its faulty assumption that the most efficacious way to change hearts is through the coercive power of the state...To get there, religious conservatives must shun harsh language on critical issues -- chiefly abortion, Clinton-bashing, and homosexuality -- and learn to speak of our opponents with charity." -- Ralph Reed in Active Faith, as excerpted in Newsweek magazine "What Planned Parenthood is doing is absolutely contrary to everything Christian. It is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to have adultery, teaching people to get involved in every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism -- everything that the Bible condemns. And teaching us to be without absolutely any moral constraint." -- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, 4-9-91 "[It's] incredible that those who claim to be liberal have got blood on their hands. They've got this desire to murder." -- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, 3-3-90 "When lawlessness is abroad in the land, the same thing will happen here that happened in Nazi Germany. Many of those people involved in Adolph Hitler were Satanists, many of them were homosexuals -- the two things seem to go together." -- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, 1-21-93. ----------------------------------------------------- "We will be judged by history and by our God not according to the political victories we achieve but by whether our words and our deeds reflect His love. When one of the nation's leading evangelical preachers suggests that the president may be a murderer, when a pro-life leader says that to vote for Clinton is to sin against God, and when conservative talk-show hosts lampoon the sexual behavior of the leader of the free world, their speech reflects poorly on the gospel and on our faith." -- Ralph Reed in Active Faith "The president is the leader of the country. He is supposed to be the role model for every human being in this nation. We set him on a pedestal, maybe beyond what we should. But you don't expect the President to be a sleazy liar." -- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, 12-23-93. "[T]hese socialists and they're in there now, starting with the President and his associates...they want to squeeze out religion because if people read the Bible, they can't be enslaved. You'll never have a socialist government where everybody's Christian." -- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, 2-18-94. "God and morality, the Clinton administration wants out of the country." -- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, 12-23-93. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- "Calling gays 'perverts' or announcing that AIDS is 'God's judgment' on the gay community is not consistent with our Christian call to mercy." -- Ralph Reed in Active Faith "Many observers say that AIDS is the hammer and gun of the homosexual movement, an effective vehicle to propel the homosexual agenda throughout every phase of our society." -- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, 6-20-90. "It's one thing to say, 'We have rights to jobs...we have rights to be left alone in out little corner of the world to do our thing.' It's an entirely different thing to say, well, 'We're not only going to go into the schools and we're going to take your children and your grandchildren and turn them into homosexuals.' Now that's wrong." -- Pat Robertson on The 700 Club, 9-17-92. "I am absolutely persuaded one of the reasons so many lesbians are at the forefront of the pro-choice movement is because being a mother is the unique characteristic of womanhood, and these lesbians will never be mothers naturally, so they don't want anybody else to have that privilege either." -- Pat Robertson on The 700 Club, 5-18-93. "I have known few homosexuals who did not practice their tendencies. Such people are sinning against God and will lead to the ultimate destruction of the family and our nation. I am unalterably opposed to such things, and will do everything I can to restrict the freedom of these people to spread their contagious infection to the youth of our nation." -- Pat Robertson, May 24, 1994 letter ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- "To change public attitudes, we must also repudiate the demonization of women who are pregnant out of wedlock...and pour our greatest efforts into education, persuasion, and prayer -- not politics alone." -- Ralph Reed in Active Faith "These girls are not stupid. If you want to pay them five hundred, six hundred, seven hundred, eight hundred dollars a month, or whatever it is, to have a baby, they'll have babies. And if they'll stop paying them, they'll stop having babies. It's that simple. It's not heartless, it's not cruel, it's an intelligent use of money." -- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, 8-7-95. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --- "If religious conservatives are wise, they will resist the temptation to replace the social engineering of the left with the social engineering of the right by forcing compliance with the moral principles that motivate us so deeply." -- Ralph Reed in Active Faith "If Christian people work together, they can succeed during this decade in winning back control of the institutions that have been taken from them over the past 70 years. Expect confrontations that will be not only unpleasant but at times physically bloody...This decade will not be for the faint of heart, but the resolute. Institutions will be plunged into wrenching change. We will be living through one of the most tumultuous periods of human history. When it is over, I am convinced God's people will emerge victorious." -- Pat Robertson's Perspective, Oct/Nov, 1992 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------- "We have all been guilty of excessive hyperbole in fund-raising letters (the harangues against conservative Christians by groups on the left are notorious), but I would hope both sides will resist attacking individuals and stick to policy differences." Ralph Reed in Active Faith "This is the United States of America. Christians, like all other Americans, have the constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of religion. But a small minority of godless liberals are working hard to take away our rights." -- Dick Weinhold, Chairman of the Texas Christian Coalition in a May 12, 1994 letter. "The 40-year reign of a liberal Congress allowed every wind of humanistic doctrine to occupy the high places of authority and seats of influence in this country. Liberal dogma seeped through our culture via legislation, the media and press, our churches and schools, the courts and our entertainment industry. Like possessed apostles, they have turned the American dream into an American nightmare. They protect the profane while profaning our God." -- Missouri Christian Coalition newsletter - July 1995 "As government liberalism tries to tighten its immoral hold on America's families, the time has never been better for the forces of God to stand up for our religious and other freedoms. Just watch...as the anti-God forces incrementally try to eliminate all traces of God from schools and other public arenas...they will also try to rid our country of Churches through taxation laws. WE CAN PUT THEM TO FLIGHT!" -- Sara DiVito Hardman, state director of the California Christian Coalition (no date) Bill Clinton's inauguration was "a repudiation of our founding fathers' covenant with God." -- Attributed to the Christian Coalition, the New York Times, 7-5-94