Thursday, November 06, 2014

Family Research Council 'forgets' to mention marriage equality in election night bragging fest


The end result of the 'religious freedom argument'

Just as I figured, the Family Research Council is crowing like a crowd of roosters because of Republican election night wave:

Via an email from FRCAction:

President Obama has bailed out a lot of things in six years -- but last night, the Democratic Party wasn't one of them.

By night's end, his policy failures accounted for one of the largest Republican waves to hit Capitol Hill since World War II, as the GOP won back control of Congress. With a 12-seat cushion in the House and seven-plus gains in the Senate, conservatives sent more Democrats packing than the city has moving vans.

The message from an angry electorate was clear: the experiment in lawlessness has gone on long enough. And while Republicans were the beneficiaries of the country's outrage, Tuesday's victories were not so much an endorsement of the GOP as they were a repudiation of Senator Harry Reid's (D-Nev.).

Angry voters used Republicans to remind the White House that the President and his party can bypass Congress. They can even ignore the Constitution. But as long as democracy exists, they cannot silence the people. With a 52-45 edge in the Senate and a comfortable double-digit majority in the House, a new political dynamic is already taking shape. This morning, voters woke up to even more surprises, as Democrats continued to fall like dominos in liberal strongholds like Illinois, Maryland, and Massachusetts.

It goes on like this, except for in one unexpected place. There is nary a mention about marriage equality. There is an offhand comment about the recent 'I Stand Sunday' event but even then there is no mention of marriage equality or the argument about "religious liberty:"

 For all the talk that the evangelical movement is dead or irrelevant, last night's results should put those rumors to rest. Thanks to the momentum from I Stand Sunday, Star Spangled Sunday, and unprecedented church engagement, 26% of the voters in yesterday's midterms were evangelicals (1% higher than their turnout in 2010). A whopping 78% of them broke for the GOP. And that's just the tip of the evangelical iceberg. Experts believe there's plenty of untapped potential in the pews, especially if a third of possible evangelical voters stayed home. Imagine the growth possibilities for the GOP if it did more to mobilize its social conservative religious base! Meanwhile, the non-churchgoing vote fell heavily Democratic -- a reminder of how important the evangelical movement is to the Republicans' success. Once again, the youth vote was an unreliable one for either party, with a 12% turnout for 18 to 29-year-olds (a seven-point drop from 2012).

It's fascinating that an organization so invested in exploiting people's inaccurate fear and religious opposition to marriage equality would go out its way to exclude mentioning it on its post election night gleefest.

Could it be that FRC recognizes that marriage equality was not a large factor the Republican victories? Could it be that the organization is tacitly scaling back its vocal commitment against marriage equality because it recognizes it can't stop the progressive onslaught of  the issue?

Naw.  FRC is planning something and I bet that it will be huge.

In the meantime, let's do what we can to make the above picture the true face of the "religious liberty,"  "religious freedom" argument.

Photo taken from BradPritch on Instagram via Goodasyou.org

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