c. 2005 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) Religious conservatives lost electoral fights to pass an abortion law in California, overturn gay-rights legislation in Maine and defeat a bond issue in Ohio that critics said could fund embryonic stem-cell research.
However, the right claimed victory in Texas as voters overwhelmingly approved a measure Tuesday (Nov. 8) bolstering the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.
“It was definitely a mixed night,” said Mona Passignano, state issues analyst at Focus on the Family Action, a Colorado Springs, Colo., evangelical organization founded by religious broadcaster James Dobson.
“The Texas victory was huge, but the other ones _ Maine and California _ those were significant losses,” Passignano said Wednesday. “Maine, we knew, was going to be close. But California, it looked like we could win.”
Elsewhere, voters in the Dover, Pa., school district ousted all eight Republican incumbents in favor of Democratic challengers who pledged to eliminate a policy requiring the teaching of intelligent design alongside evolution.
Moreover, Republican gubernatorial candidates lost closely watched races in New Jersey and Virginia.
“2005 is not a victory for the Republican right, including the cultural and religious issues,” Alan Wolfe, a Boston College political scientist who directs the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, said Wednesday.
“Who knows what the future will bring?” Wolfe added. “But maybe we’ll look back and say the Bush first term was really the high point of the Christian right’s influence in American politics.”
But Corwin Smidt, a political scientist at Calvin College, a Grand Rapids, Mich., school with evangelical ties, cautioned against reading too much into what he characterized as “very scattered, isolated, distinctive ballot proposals.”
“I don’t want to say that they (Tuesday’s elections) are insignificant,” Smidt, director of the Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics, said Wednesday. “On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to jump to the conclusion that this is evidence that the Christian right has peaked and that it’s now on the decline.”
The Christian right “has been pronounced dead and arisen from its ashes on several occasions,” Smidt said.
In Tuesday’s balloting:
_ A California measure that would have required doctors to notify the parents of teenage girls seeking abortions failed, with 53 percent voting against it.
As reported by the Los Angeles Times, the Republican Party had promoted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s endorsement of the measure among evangelicals and other religious conservatives in a bid to boost turnout of voters who would back the rest of his agenda. But Californians rejected all of Schwarzenegger’s proposals in an election that the Times said “shattered his image as an agent of the popular will.”
_ Maine voters upheld a new state law that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation. Voters twice before, in 1998 and 2000, had rejected similar measures. “After 28 years, it’s over, you guys. We won,” gay rights advocate Pat Peard told supporters in Portland on Tuesday night, as reported by the Portland Press Herald.
_ Fifty-four percent of Ohio voters supported State Issue 1, a $2 billion ballot measure for bridges, roads and infrastructure repairs that includes $500 million for research and development. Anti-abortion groups and Christian conservatives opposed the question, saying they feared taxpayer money could be used to finance embryonic stem-cell research.
_ By a 3-to-1 margin, Texas became the 18th state to write a ban on same-sex marriage into its constitution. Republican Gov. Rick Perry and many churches supported the amendment. “The Texas Constitution will now protect marriage, families and the state that we love,” Republican Party Chairwoman Tina Benkiser said. But Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, blamed the outcome on “the lies and smears of anti-gay zealots and the profound unfairness of having minority rights put up for a popular vote.”
_ The Dover school board incumbents were defeated in a small Pennsylvania town in the national spotlight over its teaching of intelligent design. The district’s policy, requiring that a statement on intelligent design be read to ninth-grade students at the start of a science unit on evolution, sparked a lawsuit and then a six-week trial in federal court that ended Friday (Nov. 4). Federal Judge John E. Jones III said he expects to rule in December or January on whether the policy is constitutional. Even if the new board, which takes office in December, scraps the policy, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney said he would seek a court order to ensure no new effort is made to bring intelligent design into the classroom.
_ Redlands, Calif., voters rejected a proposal to put a cross back on the city seal. The city council removed the Christian symbol amid threats of a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union.
MO/PH END RNS
Editors: Smidt is cq
