Social Conservatives Fighting Culture War

Bad Few Weeks Aside, Social Conservatives Aren’t Losing Culture War

Do two weeks of dismal headlines for social conservatives mean the religious right is losing the culture war? Far from it—despite Komen and Prop 8, the right has built a sturdy political infrastructure that could drag out the fight for decades.

Feb 12, 2012 12:00 AM EST
David Sessions

 

The second judicial defeat of Proposition 8 in California this week was the latest in a cascade of bad news burying social conservatives. Just a few days prior, the Obama administration ruled, against the objections of conservative Catholics, that religious employers must pay for insurance that covers contraceptives. Before that decision could explode into a full-blown controversy, an anti-abortion executive at the breast-cancer foundation Susan G. Komen for the Cure tried to strong-arm Planned Parenthood, a move that backfired badly. The uproar left Komen’s leadership in disarray and Planned Parenthood looking more untouchable than ever, with a few extra millions in the bank.

The headlines of the past two weeks seem to reiterate a particular storyline about the culture wars, one progressives would desperately like to believe: that the trends are breaking their way, and the final defeat of the religious right comes nearer with each passing day. In the very long run, that narrative may not be far from the truth. But the drubbing social conservatives have been getting, particularly the seemingly unstoppable march of same-sex marriage, is only part of the story. Out of sight of the tweets, jokes, and image macros that often give wings to progressive causes online, the religious right has placed its bets on the banal dirty work of real-world electoral politics. And that long-term dedication to building a political infrastructure has placed it in a strong position on certain culture-war issues even as public opinion turns more sharply against it.