Blowing Smoke - Michael Wolraich [41]
Likewise, before Anita Bryant’s 1977 Save Our Children campaign in Miami, the right wing barely reacted as cities across the country enacted antidiscrimination protections for homosexuals. Conservatives didn’t begin to accuse militant homosexuals of conspiring to take over the nation until after Bryant’s successful campaign. At that point, they mobilized in cities like Wichita and St. Paul that had previously enacted gay rights laws and got the laws repealed by frightening locals with warnings that homosexuals were recruiting schoolchildren.
Conversely, when the right wing loses, the paranoia fears recede. Jittery conspiracists should have seen the U.S. Court of Appeal’s repudiation of Judge Hand’s ruling, which effectively extinguished the dream that courts would end secular humanist education, as a fearsome sign of secular humanist power. Instead, they shrugged their shoulders and moved on to other villains.
Controversial gay rights issues like same-sex marriage still elicit right-wing vitriol, but the guarantees of equal employment and housing that once drew fearful opposition have quietly become commonplace. Miami finally extended equal rights to homosexuals in 1998 with scarcely a whimper from the right.
In short, the right wing’s successes seemed to inflame its fears; its failures seemed to dampen them. This upside-down behavior suggests that the fear of political conspiracies is different from the fear of other dangers, like terrorists or man-eating sharks. Normally, fear is something imposed on us from without. We read about a bombing or a shark attack, and we worry that we could be next. But there were no secular humanists out there, nor militant homosexuals recruiting children in the schools—no external threat to ignite the fears of nervous Christians.
A cynical analyst might conclude that right-wing leaders have been manipulating their credulous Christian supporters for political gain. Such an analyst might observe with raised eyebrow that paranoid hysteria tends to explode just before controversial bills and ballot measures come up for a vote and then immediately dissipate. But former governor Mike Huckabee praised Speechless: Silencing the Christians, the scourge of liberal cockroaches, calling its author, Rev. Wildmon, “one of the national leaders who is driven by principles and not by politics.” So surely the good reverend would never stoop to manipulative fearmongering. 22 Likewise, James Dobson is much too principled to fabricate a threat in order to expand his sprawling operation in Colorado Springs, Bill O’Reilly is too honest to exaggerate for the sake of his media ratings, and the various Republican legislators care too much for the truth to scare the bejeezus out of their constituents for the sake of a few campaign contributions.
Unfortunately for the curious cynic, unless these leaders have been secretly recording their machinations like Richard Nixon, there is no way to know what they truly believe. We can raise our eyebrows until our foreheads ache but, without evidence, such speculation resembles Bill O’Reilly’s “superior analysis.” Moreover, it’s not implausible to imagine that many right-wing paranoia proponents believe in their own wacky ideas. Complicity in promulgating a convenient fiction does not prevent one from believing the fiction oneself.
More important, it would be a mistake to treat the rank and file as passive victims of exploitation. To learn about the secular humanist menace, people had to buy books, tune to radio stations, listen to sermons, and attend meetings.