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The Antigay Agenda: Orthodox Vision and the Christian Right

Name: The Antigay Agenda: Orthodox Vision and the Christian Right
Author: Didi Herman
ISBN: 9780226327655

by Didi Herman

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Overview

"A penetrating analysis of the Christian Right's antigay agenda and of how that agenda is derived from the Christian Right's peculiar vision of American history and the Christian faith."—Rev. Peter J. Gomes, Boston Book Review

"Public intellectualism at its best. . . . A comprehensive summary of the conservative Protestant worldview."—Michael Joseph Gross, Boston Phoenix Literary Section

"Presents considerable information not previously part of the nation's political discourse. . . . [Herman] dissects the Christian Right's antigay stance dispassionately giving, as it were, the devil his due. For anyone on either side of this passionate and important conflict, that is an impressive accomplishment."—Hastings Wyman, Jr., Washington Post Book World

Synopsis

In The Antigay Agenda, Didi Herman probes the values, beliefs, and rhetoric of the organizations of the Christian Right. Tracing the emergence of their antigay agenda, Herman explores how and why these groups made antigay activity a top priority, and how it relates to their political history.

"A penetrating analysis of the Christian Right's antigay agenda and of how that agenda is derived from the Christian Right's peculiar vision of American history and the Christian faith."—Rev. Peter J. Gomes, Boston Book Review

"Public intellectualism at its best. . . . A comprehensive summary of the conservative Protestant worldview."—Michael Joseph Gross, Boston Phoenix Literary Section

"Presents considerable information not previously part of the nation's political discourse. . . . [Herman] dissects the Christian Right's antigay stance dispassionately giving, as it were, the devil his due. For anyone on either side of this passionate and important conflict, that is an impressive accomplishment."—Hastings Wyman, Jr., Washington Post Book World

Michael Joseph Gross

The Antigay Agenda. . .represents public intellectualism at its best. . . .More than a political playbook; in a broader sense, it offers to help progressives understand their enemies. -- Boston Phoenix Literary Section

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Editorials

Michael Joseph Gross

Kirkus Reviews

Herman (Law/Keele University, England) offers a thorough critique of the positions taken by American conservative Protestantism since the '50s on the issue of gay rights. Over the past 40 years, homosexuality's legal status in the U.S. has passed from decriminalization to highly contentious demands for equality, such as spousal rights and other forms of social entitlement based on heterosexual partnership. Herman has long been a promoter of this development, and she now turns her attention to the thinking and aims of the Christian Right's opposing stance. In an area where name-calling is rife, she maintains a careful, scholarly approach and succeeds in bringing out some of the positive values and vision of her opponents. She defines the Christian Right as mainly white evangelical Protestants, whose Utopian brand of Christianity focuses on the Second Coming of Christ at the culmination of a fearful battle between the forces of good and evil. In this scenario, gay rights legislation, like international communism, takes on an apocalyptic significance and must be resisted by the Elect. Herman's work is well researched and draws heavily on the journal Christianity Today as a contemporary chronicle of Christian Right attitudes. She is good at teasing out well-known tensions, e.g., between the views of government as having a minimal role and as the theocratic enforcer of morals. But Herman also shows that Christian Right thinking has varied over the decades, and she outlines tensions within the Christian Right about how to define homosexuality (lifestyle choice or immutable trait) and the implications of that for the antigay rights battle. A special chapter is devoted to the unsuccessful 199192Colorado battle against gay-rights legislation. Deserves to be read by both sides in this passionate controversy.