In Defense of the Religious Right
Ross Douthat OCT. 15, 2016
I RISE to offer a defense — not a full-throated defense, more of a limited one — of the beleaguered, battered, all-but-broken religious right.
For the last two weeks we’ve watched various paladins of traditional values twist and squirm as they try to square their Christian conservatism with Donald Trump’s sexual attitudes and conduct. They sought a remoralized politics, a less licentious culture, and now they’re making lesser-of-two-evil arguments to protect a pagan demagogue from the consequences of his own unbridled lust.
This is a grim endgame for a movement that just a little over a decade ago had liberals fearing its electoral strength and allegedly-theocratic ambitions. And for those liberals today, the religious right’s crisis tastes like victory and vindication both: Those theocrats are finally cracking up, and Trump has proved that all their talk about virtue and character was just partisanship, with no real moral substance underneath.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/opinion/sunday/in-defense-of-the-religious-right.html?ref=opinion
