Search

“Religious liberty was meant to be a shield, not a sword,” says Jay Michaelson, author of PRA’s Redefining Religious Liberty report (pdf). “Religious liberty has become a code word, kind of like family values.”

Consider the following situation: Because of her religious beliefs against same-sex marriage, a New Mexico photographer refuses to shoot a lesbian couple’s wedding. The photographer claims taking the pictures would infringe on her religious liberty. The couple, on the other hand, faces discrimination based on sexual orientation. Who is in the right?

As a new pope with hardline stances against reproductive and LGBTQ rights is inaugurated, a new report documents how a network of conservative Christian organizations, beginning with a group of ultra-conservative Catholic organizations, has successfully fought pro-choice and LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) civil rights legislation by claiming that such policies infringe on religious liberty.

Political Research Associates launched an Indiegogo fundraising campaign today to produce and distribute the 2013 “Defending Reproductive Justice” ARK to women’s rights groups and educators across the country.

For over a decade and a half, same-sex marriage advocates experienced a long and almost unbroken series of defeats at the ballot box, including the passage of California’s Proposition 8 in 2008, Maine’s Question 1 a year later, and an anti-gay constitutional amendment in North Carolina in spring 2012. But in fall 2012, things changed.

“Mom, guess what I learned in school today! I learned how a prince married a prince, and I can marry a princess!” Kids say the darndest things, don’t they? Over the past decade, the Right has drummed up fears that marriage equality will indoctrine children into a homosexual lifestyle.

Tomorrow in Park City, Utah, will be the world debut of God Loves Uganda, a documentary on the U.S. Christian Right spreading homophobia abroad that builds on Political Research Associates’ research.

If you’re a regular visitor to Political Research Associates’ website, you’ll notice we’ve done more than a little sprucing up around here. In fact, we’ve built a completely new site from the bottom up, so that visitors like you can more easily navigate our vital research and analysis on the U.S. Right.

Today, Political Research Associates (PRA) released its new report, Colonizing African Values: How the U.S. Christian Right is Transforming Sexual Politics in Africa (pdf), which exposes the U.S. Christian Right’s growing infrastructure for promoting attacks on LGBT and reproductive rights across Africa.

On the heels of President Barack Obama’s public statement favoring marriage equality, a new Political Research Associates (PRA) report indicates that homophobia remains one of the most successful right-wing tools for mobilizing electoral support.