University of Virginia Library

Ch 12: Is There Not a Cause?

A prince, says Machiavelli, ought always to be a great asker and a patient hearer of truth about those things of which he has inquired, and he should be angry if he finds that anyone has scruples about telling him the truth.

--Barbara Tuchman,
The March of Folly

On June 11, 1986, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down, by a vote of 5-4, a Pennsylvania law that regulated abortion, and in doing so upheld the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, effectively legalizing abortion on demand. Pro-choice forces initially were jubilant. Claimed Janet Benshoof of the American Civil Liberties Union: "This is a tremendous pro- choice victory . . . an absolute rejection of the Reagan Administration's request to the Court to overturn that landmark decision." [1]

But the pro-life forces also responded as if they had won. "The thing that jumps out at you is that it's a 5-to-4 decision," noted Douglas Johnson, the National Right-to-Life Committee's legislative director. "We're very encouraged," [2] he told a New York Times reporter. "We're just one vote away from a Court which may be prepared to abandon Roe v. Wade." [3] (The vote on the 1973 decision was 7-2. In a harshly worded dissent to the Pennsylvania decision, Chief Justice Warren Burger stated, ". . . every member of the Roe Court rejected the idea of abortion on demand.") [4]

Two days after the decision, Pat Robertson drew enthusiastic applause when he sharply attacked the Supreme Court at the National Right-to-Life Committee convention in Denver. Referring to the jus

tices as "despots," he called on the assembled to become more active in politics and thereby help "rid this country of the runaway excesses of five unelected men."

But Robertson also wryly noted the narrowness of the margin and the importance of Justice Burger's dissent: "That means with the wonderful process of mortality tables only one more is needed to get a judicial reversal." [5] Robertson's reference was to the aging court and likelihood of President Reagan's having the opportunity to make at least one more conservative appointment to the Court-which is in fact exactly what happened with the retirement of Justice Powell in 1987.

Eleanor Smeal, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), also recognized that the "good news" for her forces could be short lived. "It is shocking how close we are to losing legal abortion and birth control," she told a gathering of NOW, meeting in Denver just a few blocks away. [6]

Smeal wasted little time in utilizing the decision to rally support for her organization and the pro-choice issue. In a direct-mail appeal she wrote:

"This is no time to remain silent," Smeal said as she called on prochoice advocates to "wake up" and "raise hell." [8]

Interestingly, her letter assumes the posture of the majority position: "The vast majority of Americans want to keep abortion and birth control safe and legal." And elsewhere the letter states, "The clear majority of Catholics support legal abortion." [9]

Is she correct? Or does it matter? Couldn't Eleanor Smeal simply search until she finds a poll to suit her point of view or even make up numbers if she wanted? She could, but she didn't. There are a variety of polls on abortion that support her conclusion.

America has moved beyond fascination with public opinion polling to near-obsession. For almost any conceivable subject, someone has

done a poll. To know how others feel, or to be asked our opinions, is a kind of quasi-enactment of democracy. To cite public opinion statistics is to speak with authority.

Public opinion polls reveal a lot about the subject of this book. Polls can indicate whether a religious conservative such as Pat Robertson has simply fantasized potential support for a political race or whether it indeed exists. Polls can help us determine whether Robertson and other leaders of the New Christian Right are extremist or are actually in touch with mainline America.

Abortion is the single most emotional and publicized moral issue among conservative Christians as well as many other Americans. It is an issue on which every presidential candidate has to take a stand, and that position can affect the presidential race. It is worth considering abortion polls in some detail.

What is it that gives a survey authority and credibility? Social scientists have formulated a set of rules that are codified in research textbooks, but not everybody follows them. You don't need a license to conduct a poll. Anybody can do a poll and publicize the results. How is the public to know which polls are reliable? Often it is not easy.

The first thing to remember is that how the question is asked can make a vast difference in the response. Consider, for example, the following items in a New York Times/CBS poll conducted in August 1980 [10]

     

	Yes	No
1. Do you think there should be an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting abortion, or shouldn't there be such an amendment?	29%	62%
Do you believe there should be an amdendment to the Constitution protecting the life of the unborn child, or shouldn't there be such an amendment? [emphasis added to both questions]	50%	39%

Both questions get at the same subject (an amendment prohibiting abortion), but the different wording produces very different results. Almost two-thirds (62 percent) say they are opposed to an amendment prohibiting abortion, but exactly half (50 percent) say they favor an amendment protecting the unborn.

The different wordings were deliberately included in this poll to demonstrate the problem. But the fact that wording can influence a response doesn't mean that all polls are tricky, or that no polling result is to be trusted. Rather, it instructs us to approach the world of opinion polling with caution.

Another problem with polling data is interpreting what numbers mean. What people say and what they do are often very different. Also, the intensity of their feelings about an issue may not be evident in the response categories. Someone may say that he is opposed to abortion, for example, but a follow-up question (pollsters call them "probes") about how important the issue is may reveal that it is not very important at all.

In addition to bad data, ambiguous data, and data that may have alternative interpretations, one also has to contend with the problem of no data. No data? That's right. Today's garbage is wrapped in yesterday's poll. We may or may not have read that poll. We may or may not remember correctly what it said. In this hazy world of fleeting information, there are mountains of claims regarding what polls have proven.

Claims are not necessarily made with the conscious intent to deceive. But everyone tends to interpret information in a way that is consistent with his or her values or best interests. Also, we are more likely to remember information that supports what we think, so the one poll in ten that supports what we believe may be the only one we remember.

Consider Eleanor Smeal's claim that those who support a woman's right to have an abortion are the vast majority, and that even among Catholics a clear majority [authors' emphasis] support legal abortion. Is that what the polls say? Again, not surprisingly, it depends on how the question is asked, and how one chooses to interpret the data.

A good figure to cite to refute Smeal's claims appears in an impressive study conducted in 1981 for the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company and entitled The Connecticut Mutual Life Report

on American Values in the 80s: The Impact of Belief (hereafter, Connecticut Mutual). [11] In this study of 2,018 randomly selected adults, 65 percent said they believed that abortion is morally wrong. [12] Or, one could cite a New York Times poll published in February 1986 in which 55 percent said that abortion is the same thing as murdering a child. [13]

These numbers suggest not a huge majority but a solid majority with reservations about abortion. Notwithstanding this abstract moral opposition, a number of reliable polls demonstrate that a large percentage of Americans would permit abortion under certain circumstances. What kinds of circumstances? A recent poll conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) found that 88 percent of a U.S. sample approved of abortion if the woman's health was in danger; 74 percent approved if there was a significant chance of serious birth defect; and 74 percent said abortion was OK in the case of rape. In those instances, three-quarters or more of the Catholic subsample also gave its consent to abortion. [14]

Eleanor Smeal may have these kinds of issues in mind when she says "vast majority." Furthermore, she might be recalling that a lot of people think that making abortion illegal will not solve all of the problems that result from legal abortion. For example, Gallup found that 88 percent agreed that if abortion were made illegal, "many women would break the law by getting illegal abortions"; and 87 percent believed that many women would be physically harmed in abortions performed by unqualified people. [15] In further support of Smeal's position, one could note a 1985 Los Angeles Times poll that found that a majority (51 percent) would oppose a law to prohibit use of federal funds for abortion. [16]

One could make a case that these numbers add up to tacit public support for abortion. But without looking at the numbers in a broader context, one would likely misunderstand the mood of the country. When it comes to abortion on demand, without consideration of anything but the woman's wishes, the American public does not stand with the pro-choice advocates. Let's examine more data.

For more than a decade, the Gallup Organization has been asking questions for Newsweek about abortion. The polls reveal that approximately one-fifth (21 percent in 1985) of the American population would permit abortion under all circumstances, and an identical proportion

(21 percent) believes that abortion should be illegal under all circumstances.

Furthermore, this distribution of public opinion has hardly changed in the years since Roe vs. Wade. Those with strong pro-life and prochoice beliefs may feel even more strongly today than they did a decade ago, but they have scarcely budged the majority in the middle at all, as shown in Table 1. [17]

Table 1. PROPORTION FAVORING AND OPPOSING ABORTION IS HIGHLY STABLE OVER PAST DECADE

               

	Favor Abortion, All Circumstances	Only Certain Circumstances	Disapprove, All Circumstances
1985	21%	55%	21%
1983	23	58	16
1981	23	52	21
1980	25	53	18
1979	22	54	19
1977	22	55	19
1975	21	54	22

We have already noted the circumstances in which the public approves of abortion-the mother's health endangered, serious birth defect possibilities, and rape (or what are sometimes referred to as medical reasons). The NORC poll found that, by small majorities, Americans disapproved of abortions performed because (a) the couple didn't want any more children (56 percent), (b) the mother was not married (54 percent), and (c) the couple felt they could not afford any more children (52 percent). [18]

When asked if they favored or opposed a ban on all abortions except in cases of rape or incest, or when the mother's life is endangered, 58 percent of Americans told Gallup in 1985 that they favored such a ban. [19]

There are three important tendencies evident in the survey data on abortion. The first is that the majority of Americans neither approve of abortions under all circumstances nor reject it under all circumstances, although their allegiance sometimes is claimed by believers on either extreme of the issue. Second, there is a tendency to view

abortion as a moral issue and to reject it under circumstances other than catastrophic, life-endangering, or life-debilitating circumstances. Third, the available evidence suggests a small but increasing proportion of Americans who reject abortions simply at the "convenience" of the mother (see Table 2). [20]

Table 2. A GROWING NUMBER OF AMERICANS ARE REJECTING CONVENIENCE ABORTIONS

       

People Who Say No to Abortion Because Mother . . .	1972-82	1984	1985
Wants no more children	52%	56%	58%
Cannot afford more children	46	52	55
Is not married	50	54	57

To the extent that the data permit one to speak of a majority sentiment in the United States, that sentiment is on the side of a conservative, cautious posture toward abortion. However, the large majority of abortions performed are for so-called nonmedical reasons, i.e., for reasons of personal preference rather than for life-threatening or debilitating reasons. In 1983, Irvin M. Cushner, M.D., testified before the U. S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary that only 2 percent of all abortions are performed for medical reasons. [21] Others have placed the figure as high as 5 percent. In either case, it is clear that the overwhelming percentage of abortions performed in the United States are for reasons that would not be judged as catastrophic and life- threatening.

Thus, one can find some evidence to support whatever claims one wishes to make, but the weight of evidence does not support Eleanor Smeal's claims regarding public sentiment on the abortion issue.

Abortion, of course, has been high on the list of concerns of the New Christian Right. Jerry Falwell has frequently used his "Old Time Gospel Hour" television program to promote the pro-life position, and his Moral Majority has frequently cooperated with other groups on this issue. There are a dozen significant pro-life groups that are, on the whole, better organized and more active than many of the more visible New Christian Right organizations.

In 1981, Time called abortion "without question, the most emotional issue of politics and morality that faces the nation today." [22] That assessment seems just as appropriate now as it was then. Insofar as the

weight of public opinion is concerned, the "pro-lifers" would seem to have public sentiment and time on their side.

This perspective runs contrary to the general impression communicated by mass media. On abortion as with other issues, the media have generally portrayed the New Christian Right as being out of step with general public sentiment. But the evidence shows that the New Christian Right is closer to the general public than are journalists.

Consider Jerry Falwell, who is generally depicted as a zealous fundamentalist envisioning the most sweeping transformation of churchstate relations of all the televangelists. Falwell has long claimed that the majority of American people agree with him on important moral issues, even if they don't back him personally or the Moral Majority to any great degree (which he blames on the media's distorted portrayal of him as a radical, far to the right of general public sentiment).

It is not possible to examine all of the moral issues Jerry Falwell has identified as part of his platform with the same detail as abortion. But even in a somewhat-abbreviated discussion, it is possible to see that mass media have either subconsciously ignored the question of where the general public stands on the issues, or they have deliberately "stacked the deck" in order to present Falwell as a man outrageously out of touch with American public sentiment.

When Jerry Falwell formed the Moral Majority in 1979, he identified four principal concerns. The organization, he said, was (1) prolife, (2) pro-family, (3) pro-morality, and (4) pro-America. Having assessed the pro-life concern, let's briefly consider the others.

Pro-Family. Pro-family values mean "traditional" family values and, simultaneously, a rejection of all forms of family life other than the marriage of a man and a woman. Implicit in this affirmation is a rejection of divorce, because Falwell believes that marriage is for life. Homosexual and common-law marriages are explicitly condemned.

Public opinion polls have consistently shown that the family ranks as a top priority among individuals. Likewise, the overwhelming majority of people report that they are "very satisfied" or "mostly satisfied" with their family life.

These sentiments notwithstanding, the divorce rate in America is high and increasing. The paradox affects people of every religious persuasion. The Connecticut Mutual study reports that 52 percent of

Americans believe that obtaining a divorce should be made more difficult and only 21 percent think it should be easier. But when confronted with the hypothetical situation of being unhappily married and unable to reconcile problems, 56 percent say they would be willing to seek a divorce. And to add yet another dimension of complexity, 67 percent say they believe that the high rate of divorce in the United States is the result of people "not trying hard enough to stay together." [23] In short, these sentiments add up to an affirmation of the institution of marriage, but a recognition that it doesn't always work.

Only 29 percent said that they preferred a traditional family, one "in which the husband is responsible for providing for the family and the wife for the home and taking care of the children." Sixty- three percent of the total sample said they preferred a marriage in which husband and wife share responsibility equally. [24] Even among the most religious group in the Connecticut Mutual study, 56 percent said they preferred the shared responsibility to the traditional-family option. [25]

Such are the realities of the changing family in America today. Scripture says, "The husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is head of the Church: let wives be subject to their husbands as to the Lord." When sociologist Patrick McNamara sat down with evangelical and fundamentalist Christians and asked if this was true of their families, they overwhelmingly agreed that it was. But as he explored the process of family decision- making and division of labor in the household, he found them to be remarkably like nonevangelical families. [26]

McNamara's ethnographic research reveals a gap between what families say and what they do. The doctrine of the traditional family is a meaning system that gives coherence and structure to their lives. It is adhered to in principle even if not in the practical matters of day-to-day living. Evangelicals are just about as likely to have an egalitarian, task-and-decision-sharing family structure.

Evangelical Christians do differ significantly from nonevangelicals in their perceptions of what is right and what is wrong. People who score high on the Connecticut Mutual index of religiosity, for example, are much more likely to say that divorces should be harder to get, are less likely to approve of getting a divorce if problems can't be reconciled, and are more likely to believe that divorce is common because

people aren't trying hard enough to work out their problems. Similarly, they are much more likely to disapprove of premarital sex, adultery, unmarried couples living together, and homosexuality.

But perhaps most significant is the extent to which the general public affirms values associated with the traditional family. The Connecticut Mutual survey found that 85 percent of the adult public felt that adultery was morally wrong. [27] That statistic is confirmed by a 1985 NORC survey, in which 88 percent said that "a married person having sexual relations with someone other than their married partner" was "always wrong" (74 percent) or "almost always wrong" (14 percent). [28]

Similarly, nontraditional sex partners are considered wrong. In the Connecticut Mutual study, 71 percent rejected male homosexuality as morally wrong and 70 percent rejected lesbianism. [29] In the most recent NORC survey, 73 percent said that sexual relations between two adults of the same sex was "always wrong," and an additional 3 percent said it was "almost always wrong." [30]

In contrast, a 1986 Los Angeles Times poll found 53 percent saying that homosexual relations between consenting adults in the privacy of their home should be legal, while 35 percent said it should be illegal. [31] But, presumably, saying that homosexual relations between consenting adults should be legal does not preclude many respondents from believing that it is immoral.

Taken together, poll findings indicate a certain amount of tolerance for families that have strayed from the "traditional" pattern, and the emergence of a new egalitarianism; but also a strong endorsement of the traditional family. Jerry Falwell would no doubt be less accepting of divorce when couples have made an honest effort to work out their differences, but his views about the traditional family do not appear to be all that different from those of a sizable majority of the American public.

Pro-Morality. The pro-morality plank, as articulated by Falwell in the early days of the Moral Majority, referred almost exclusively to opposition to pornography. In his antipornography campaign, Falwell was portrayed in the media as representing an ideological fringe group that was prepared to encroach on the First Amendment rights of the majority of Americans in order to impose the prudish standards of a minority.

Back in the late nineteenth century, Anthony Comstock led a cru-

sade that resulted in the passage of federal legislation in 1873 prohibiting the use of the mail for obscene materials. From that date forward, legislators and the courts periodically have wrestled with a definition of just what is obscene or pornographic. In a series of Supreme Court cases between 1957 and 1973, the Court failed to define the subject matter, but their efforts had the net effect of liberalizing social practice. The problem of determining what is pornographic was essentially left to the local community.

In 1970 the Presidential Commission on Obscenity and Pornography failed to find any scientific evidence that would causally link pornography to antisocial behavior. The combination of scientific legitimation and the Supreme Court's unsuccessful attempts to draw an empirically definable boundary resulted in a rapidly expanding availability of sexually explicit materials during the 1970s. Fifteen years later, when Reagan's Attorney General, Edwin Meese III, created another commission to study pornography, it was assumed-even before the commissioners were identified-to be a sop for the New Christian Right. It was also assumed that the findings would refute those of the 1970 presidential commission. There was widespread apprehension that it would bring censorship and the abrogation of First Amendment rights.

The American Civil Liberties Union loudly protested the Meese Commission's findings and warned against its recommendations. But their voice was drowned out by four factors. (1) The commission produced evidence that linked antisocial behavior to violent pornography, and it published the results in graphic detail. (2) The widespread existence of child pornography and the abuse of minors that the report detailed were shocking. It wasn't easy for the ACLU to find a spot where they could drive in a wedge for First Amendment rights in the face of the sexual abuse of children. (3) Feminist objections to pornography had been changing the way a lot of people thought about the subject. A broader coalition was voicing the argument that sexual violence in pornography is causally related to the violent and degrading treatment of women. (4) Perhaps most important, a significant majority of Americans had simply grown tired of what they perceived to be the excesses of pornography. Any way you shuffle or interpret the public opinion poll numbers, it is clear that Americans have very serious objections to pornographic material.

Meese Commission member Park Dietz is a psychiatrist who also

holds a Ph. D. in sociology and is professor of law at the University of Virginia. In a personal statement about the report, he noted the public policy tensions represented in his several disciplines. As a sociologist, he acknowledges that all the evidence may not be in. As a law professor, he feels the importance of protecting First Amendment rights, and he acknowledges the ambiguity of the Supreme Court's efforts to determine what, if anything pornographic, lies outside the protection of the law. But, as a physician, he is compelled to make a clinical judgment, even in the face of uncertainty. And as a clinician, Dietz concludes:

By significant margins, polls indicate that Americans support Dietz's thinking. In 1985, according to a NORC survey, more than half (54 percent) of Americans favored legislation that would outlaw pornography for persons under eighteen years of age, and an additional 40 percent favored laws banning pornography entirely. [33] That's 94 percent of the population supporting a total or partial ban on pornography.

It is not simply that pornography is offensive. Again, according to a 1984 NORC survey, a majority (61 percent) of Americans believe that pornography contributes to the breakdown of morals and 55 percent believe that pornography leads people to commit rape. [34] A Gallup poll conducted for Newsweek in early 1985 found even greater proportions agreeing that explicit sexual materials have pernicious effects. Two-thirds (67 percent) told Gallup that it is "true" that sexually explicit magazines, movies, and books "lead to a breakdown of public morals"; 73 percent say these materials "lead some people to commit rape or sexual violence"; and 76 percent say they "lead some people to lose respect for women." [35]

Whether pornography does have such effects is unclear. What is

clear is that people are concerned that it does. This concern has led the American public to conclude that at least some types of pornography should be banned. Furthermore, there is overwhelming support for removing virtually all kinds of pornography from public display.

One out of five (21 percent) Americans would outlaw magazines that show nudity; two in five (40 percent) would outlaw X-rated movies in theatres. [36] Sexual violence is the most abhorred form of pornography. Seventy-three percent of Americans favor laws that would totally ban magazines that show sexual violence; 68 percent would ban movies that depict sexual violence, and 63 percent would ban the sale or rental of video cassettes featuring sexual violence. [37] As is dramatically demonstrated in Table 3, the large majority of Americans would like to see pornography of virtually every kind either out of sight or outlawed altogether.

For a person whose views are supposed to be on the fringe of American culture, Jerry Falwell seems to have a lot of company on the issue of pornography.

Pro-America. By saying he is pro-America, Jerry Falwell is expressing both general patriotism and support for a strong national defense.

Ronald Reagan campaigned on a platform calling for the strengthening of America's defenses. The 1981 Connecticut Mutual survey found that 73 percent of Americans believe "it is important for America to have the strongest military force in the world, no matter what it costs." [38] When Reagan was elected, every major public opinion polling organization that had been asking about defense expenditures over a period of time found public approval for increased military spending was at an all-time high. Americans were with Reagan on this issue early in his presidency.

After several years of increased military expenditures, and increasing pressure to cut domestic programs rather than raise taxes, public sentiment has shifted away from further expanding the military budget. In 1982, for example, President Reagan's proposals to increase military spending rated 69 percent approval in a national poll conducted by the Los Angeles Times. That shrank to 54 percent by 1985-but still a majority. [39]

Part of this decline stems from Americans' belief that the military has been successfully strengthened during the Reagan administration. For example, 67 percent of the American population told the Gallup

Table 3. AMERICANS FAVOR OUTLAWING OR RESTRICTING PUBLIC DISPLAY OF PORNOGRAPHY [40]

               

	Outlaw	No Public Display	Outlaw Plus Ban Public Display
Magazines that show nudity	21%	52%	73%
Magazines that show adults having sexual relations	47	40	87
Magazines that show sexual violence	73	20	93
Theatres showing X-rated movies	40	37	77
Theatres showing movies that depict sexual violence	68	21	89
Sale or rental of X-rated cassettes for home viewing	32	39	71
Sale or rental of video cassettes featuring sexual violence	63	23	86

Organization in 1985 that "the ability of the nation to defend itself militarily has gotten better as a result of Reagan's policies." [41] And a CBS News/New York Times survey conducted at about the same time found 75 percent of Americans agreeing that "Reagan has significantly strengthened the country's military budget. [42] Furthermore, 83 percent of Americans told Gallup that "building the strongest military force in the world" would be "very important" (46 percent) or "fairly important" (37 percent) in determining America~s strength twenty-five years from now. [43]

It is quite clear that Jerry Falwell is not too far out of the mainstream on national defense, either.

While Falwell has never formally amended or expanded the agenda of the Moral Majority, he has spoken out on a wide range of social and moral issues. In addition to the four original goals of the Moral Majority, a later brochure identified another four "vital issues": affirmation of the separation of church and state; opposition to illegal drug traffic; support of the state of Israel and Jewish people everywhere; and support of equal rights for women while rejecting the Equal Rights Amendment as the appropriate vehicle for obtaining this goal. [44] Let's examine these issues very briefly.

Separation of Church and State. Falwell's critics (and now Pat Robertson's critics) to the contrary, Falwell has stated on numerous occasions that he believes in the separation of church and state. On the other hand, he doesn't think that Christians should be disenfranchised from participation in the political process. He believes that they, like any other interest group, have a right to petition the government.

By substantial margins, the polls show that Americans approve of the separation of church and state. Only 14 percent (albeit 31 percent of white fundamentalists) told the Los Angeles Times that they favor a constitutional amendment to make Christianity the official religion of the United States. [45]

Opposition to Illegal Drug Traffic. An epidemic is abroad in America, as pervasive and as dangerous in its way as the plagues of medieval times," wrote Newsweek editor-in-chief Richard M. Smith in an introduction to that magazine's second cover story on drugs within three months in mid-1986. [46] Americans perceive that their country is in the midst of a drug crisis.

It's a big story for the mass media as attention shifts quickly from the Central and South American drug sources, to the crime wars for control of the estimated $25 billion-a-year growth industry, to the destruction of respectable upper-middle-class people's lives, to questions of the constitutionality of requiring government employees, airline pilots, and athletes to take drug tests, to Nancy Reagan's "just say no" crusade, to the ever-expanding array of new drugs.

While it is conceivable that a Jerry Falwell or a Pat Robertson might be to the right of most Americans on drug-related issues, it seems

highly unlikely. Their hard- line position on drugs is now the norm, not the exception.

Support of Israel. Jerry Falwell's biggest risk in supporting Israel was the possibility of alienating fundamentalists theologically to his right. It is a posture in line with both American foreign policy and public opinion. Since Israel's founding following World War II, U.S. foreign policy has always been pro-Israel. Political scientist Kenneth D. Wald has noted that in addition to a considerable pro-Israel lobby that consists of more than 200 groups (most of them Jewish) and the typically "moralistic posture our nation takes in its foreign policy, most Americans-leaders and voters alike-see a strong Israel as serving America's foreign-policy objectives. [47]

Support of Equal Rights for Women. Fundamentalist Christians as well as some other evangelical groups have claimed all along that they support equal rights for women but believe that the Equal Plights Amendment was the wrong vehicle. If there should be another Equal Rights Amendment passed by Congress and sent out to the states for ratification, the issue could again become a source of public dispute between conservative Christians and ERA supporters. If not, it's a dead issue. Feminists may disagree with conservative Christians, but it's hard to sustain the battle-especially when the conservative Christians say their only disagreement is with the means, not the ends.

Now there is one final item to examine-an item that may fool some people.

School Prayer. Jerry Falwell is foursquare in favor of a constitutional amendment to put prayer back into public schools. In 1963, the Supreme Court found a Pennsylvania statute requiring the reading of Bible verses, followed by the Lord's Prayer, to be unconstitutional (Abington vs. Schempp). The decision was not popular then, and almost a quarter-century later, a majority (56 percent) of Americans say they disapprove. [48] Falwell does more than simply disapprove; he links the decline in public education to that decision.

The Bible states, "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge." (Proverbs 1:7) I believe that the decay in our public school system suffered an enormous acceleration when prayer and Bible reading were taken out of the classroom by our U.S. Supreme Court. [49]

On the side of civil libertarians who favor removing all evidence of religion from public schools, there is some hope in poll data showing that the percentage approving the Court decision has slowly increased (from 29 percent approval in 1971 to 44 percent in 1985). [50]

Nevertheless, when the issue is raised in other ways, it is obvious that a large segment of the American public has difficulty with barring all religion from school. A 1983 Gallup survey found 85 percent of Americans saying that they favor an amendment to the Constitution that would allow for voluntary prayer in public school. [51] A CBS News/ New York Times poll in 1984 found 68 percent favoring a constitutional amendment permitting organized prayer in schools. And of those approving, 77 percent said they would still approve of the amendment if it meant that the prayer used was from a religion other than their own. [52]

Together, all of these polls strongly suggest that Jerry Falwell is not all that radical compared with the rest of the American public, even if his positions appear extreme in the eyes of the media.

Of course, one can locate elaborations of Falwell's positions in sermons and speeches that suggest very dogmatic views on these issues. But one can also find much interview material in which his posture seems quintessentially pluralistic.

The leadership of the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King, Jr., made some rather strident statements along the movement trail. And we have heard some pretty ugly words from fired-up rhetoricians feminists, gay rights advocates, environmentalists, antiwar protesters, anticultists, and striking labor leaders.

All movement leaders are prone to hyperbole when rallying their constituents or in the heat of battle with their adversaries. Pat Robertson is no different from other movement leaders and spirited political candidates in this regard. From the very beginning of his exploration of a presidential bid, the mass media endeavored to label him an extremist, just as they attempted with Ronald Reagan when he first sought political office. Robertson makes no bones about being a conservative, but he rejects the label of extremist.

One thing is clear: Pat Robertson does not have the option of flipflopping on issues to accommodate public opinion trends. He has repeatedly addressed almost every potential campaign issue on "The 700 Club." These commentaries are available on videotape. The Amer-

ican public is the arbiter of the struggle to determine whether Robertson is a mainstream conservative in the Reagan mode, or the dangerous extremist his critics claim.

Ironically, it was the archenemies of the Other Americans who took the Robertson candidacy seriously from the outset. For example, "skin" magazines such as Penthouse, Hustler, and Genesis warned of the certain moratorium on First Amendment liberties that a conservative Christian government would impose.

The May/June 1987 issue of The Humanist included an article- complete with an illustration of Gestapo goons wearing the cross in place of swastikas-that stated emphatically that Robertson is a firm opponent of church-state separation. Painting Robertson as something akin to a neo-Nazi, its authors concluded:

Ronald Reagan has been called The Great Communicator. Pat Robertson, too, needs to do some slick communicating. The public opinion poll data suggest he may not be as far away from the mainstream of America as the media have characterized him. A Los Angeles Times poll found that 69 percent of Americans believe that "life today is getting worse in terms of morals. [54] If Robertson plays it right, his socalled extremist views on morality constitute one of his strongest assets.

To be a serious candidate for the presidency, the first issue he has to deal with is the widely held belief that religion and politics should not be mixed. In 1984, the Gallup Organization asked people if they favored or opposed "the separation of Church and State as described in the U. S. Constitution." By a margin of seven to one, those with an opinion affirmed the principle of separation (71 percent to 10 percent). [55]

But another question in the study revealed that many Americans are confused about what the Constitution says regarding the separation of church and state. A mere majority (55 percent) correctly identified the relevant passage in the Constitution: "Congress shall make no law

respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Forty-five percent said they believed the Constitution says: "The state shall be separate from the church, and the church from the school." This statement is actually taken verbatim from the Constitution of the Soviet Union.

By a margin of 52 percent to 30 percent, Americans expressed the view that it is wrong for religious groups to work actively for the defeat of political candidates who disagree with their position on certain issues. Fifty-four percent felt it is wrong for political candidates to bring in their own religious beliefs in discussing issues. And 64 percent believe it wrong for clergymen to air their own political beliefs in their sermons.

A national poll conducted for the Los Angeles Times in mid-1986 suggests that Americans' views on these issues have not changed much since the 1984 poll. [56] An identical proportion (54 percent) disapproved of political candidates bringing in their own religious views in discussing issues, and 62 percent disapproved of clergymen introducing their own political views in sermons.

Furthermore, 67 percent of those polled for the Los Angeles Times agreed with the statement, "We must maintain the separation of church and state." And by a margin of 2.5 to 1, people said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who described himself as "an evangelical Christian." By a margin of more than two to one, respondents rejected a candidate who differed from his opponent only in the fact that he was a Protestant minister.

The average American appears to have strong reservations about mixing religion and politics; and having a preacher doing the mixing is worse. That is the conclusion reached by George Skelton, the Los Angeles Times's Sacramento bureau chief who reported on the political implications of the poll:

So, what of the prospects of Pat Robertson becoming president? It's just not in the cards, as Skelton reads the numbers, and he quotes

the Times poll director I. A. Lewis to back him up. "Pat Robertson is not a viable presidential candidate [emphasis added]," concluded Lewis after analyzing the study results. [58]

Pollster Lewis has some impressive numbers to back up his conclusion. First of all, only 17 percent of the national sample were identified as fundamentalists and half of them did not have enough knowledge to form an opinion of Robertson's prospects as a presidential candidate. While those who did know him had a favorable impression by a three-to-one ratio, white fundamentalists rejected his presidential candidacy by a ratio of six to five. And among all registered Republicans, Robertson was rejected by a whopping five-to-one margin.

Still, Pat Robertson is a very pragmatic man. In his business operations at CBN, he has been quick to kill projects that just weren't working out according to the business plan. If the odds are so stacked against a bid for the presidency, why has he walked away from "The 700 Club," which he says he loves doing, and risked the financial stability of the show and CBN?

In the Old Testament, a giant called Goliath appeared on the scene of battle between Israel and the Philistines, and virtually the entire Israelite army fled. When David the shepherd learned of this, he went down to the battlefield and slew the giant with a slingshot. His brother scolded him for leaving the sheep unattended, but David replied, "Is there not a cause?" (I Samuel 17 29).

David did not fear the giant because he had faith that God would protect him just as He had protected David when the young lad battled the lions and bears that attacked his father's sheep.

The New Christian Right has used the imagery of David and Goliath to portray their struggle against a society that has become a secular giant. The Christian Roundtable, one of the significant social- movement organizations of the New Christian Right, has used "Is there not a cause?" as the motto of their organization. It captures the sentiment of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who see their cause as noble and their troops as meager in the face of the Secular Humanists.

For Pat Robertson, a presidential campaign is a matter of doing what he thinks God would have him do. But his perceptions of how God speaks are not as unorthodox as he sometimes sounds on "The 700 Club" and as his adversaries would have us believe. On "Meet

the Press," in response to interviewer Ken Bode's question about the specific instructions Robertson receives from God, he replied:

A lot of people skeptical about Robertson's candidacy will concede one point: Considering the odds, it must be an act of faith that pushes him forward.

But there is more than faith. When he was president, John F. Kennedy once said that after prayer, one has to get up off one s knees and hustle, because on this earth God has no hands but ours to do his bidding. Faith figures centrally in his operations of CBN, but so does hustle. There are probably few corporations in America where solid market research and rational decision- making play a more critical role.

Is Pat Robertson hiring different pollsters who are giving him different results than the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and the Washington Post? Yes and no. He commissions a lot of polling for CBN in programming and research, and sometimes he includes questions that are not explored in other polls. But, for the most part, Robertson reads the same polls as everyone else. He just reads the results differently.

Take, for example, that Los Angeles Times finding that by a margin of 2.5 to 1 people would be iess likely to vote for a candidate describing himself as "an evangelical Christian." Reporter George Skelton found in that question what he was looking for. But Pat Robertson found something else-something he was looking for. Skelton reported the margin correctly, but he neglected to cite the precise figures of 27 percent and 10 percent respectively. That camouflages another important statistic: A majority, 57 percent, say that it wouldn't make any difference. Furthermore, 30 percent of those who are fundamentalists (white and black), and a third who vote conservatively, report that they would be more likely to vote for someone who identifies himself as "an evangelical Christian."

When Pat Robertson reads this poll question, he sees a natural three-to-one edge among conservative voters. Equally significant, he sees that a sizable majority are not disinclined to vote for someone because he identifies himself as an evangelical Christian.

There are a lot of other questions in that survey that Robertson would read differently than Skelton. Robertson certainly would disagree that while most Americans are religious and worried about declining moral standards, "they are in no mood to launch a moral crusade through the national political process."

Robertson is very much persuaded that there is a religious revival taking place in America today-a revival that parallels in order of magnitude and significance the Great Awakenings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The significance of the poll data for Robertson is that they confirm a high degree of discontent. More than two-thirds (69 percent) of all Americans believe that "life today is getting worse in terms of morals." Only 17 percent believe that the moral fiber of the nation is improving. The percentage who believe things are getting worse runs two-thirds or greater for Democrats, Republicans, and independents; approximately four out of five fundamentalists and blacks believe that moral standards are declining.

For a preacher-turned- political-candidate, these numbers represent an enormous opportunity. The challenge is to mobilize a generalized discontent into a social movement.

George Skelton apparently sees at least three factors that persuade him that Americans are not in the mood for a moral/political crusade. First, there is a low level of support for Robertson's candidacy. Second, Americans express strong support for the separation of church and state. And third, there is general disapproval of preachers getting involved in politics.

Again, Pat Robertson's assessment of these matters is rather different. First, in mid-1986 he was not particularly concerned that he had such a low level of support even before declaring his candidacy. In the early stages of a campaign, mere name recognition is important, and he wasn't doing badly. According to the Los Angeles Times poll, he ranked third among Republican hopefuls behind Vice President George Bush and former Secretary of State Alexander Hail and ahead of former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker, current Senate Mi-

norixty Leader Robert Dole, New York Congressman Jack Kemp, and former U. N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick.

Second, Pat Robertson also believes in the separation of church and state. He wrote a book in 1986 about the church-state relationship in American history, [60] which he hopes clarifies his stands on a number of important issues and also helps focus attention on what he believes as opposed to what others say he believes. Some of the views he expresses will not be popular with liberals, but, on balance, he believes that his views on church and state separation can be a net political asset and not a liability.

Third, Pat Robertson has seen other polls regarding people's attitudes about clergy involvement in politics. As a general proposition, people say that they don't think clergy ought to mess around with politics. But this general stance tends to break down under examination of specific issues and context. When people know the preacher, and his views happen to agree with their own, they don't think his involvement in politics is a bad idea. For example, liberals thought Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, involvement in the political process was an effective way to express the legitimate grievances of black Americans. Conservatives disagreed, but they didn't object if their preacher got up in the pulpit and denounced the activist clergy.

When Billy Graham was the quasi-official White House chaplain to Republican presidents, Democrats howled that Graham was legitimizing conservative political ideologies. Republicans didn't see anything wrong with that.

Blacks have generally approved of mixing religion and politics because black preachers have traditionally been the leaders of their communities. Whites tended not to object-unless the black preachers were effective.

Liberal Catholics were glad when their bishops spoke out against the nuclear arms race; conservative Catholics wasted no time in letting the bishops know that their pastoral letter on economics exceeded the bounds of their competency.

In general, people object to preachers being involved in politics if they are on the other side. If the preacher is on my side, he has obviously considered the issues carefully and is acting in a morally responsible and courageous manner. Public opinion polls consistently show disapproval of clergy involvement in politics because the general

question tends to make people think of those sanctimonious SOBs on the other side.

Pat Robertson took a long hard look at the poll numbers before making his decision to enter the presidential race. And he concluded the poll numbers were sending a message that the pundits were missing-a message that would be critical to victory in 1988.

Notes