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The Christian right, or more generally the religious right, is a broad label applied to a
number of political and/or religious movements with particularly conservative or right wing views. While such elements are found in many nations, the term is most commonly applied to groups
within the United States.
Christian right groups, as the name implies, consist primarily of Christians,
many of them fundamentalists; some have been
known to claim that their political positions are, or ought to be, the views of all Christians. In reality, American Christians
hold a wide variety of political views.
Many elements of the Christian right sympathize with, support, and sometimes influence the United States Republican Party. For example,
such support is thought to have provided considerable backing for the campaign of U.S. President George W.
Bush.
Issues with which the Christian right is (or is thought to be) primarily concerned include opposition to the accessibility of
abortion; legal rights of unborn children; opposition to much of the gay rights movement and the upholding of what they consider to be "traditional family values"; opposition to the practice of gay or straight "sodomy" (usually meaning anal sex or oral sex)-- see santorum; and support for the
presence of Christianity in the public sphere, as with school-sponsored prayer, government funding for religious charities and
schools, and similar matters, regardless in many cases of the U.S. tradition of separation of church and state.
Prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks,
foreign affairs appeared to be of little concern to the Christian right, but since then many of its most prominent spokespersons
have joined with neoconservatives in strongly supporting the wars
in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and have
also expressed profound sympathy for Israel, some going so far as to advocate the
"transfer" of the Palestinian population from the West Bank as the only viable long-term solution to the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East. The Reverend Franklin Graham, in
particular, has been noted for his strident views, drawing criticism for his harsh remarks directed at Islam and for his travelling to Baghdad to conduct an open-air
Good Friday service on April
18, 2003, nine days after the city had fallen to American troops. Citing these and
other statements and actions, some critics have taken to characterising the post-9/11
foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration and its most
visible supporters as the Tenth Crusade.
Use As Propaganda
Use of the term "Religious Right" is thought by some to be an example of stereotyping by the liberal media (contrast this with
the lack of the use of such terms as "Atheist left" or "Jewish left" by the same.) Others point out that the term Christian left is also used, but not in a pejorative sense.
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