Sin, Sex, and Democracy: Antigay Rhetoric and the Christian Right

Explores the Christian Right's use of tailored rhetorics to advance multiple and varied antigay political projects.

While the Christian Right has spearheaded a variety of antigay projects over the past fifteen years, including interventions in public schools, antigay-rights initiatives, and support for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, observers of the institutionalized Christian Right have also noted a softening of antigay public rhetoric. Sin, Sex, and Democracy analyzes these two ostensibly conflicting phenomena. Examining Christian witnessing tracts, the ex-gay movement, and recent linkages between gays and terrorists, Cynthia Burack argues that as the Christian Right has become a more sophisticated interest group, leaders have become adept at tailoring different messages for mainstream audiences and for the internal pedagogical processes of Christian conservatives. Understanding the rhetoric and the theological convictions that lie behind them, Burack claims, is essential to better understand how American politics work and how to effectively respond to exclusionary forms of political thought and practice.

Cynthia Burack is Associate Professor of Women's Studies at the Ohio State University. She is the author of Healing Identities: Black Feminist Thought and the Politics of Groups and coeditor (with Jyl J. Josephson) of Fundamental Differences: Feminists Talk Back to Social Conservatives.