Is The End of the Christian Right Approaching?

I have often noted that the Republican Party is - at least in my opinion - committing a slow, long term form of suicide in its quest to prostitute itself to Christianists and what might be best described as those who are tantamount to white supremacists. As the older generations literally die off, the base to which the GOP is prostituting itself is literally dying off. And the GOP is positioning itself to have no one aligned with the party to replace the deceased haters and Christofascists. A piece in the New Republic looks at the possible sunset days of the Christian Right and what it may mean for the GOP. With luck, the GOP will not wake up until it's too late to avert the consequences of its disgusting pandering to a dwindling influence in the political realm. Here are some article highlights:

Is the Christian Right still a power in American politics? The lavish coverage which its partisans and their favorite issues have received during the current Republican campaign certainly leave that impression. Yet all this attention is akin to the dazzling glow of a setting sun. In fact, the Christian Right is a fading force in American life, one which has little chance of achieving its cherished goals.

Yes, pious conservatives earned the underfunded Rick Santorum a virtual tie in the Iowa caucuses, and, last week, a large gathering of evangelical leaders nodded fervently in his direction. Every GOP candidate still in the race speaks of Planned Parenthood as if it were a band of terrorists and vows to stop the largest and oldest reproductive rights group in the country from winning even a dollar of federal funding—and all of them except Ron Paul has signed a firm pledge to support a constitutional amendment that would essentially ban same-sex marriage.

[W]hatever their influence on the Republican primary, the Christian Right is fighting a losing battle with the rest of the country — above all, when it comes to abortion and same-sex marriage, the issues they care most about. A strong majority of Americans backs abortion in the early months of a pregnancy.

Meanwhile, support for gay rights is rising, quite swiftly. Same-sex marriage tops fifty percent in some recent polls, and the remarkably placid response to New York’s recent legalization of the practice will make it easier for other states to follow suit. With over two-thirds of Americans now endorsing the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the debate on that once controversial issue is now a matter for historians to analyze.

In the modern U.S., once a demand for justice gets widely accepted as an individual right, its victory becomes all but certain. As the woman suffrage, birth control, and black freedom movements triumphed, so will those who campaign for legalizing gay marriage.

At Glenn Beck’s prayer meeting cum political rally in August 2010, the average age of the participants was somewhere in the late fifties or older: White and gray hair and spreading midriffs predominated in the nearly all-white crowd.

Put simply, the Christian Right is getting old. According to the largest and most recent study we have of American religion and politics, by Robert D. Putnam and David E. Campbell, almost twice as many people 18 to 29 confess to no faith at all as adhere to evangelical Protestantism. Young people who have attended college, a growing percentage of the population, are more secular still.

If they still hope to transform our pluralistic, profane culture into a new Jerusalem, Christian conservatives will have to find new holy battles to wage. The old ones and their crusaders are rapidly aging.

The death of the Christian Right as any sort of force in politics and/or society cannot come soon enough in my book. Hate, intolerance and division are not forces that will move America forward. The Christian Right needs to be buried with its soon to expire base and the nation needs to embrace science,knowledge and inclusion as opposed to ignorance and bigotry. I hope I live long enough to see the Christian Right become utterly irrelevant in the political realm.