Congress redoubles efforts to appease James Dobson, the powerful head of Focus on the Family. Will Americans end up funding a "Morals Czar"?

nergized by President George W. Bush's creation of a White House office to involve faith-based groups in the welfare system as well as the appointment of Attorney General John Ashcroft, a group of key lawmakers have big plans for the upcoming 107th Congress. Among the ideas being discussed are efforts to restrict abortion, including a possible prohibition on the RU-486 pill, review of military policies on pregnancies, chastity training in schools, and efforts to promote the traditional family by creating a special White House office and "morals Czar."

   Leading the effort is a little-known group called the Values Action Team, a coalition of religious conservative groups and nearly three dozen Representatives who gather weekly to discuss legislative strategy. The group operates from the office of Pennsylvania Rep. Joseph R. Pitts. VAT was formed in the fall of 1999, after representatives from key religious right groups threatened to pull their support from the Republican Party if more attention was not given to the Christian fundamentalist social agenda. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, had complained that the GOP leadership had emphasized tax breaks and the economy, and backed off the more incendiary issues such as abortion, pornography and internet controls, keeping gays out of the military and enacting a constitutional amendment to permit organized school prayer.

   Since then, the Values Action Team has coordinated strategy on dozens of legislative initiatives, and is geared up to work closely with the new administration now that the 107th Congress is in session.

   "President Bush will support a lot of things we support and won't veto everything, the way President Clinton did," Pitts told the Boston Globe newspaper. "We're very encouraged; I think we can work together."

   Pitts and others point to Bush's support for vouchers, and his establishment of a special White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives which seeks a greater role for religious groups in operating social services. Abortion policy is also a focus for VAT members. The Team supports a recent Heritage Foundation proposal that will establish a special federal office to promote heterosexual marriage, funded with money which previously went to family planning groups. The goal would be slash divorce rates and out-of-wedlock births by 30 percent in the next decades.

   Already, tax money is being sought to establish such programs at the state level. In April, 2000, Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating sought federal funds to redirect money from the TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) program in order to subsidize his "Marriage Initiative" office, and galvanize his pro-marriage campaign. Numerous religious groups are involved.

   A federal level program is a good idea insists Kenneth Cooper, the new president of the Family Research Council. "By promoting policies that encouraged sexual promiscuity among teens, fostered negative tax policies for families and elevated homosexual relationships to the status of marriage," Cooper said, "the Clinton administration undermined and was downright hostile to marriage." He predicted that under the Bush regime, "you will see more sympathy to and more affirmation of marriage."

   Not all fiscal conservative who support part of the VAT agenda, though, will sign on to the morals legislation. Darcy Olsen, a policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute, branded a proposal to created a federal marriage czar "absurd."

   "Personal and sacred matters of the heart and mind deserve protection from the government, not oversight," said Olsen.

   ¶    The "linkage" between the new White House faith-based office and a federal campaign to support marriage is reflected in statements Bush has made on the subject, and the appointment of Donald E. Eberly. Last year, Bush praised the work of a group called Marriage Movement, and pledged to restore "a pro-marriage culture in America." That could mean that the new administration will take a dim view of efforts to keep gays in the military, strengthen legislation which protects gays and lesbians from discrimination, and provides equal benefits to same-sex couples. "Strengthening marriage will help families and children, build civil society, boost opportunity, and spread social equality" Mr. Bush insists. The appointment of John Ashcroft as Attorney General and former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson as secretary of health and human services could be the beginning of this profound shift in government policy.

   So is the appointment of Donald Eberly as assistant to John DiIulio, head of the new White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives. Eberly is founder of the National Fatherhood Initiative, and has worked closely on shared ideological issues which groups like the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. He also is Director of The Civil Society Project, and has authored books and articles on the role of traditional fatherhood as a stabilizing element in families and culture. Eberly is involved in the nexus of "civil society" groups and think tanks which advocate a greater role for religious institutions, and works with former Reagan administration official William Bennett in another group, the National Commission on Civic Renewal.

   ¶    Government funded "chastity" and "abstinence" programs are sure to receive a boost under the aegis of the Bush administration, thanks in part to the Values Action Team. The idea was ridiculed when it was proposed during the 1980s by First Lady Nancy Reagan, who sought $20 million public funding to open up a chain of "chastity centers" for teens. Debra Haffner, President of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, has charged that similar programs are simply fronts for those groups "trying to Christianize the schools." Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, though, says that it is time for government to begin promoting chastity as part of what he describes as a "sexual pecking order" for public policy.

   "Marriage holds the place of highest reward," Rector told the Nando Times news service, "followed by virgins until engaged, virgins until they meet someone they want to marry, virgins until they fall in love and on down to the bottom." Rector describes the lowest terrain of his "pecking order" as "extremely dysfunctional, extremely destructive bar-hopping with casual partners to whom they have no commitment."

   ¶    Abortion, chastity and religious involvement in civic society are all strategies to combat what House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) last summer described as a "cultural coup d'etat by the fashionable elite." In a bombastic speech at the National Press Club, DeLay accused leading social institutions, from the news media to non-profit foundations and even artists of waging what he described as a "guerrilla assault ... on our nation's founding principles." During his speech, he charged that the "elite" disdain religious belief, and promised a "very aggressive counterattack" if George W. Bush were elected president.

   DeLay now has his wish, and by all accounts has pledged to work closely with the Bush administration. The Whip was the leading impetus for establishing the Values Action Team, and the caucus web site has had links to Dobson's Focus group, and the Family Research Council. In a 1998 piece, Salon on-line magazine quoted DeLay in providing his own "pro-family" interpretation of the First Amendment, and insisting "There is no separation of church and state in that statement."

   ¶    VAT has been so successful that Arkansas Republican Tim Hutchinson is forming a counterpart over in the U.S. Senate. Already, the House Values Action Team has carried though on efforts to appease Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and other luminaries of the religious right. Last year the House launched a "Black Thursday" assault on the separation of church and state with amendments to a juvenile justice bill encouraging states to display the ten Commandments in public schools. Another VAT project introduced by Rep. Jim DeMint is still on the legislative burner, and would disallow attorney fees in any legal action involving a First Amendment challenge to public school practices.

   ¶    Bush's call for taxpayers to ante up and subsidize faith-based social projects has attracted its share of controversy, and even skepticism from some religious and conservative groups. A number fear that funding religion goes far beyond the token exercises of displaying the Ten Commandments, and could threaten the independence of denominations that choose to accept government subsidies. Others of a more libertarian bent may agree with tax cuts and similar economic proposals coming from VAT, but insist that Bush should avoid "national nannyism" by enforcing chastity or tampering with how people choose to live their private lives.

   This is unlikely to stop the Values Action Team, especially since Dobson, Robertson and others on the religious right carried through with their support of the Bush campaign, and delivered a record number of votes from fundamentalists and evangelicals in the year 2000 election. Christian conservatives provided the margin of victory Bush needed in several states. Democrats may even embrace some of the VAT agenda as well. When the President signed Executive Orders creating the White House office for faith-based partnerships, the move drew hearty and immediate support from Sen. Joseph Lieberman and others in the Democratic camp.

   The harsher side of the VAT program is well underway. In the Senate, Tim Hutchinson last week reintroduced his "RU-486 Patient Health and Safety Protection Act" which would tighten FDS standards on approval of the drug. Hutchinson's proposal is perhaps the sneakiest attack yet on the abortion pill, which anti-choice groups say is the greatest threat to their crusade at outlawing the procedure. It would require any physician who prescribes the drug to "be qualified to handle complications of an incomplete abortion," "be legally authorized to perform an abortion," and meet other stringent guidelines.

   ¶    James Dobson seems to have gotten everything he wished for when he drew a ine in the ideological sand, and told the Republican Party that they had better start delivering on the social agenda for the religious right. "I'm very interested in the Republicans knowing that there are millions and millions and millions of pro-family, pro-life, pro-moral voters out there who are agitated, concerned and watching very closely." No doubt, Dobson and his associates continue to watch; and Tom DeLay, Joe Pitts and the rest of the Values Action Team are working hard to deliver.

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