Moral Majority regroups

Friday, Jan. 21, 2005, was a day the Rev. Jerry Falwell has been dreaming of for at least 25 years.

That day, Falwell was an invited guest at the final inaugural event of President George W. Bush's second term, a prayer service at the National Cathedral.

"I was sitting at the cathedral with some of the leading clergymen of the country," Falwell told me later that day. "We talked after the service and I said this was vintage George W. Bush.

"This is America under God again."

Falwell couldn't have chosen a slogan that more embodied his aim when he started the Moral Majority 25 years ago. His goal had been to change American politics and culture to reflect the conservative Christian faith he and the other Moral Majority co-founders believed most of their fellow citizens shared.

The first Moral Majority lasted only 10 years before Falwell disbanded it and retrenched in Lynchburg to pull Liberty University and Thomas Road Baptist Church back from the brink of financial ruin.

Now he's resurrected the name, at least.

Moral Majority Coalition

A new organization he created in the days after November's election is now called the Moral Majority Coalition, rather than the Faith and Values Coalition, its leadership's first choice. The first name was too close to some existing groups', Falwell said, so he decided to go with the Moral Majority moniker.

He acknowledges that the name does evoke a "confrontational image, just as I do," a bit of baggage that caused some hesitation to use it. In the end, however, "I'm sort of glad we're back to Moral Majority. I like them to know the gun is loaded."

The new Moral Majority is starting off with a mailing list of about 5 million families, Falwell said, and its leaders will gather in February to put together a four-year strategy.

That will include attempting to register 10 million new voters - specifically evangelical Christians - by 2008, "so we can be sure Hillary [Clinton] will never become president." It also will support efforts to pass constitutional amendments limiting marriage to legal unions of one man and one woman in all 50 states, "all aimed at a federal amendment."

That effort starts right here in Virginia, where several competing proposals to amend the state constitution have been floated in this year's legislative session.

Among the differences is the question of whether the language should likewise ban "civil unions." Falwell said he can support an amendment even without a ban on civil unions if it could draw sufficient votes for passage in both houses.

Learning a lesson

"The idea is you can never legislate in a way that adulterers stop committing adultery or homosexuals stop committing their perversion. You can't stop sin," Falwell said. "All I want to do is protect and defend the sacred union of a marriage relationship uniquely between a man and a woman."

He'll continue to promote a federal amendment, however, in the belief that the courts eventually will overturn a state amendment or the federal Defense of Marriage Act that allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages or unions.

"Our only hope is a federal marriage amendment that places the definition out of reach of all courts and legislatures forever."

Overall, Falwell exudes the confidence of a winner as President Bush's second term begins.

He remembers, however, that some like-minded believers were sure they had done all they needed to do for permanent change with the 1980 election - and 1984 re-election - of Ronald Reagan.

Despite Reagan's landslide victories, Bill Clinton was able to unseat his successor - the first George Bush - and win re-election with a huge popular vote. That's a lesson Falwell doesn't want the Moral Majority - for whom he still believes he speaks - to forget.