Seeking Strategy on Social Issues

Rightists agree on policy, but they differ on ways and means

To use a phrase that its members would appreciate, the New Right won attention as a voice crying in the wilderness—bewailing the moral decay of the nation, calling down the wrath of the righteous on those legislators who were in thrall to the golden calf of “secular humanism.” Now it has elected enough people who echo its call for a return to the old values, to have a shot at writing those values into real legislation. Says Connie Marshner, a leader in the right-wing Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress: “It is time to get moving.”

But the New Right is suffering the classic ills of an “anti” movement coming close to power. It is more skilled at denouncing laws than at writing them. It is divided over how far to dilute the purity of its principles in order to draft bills that might actually become the law of the land. A roundup of its principal concerns, the so-called “social issues”:

ABORTION. Putting an end to it is at the top of every New Rightist’s agenda. But how? Their originally preferred vehicle in the current session of Congress was a Jesse Helms bill proclaiming that “human life begins at conception.” That is an attempt to do an end run around Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that states could not outlaw abortion in the early months of pregnancy; if the bill succeeds, abortion would become murder in the eyes of the law. But Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, a rival of Helms’ for the congressional leadership of the New Right, objected. He feared that the bill, if enacted, would be struck down by the Supreme Court and would distract attention from a definitive solution: an amendment to the Constitution forbidding abortion. He won reluctant agreement to shelve the bill while Hatch hatched an amendment.

Trouble is, a constitutional amendment must be passed by a two-thirds vote of both Senate and House, and then ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the states. Also, New Rightists have submitted no fewer than 18 proposed amendments: some would ban any abortions whatever; others would permit those necessary to save a mother’s life. Hatch’s own bill essentially would turn over the whole issue to the states, leaving them free to enact any kind of abortion law they chose. One Hatch aide contends frankly that this approach is intended “to capture the necessary votes from the less hard core.” Antiabortion diehards point out that states could pass liberal as well as strict abortion laws.

BUSING. This is one issue on which the New Right can attract votes from legislators who would not side with it on any other matters. But again the question is how best to stop it? Jesse Helms has introduced a rider—to the bill authorizing funds for the Department of Justice—that would ban Government initiation of desegregation cases that would lead “directly or indirectly” to busing for the purpose of racial integration. His move has so far been blocked by a Senate filibuster by liberal Republican Lowell Weicker of Connecticut. Moreover, Helms’ effort has been complicated by another rider proposed by Democratic Senator Bennett Johnston of Louisiana that would overturn existing busing orders as well. Meanwhile, Hatch plans to introduce a bill to limit the power of fedral courts—up to, but not including, the Supreme Court—to order busing. That would bring up a whole new issue for the New Right: whether to concentrate on restricting the power of courts, which conservatives are convinced are the runaway enforcers of secular humanism, to rule on social issues or whether to focus on the issues themselves.

SCHOOL PRAYER. Helms has reintroduced a bill banning Supreme Court review of cases involving prayer in public schools, and a Senate Judiciary subcommittee has scheduled hearings on it for next January or February. But Hatch has scheduled competing hearings on a plan of his own to restrict the powers of lower courts, but not the Supreme Court, to rule on prayer as well as busing cases.

THE FAMILY. Republican Senator Roger Jepsen of Iowa has introduced an omnibus “Family Protection Act” that is something of a New Right wish list. Among many other provisions, it would exclude “discipline or corporal punishment methods applied by a parent” from the restrictions of child-abuse laws, deny federal funds to schools that do not allow “parental review of textbooks prior to their use in public school classrooms,” prevent any school from using federal money to buy educational materials that present an overly progressive view of “the status role of men and women” and permit any schools receiving federal cash to “limit or prohibit the intermingling of the sexes in any sport or other school-related activity.” Even Jepsen recognizes that his mishmash has no chance of passing Congress intact, so he proposes to put up seven sections for individual votes. One would, in effect, legalize prayer in public schools. The other six would provide tax incentives for people to adopt children and care for the handicapped and elderly dependents at home—which might indeed strengthen families but do nothing to further separation of the sexes or reinforce parental authority over children.

New Rightists recognize that other issues that matter to them—the effort to limit sex and violence on television, say, or require the teaching of “creationism” as well as evolution in schools—are not susceptible to federal legislation, but must be fought out in arenas outside Congress. So, too, must the battle to prevent the Equal Rights Amendment, three states short of ratification with ten months to go, from being enacted. On the federal level, Howard Phillips, director of the Conservative Caucus, proclaims the real goal of the social conservatives to be “defunding the left”—that is, killing programs that use federal money to “subsidize liberal anti-family values.” Translation: the New Right still is much more certain of what it is against than of what it is for. —By George J, Church. Reported by Johanna McGeary/Washington