Going Behind Closed Doors in Christian Right Households

By Jeremy Adam Smith, Public Eye
Posted on April 11, 2008, Printed on April 11, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/82000/

"Models of idealized family structure lie metaphorically at the heart of our politics," writes linguist George Lakoff in his 2002 book Moral Politics. "Our beliefs about the family exert a powerful influence over our beliefs about what kind of society we should build."

Certainly, many Christian Right leaders would agree with him.

People who make it their business to track and fight the Right tend, with good reason, to focus on public, political activity, but the Christian Right sees the private home as a major arena of political struggle and a showcase for the world they want to live in. "These homes are the source of ordered liberty, the fountain of real democracy, the seedbed of virtue," write long-time activists Allan C. Carlson and Paul T. Mero in their new book, The Natural Family: A Manifesto.