How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science
• Christian Fundamentalism , • Miseducation , • Wearisome Bedfellows
As Esther Kaplan shows in this fast-paced investigation, no condom fact sheet or obscure drug advisory panel is too small to escape the roving eyes of Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, or the many other political advocacy arms of the evangelical right. While organizations that promote family planning and sex education are the targets of relentless audits, church groups receive hundreds of millions in federal dollars for programs promoting sexual abstinence and marriage training, especially for the poor.
Esther Kaplan grew up in the only non-Christian family in her hometown of King's Valley, Oregon. Her childhood was deeply intertwined with those of Christian fundamentalists she played with and with whom her family socialized, even as she was often considered an oddity who needed to be converted. Later in life she was touched personally and then compelled into activity by the AIDS epidemic, particularly disturbed by the hateful response of some of the Christian Right who viewed AIDS as a just punishment from God against gays. It is this intimate familiarity with both the people who make up much of the base of the rapidly growing Christian Right in this country, as well as with the human cost and suffering being inflicted by the political operatives leading this movement, that Esther has approached the subject of the rising role Christian fundamentalism in this country.
Interview: Esther Kaplan: On the Trail of the Christian Right