The modern religious right formed,
practically overnight, as a rapid response to the Supreme Court's landmark
ruling in Roe v. Wade. Or, at least, that's how the story goes. The reality,
Randall Balmer, a Dartmouth professor writing for Politico Magazine, says, is
actually a little less savory to 21st century Americans: The religious right,
who liked to call themselves the "moral majority" at the time,
actually organized around fighting to protect Christian schools from being
desegregated. It wasn't Roe v. Wade that woke the sleeping dragon of the
evangelical vote. It was Green v. Kennedy, a 1970 decision stripping tax-exempt
status from "segregation academies"—private Christian schools that
were set up in response to Brown v. Board of Education, where the practice of
barring black students continued.
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