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The bond that explains why some on the Christian right support Putin’s war
The Russian Orthodox Church and southern US Evangelism.
A marriage of racial/LGBTQ bigotry and xenophobia.
3.5.22
Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers (R) was only one of the speakers at the Feb. 25 America First Political Action Conference to voice support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But her meme-ready remark — urging more tanks and using a crude term to call for fewer transgender people — reminds us that many on the American right see Russia as an ally in the culture wars. This long-standing alliance has forced a rift within the Republican Party since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. But there is another dimension to this rift, illustrated by the audience to which Rogers spoke: how this alliance of cultural conservatives in the United States and Russia has also embraced racial and ethnic bigotry. White evangelicals once saw Russia as an existential threat to traditional gender roles and sexual morality, but over the past three decades, they have forged a partnership in a global family values movement that not only embraces sexual and gender traditionalism but sees these practices as a solution to demographic changes around the globe. In fact, GOP-proposed state-level anti-transgender and “Don’t Say Gay” bills actually echo Russian laws — which isn’t surprising since U.S. conservatives contributed to the Russian legal prohibitions.
In 1995, Russian demographers met with the American Howard Center for the Family, Religion and Society, a project of the paleoconservative movement that mixed Holocaust deniers, Neo-Confederates and racist anti-immigrant activists. They agreed that low White birthrates were caused by the decline of traditional family forms and gender roles — and therefore the answer was the official suppression of sexual and gender dissent. Their efforts produced the World Congress of Families, which combines funding from conservative Russian oligarchs with the organizing know-how of groups like the National Organization for Marriage — a key player in California’s 2008 same-sex marriage ban. Russian Orthodox leadership in the global family values movement makes Eastern Christianity an appealing symbol for some of the most repugnant representatives of the racist right — again demonstrating the racial subtext of overt sexual conservatism. As Russian tanks roll toward Kyiv and AFPAC speakers cheer, Putin can count on the respect many Christian conservatives in the United States have for Orthodox Russia as the international standard-bearer for family values. Certainly not all the ties between American Republicans and Russian interests are based on long-standing religious visions of traditional families and White Christian supremacy. But there is no making sense of them without that context.
The Russian Orthodox Church and southern US Evangelism.
A marriage of racial/LGBTQ bigotry and xenophobia.