Without a Prayer

It's not like McCain isn't going to get Christian votes. In fact, his relationship with fundamentalist Christian groups has come a long way since last year, when some Christian leaders vowed to sit out the election if McCain was the nominee. Back then, it really looked bleak: Some prominent Christians sounded like they would rather have baguettes shoved up their asses than go anywhere near McCain come November. "Speaking as a private individual, I would not vote for John McCain under any circumstances," declared James Dobson, head of the influential Focus on the Family.

The Dobson comment came in January 2007, on a radio program called Jerry Johnson Live, a broadcast that exposed McCain's weaknesses with regard to the Christian community. Dobson was holding forth about this and that when the host suddenly whipped out an old audio recording of McCain offering his opinion about a key "values" issue. It was the kind of nightmarish, weirdly tolerant quip that seems to bubble up from McCain's past with unnerving regularity: "I think, uh . . . I think that gay marriage should be allowed if there's a ceremony kind of thing, if you wanna call it that," incredulous conservative listeners could hear McCain saying. "I don't have any problem with that."

That was enough for Dobson. "He's not in favor of traditional marriage, and I pray that we won't get stuck with him," he growled.

But that was back in the days when Huckabee was still a candidate and a whole field of more openly pious and gay-bashing Republicans had not yet dropped out. Since then, McCain has dealt with his weakness on the gay-marriage issue as he has dealt with countless others — by changing his mind. In fact, McCain changed his mind barely 11 minutes after the above "gay marriage should be allowed" statement, made on Hardball back in October 2006. "I believe that if people want to have private ceremonies, that's fine," he said in his about-face. "I do not believe that gay marriage should be legal." Just last week, McCain also came out against gay adoption. But for the most part, his strategy has been to just stop talking about any of this shit at all, recognizing that his political situation vis-à-vis the religious right improved dramatically without him saying a word the minute his chief opponent stopped being ex-preacher Mike Huckabee and started being queer-loving, Bernie Mac buddy Barack Obama.

It's McCain's newfound status as the lesser of two evils that recently won him a previously unthinkable triumph — the pledged support of more than 100 Christian groups who met in Denver on July 1st to create a so-called "Declaration of American Values." Organized by Mat Staver, chairman of the fundamentalist group Liberty Counsel, the declaration was an attempt to reunite a Christian right that, as Staver tells me, had suffered "through a fractious primary season. There were a lot of hurt feelings." The group — which included notables on the religious right like Phyllis Schlafly and Tim Lahaye — settled on a list of 10 basic principles, including the perennial sanctity of life and anti-gay-marriage stuff, as well as some weirder and less biblically obvious demands supporting unfettered gun ownership and opposing taxation "of a progressive nature."

And while the group came out in support of McCain, Staver is anxious that this not be interpreted as a broad expression of enthusiasm by the Christian right. "Uh, the media somewhat didn't accurately report that," he says with obvious fright in his voice. "This wasn't a Declaration of American Values in support of John McCain. This was a statement of support for those core values." It was agreed, Staver clarifies, that supporting McCain in this election was merely the best choice for the "short term." And the reason for that, he says, is that the election of Barack Obama would "decimate American values." From there, Staver is off and running about Obama's record on abortion rights and gay marriage, and how generally an Obama election would bring about the end of civilization; he said almost nothing about McCain.

I get the same response when I speak to Kristi Hamrick of the Campaign for Working Families, a political fundraising group affiliated with former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, who was one of the first prominent Christian-right leaders to pledge support for McCain. When I ask a general question about how evangelicals will vote in the fall, Hamrick immediately focuses on Obama. "When California endorsed gay marriage, Barack Obama said it was a good idea. John McCain didn't," she tells me. "It would be different if we had a pro-choice Republican running, but we don't. We have a pro-life Republican."

But despite the nearly monolithic support of the organized Christian right for McCain now that the infidel Obama is on the ballot, there's no guarantee that Christian voters are buying McCain as the electoral protector of biblical family values. In fact, McCain's backtracking with regard to the religious right seems to have had an off-putting effect: A recent poll shows that only one in 10 registered voters are more likely to vote for McCain now that he is campaigning with the religious right. Two in 10, on the other hand, say they are now less likely to vote for him.