Onward, Christian soldiers.

Christian radio proves a potent medium for antigay politics

Long before the Vermont supreme court's decision on gay couples' rights ever came down, James Dobson knew how to deal with public defeats. In October 1998 the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based religious broadcaster caught wind of a syndicated newspaper column implicating himself and other religious conservatives in the murder of gay Wyoming college student Matthew Shepard. In a radio commentary beamed into millions of homes via thousands of local stations that carry his Christian programs, Dobson sprang into action by assailing the columnist, Deborah Mathis of Gannett News Service, and urged his listeners to phone her in protest. In a political organizer's dream come true, Mathis's office was immediately inundated with thousands of calls,

The attack on Mathis is just one sign of the power that Dobson--the nation's biggest religious broadcaster after TV mogul Pat Robertson--has meticulously assembled through two decades of programming produced through Focus on the Family, the organization he founded in 1977.

"They're mushrooming," says Jerry Sloan, president of Project Tocsin, a Sacramento-based group that monitors the religious right, Sloan cites figures published in April in Focus on the Family's glossy magazine, which claim that Dobson's programs now reach over 660 million people in 95 countries. In the United States alone, 3,023 broadcast facilities, including some secular stations, carry Focus on the Family programming, a spokeswoman says. This radio empire is responsible, Sloan says, for the 2000 presidential candidacy of Gary Bauer, a protege whom Dobson has introduced to his audience as a frequent guest on his programs,

Dobson's voice is the most resonant among conservatives on the Christian airwaves, according to Karl Stoll, spokesman for the National Religious Broadcasters, a national trade association whose members include broadcast operations of other well-known televangelists such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. But the Colorado commentator is far from alone on the dial, Christian radio broadcasters have established a commanding--and largely unnoticed--network for preaching to their followers, targeting key issues and whipping up antigay sentiment, NRB says there are 21 million regular listeners to Christian radio nationwide on 1,731 stations, a fourfold increase since 1971.

Janet Parshall, chief spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C.-based antigay powerhouse Family Research Council, moonlights as a radio-show host from the studios of WAVA-FM in nearby Arlington, Va. Reaching into 30 states, Parshall's show puts a folksy touch on hard-edged family-values diatribes. Parshall, who honed her broadcast skills while assisting Beverly LaHaye at the religious right group Concerned Women for America, regularly includes antigay researcher Peter LaBarbera and so-called ex-gays Yvette Cantu and Michael Johnston as guests on her show.

Despite Parshall's grip on grassroots conservatives, her numbers pale beside those of another big name in conservative broadcasting: Michael Reagan. With political commentary that regularly runs a few notches further to the right of his father, the former president, Reagan reaches into 44 states out of the same Sherman Oaks, Calif., facility where the Dr. Laura show originates [see main story]. Reagan's attacks on nondiscrimination protections include the charge that gay rights kills the First Amendment. In 1999 Reagan took the helm of the Campaign for Working Families, the right-wing, antigay political action committee spun off from the Family Research Council two years earlier; both organizations were headed by Bauer before he declared his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. Guests featured on Reagan's show include Randy Thomasson, a leading proponent of the Knight initiative, the California ballot measure to ban recognition of gay marriages.

Yet the biggest voice in Christian radio is not an individual but a corporation. Salem Communications, based in Camarillo, Calif., presides over a radio empire that extends well beyond the nearly 50 stations it runs outright--to over 1,000 stations that purchase its programming, such as the Parshall show. If Salem seems to have perfected the blend of Christian ministry with conservative politics, it's for a good reason. CEO Edward Atsinger, a longtime member of the far-right political steering committee known as the Council on National Policy, is a mogul of far-right politics who has generously bankrolled GOP campaigns in California in the 1990s, including over $528,000 in 1998 alone, His recent forays into antigay politics include $50,000 contributed in 1999 to the campaign supporting the Knight initiative.

Generous patronage by angels like Atsinger continues to prompt some of the many local voices in Christian radio to jump full-fledged into conservative politics, In California's 74th state assembly district, for instance, Mason Weaver, who introduced himself to voters as a talk show host on the local airwaves, is running in the March GOP primary and can credit the national conservative funding network for many of his contributions.

Midas touch

James Dobson has turned his religious broadcasts into activism gold.

Johnson, an editor at Academe magazine, writes about religion and politics.