#718: Robert Grant

Robert G. Grant is one of the grand old men of the religious right. He was an early chairman of Christian Voice and the American Freedom Coalition, and was central in building the Taliban organization Moral Majority with Jerry Falwell. Christian Voice was founded in 1978 (by Grant and reverend Richard Zone – don’t know what Zone’s doing these days) to combat “legalized abortions, limitations on school prayer, rampant homosexuality,” secular humanism, and the teaching of evolution.

The American Freedom Coalition (AFC) was created in 1987 as another typical wingnut organization with goals that are pretty much indistinguishable from the goals of other wingnut organizations and similarly indistinguishable views on abortion, pornography, environmental issues, politics and so on. According to Grant, the AFC was created as a response to “the inability of the Christian Right to achieve its agenda,” its “failure to build coalitions with its philosophical allies from other communities,” and – in conclusion – that the Religious Right was a “sham ... controlled by three Catholics and a Jew.” In reality, however, the AFC is a Moonie front organization, and the motivation for creating it was that the other wingnut organizations didn’t want to play with the Moonies.

Grant himself is in fact not unequivocally a Moonie. Instead he serves a role as the AFC’s more traditionally evangelical alibi. He’s terribly crazy, however, as evidenced for instance by this fundraising letter – even by anti-gay activist standards this one belongs to the crazy end.

Diagnosis: Little to distinguish him from other wingnut extremists, but he is still pretty dangerous.