Rockers for Life
Many pro-life conservatives don’t appreciate the power of the arts to persuade and educate.

By Mark Joseph, author of The Rock & Roll Rebellion — Why People of Faith Abandoned Rock Music and Why They're Coming Back & president of the MJM Entertainment Group
April 25, 2001 9:40 a.m.

onight, on the Starlight Roof of the swank Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, hundreds of anti-abortion activists will spend $500 each to wine and dine and honor those whom the National Right To Life Committee will anoint as heroes of the anti-abortion movement.

The Rev. Frank Pavone, head of Priests for Life, and Lawrence D. Garvey, founding partner of Radiofone Inc., will be honored for their contributions to the anti-abortion cause. In the past the dinner has honored Mrs. Arthur DeMoss, John Cardinal O'Connor, Virgil Dechant of the Knights of Columbus, Bishop James T. McHugh, and Congressman Christopher Smith.

Many other leaders of the pro-life movement will also be there.

More interesting, however, than the question of who will be there is the question of who won't be there.

In spite of their self-perception as estranged outsiders in the American cultural landscape, leaders of the pro-life movement are just as capable of shunning others as they themselves are shunned by the popular media and the entertainment culture. Incredibly, they are even capable of shunning those who agree with their pro-life position.

How else to explain the fact that pro-lifers consistently ignore rock stars who risk their careers by taking a most unpopular stand against abortion rights?

Just ask Gary Cherone, the former lead singer of the rock group Van Halen. Cherone has long been vocal in his opposition to abortion. In the early 90s he had two big hits with his band Extreme, "More Than Words" and "Hole-Hearted." Cherone also wrote a most unusual ballad called "Rock A Bye Bye" that, had the pro-life movement any brains at all, might have become the anthem for their cause in the same way that Bob Dylan's "Blowin' In The Wind" was championed by 60s revolutionaries.

In 1997, Cherone became the lead singer of Van Halen. Soon after the release of his first record with the band, he kicked off a public campaign against abortion by sending a letter to Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, who had become a cheerleader for abortion with the pro-choice group Rock For Choice.

Vedder never responded to Cherone, so Cherone ratcheted up the debate another notch, this time going on Fox television's The O'Reilly Factor, where host Bill O'Reilly quizzed the singer about his views. Weeks later Cherone was out of the band.

Nobody can prove a direct causal link between Cherone's departure from Van Halen and his anti-abortion activism. Was he out because of Van Halen's slumping album sales, the fans' disgust with the new Cherone-influenced Van Halen message, which included lyrics lifted from the New Testament, or because of his passionate opposition to abortion on demand? Nobody knows for sure, but there is one point on which there should be unanimous agreement on the part of anti-abortion leaders: Cherone was always on their side and he wasn't ashamed of what he believed.

The sad fact is that many pro-life conservatives hate or mistrust the arts and have never understood its power to persuade and educate. How else to explain the lack of recognition among their ranks for Cherone's work, or for the work of Kings X, a Texas band that released an anti-abortion track called "Legal Kill"? Or for guitar legend Phil Keaggy and his tender ballad, "Little Ones," Gospel legend Andrae Crouch and his "I'll Be Good To You Baby," and rock mogul Steve Taylor and his haunting rendition of "Baby Doe?"

More recently, the hard-rock band Creed has topped the charts with "Arms Wide Open," which chronicles lead singer Scott Stapp's own experience with an unexpected baby (in which abortion was never contemplated); he also explicitly condemns abortion with the song "In America."

Will Cherone, Stapp, Keaggy, Crouch, Taylor or any other rock stars be invited to National Right To Life's swank dinner at the Waldorf? Will they be honored with an award, just as the pro-choicers honor those who embrace their cause? Not likely. No matter how Americans truly feel about abortion, they will tend to be more sympathetic to the pro-choice side than the pro-life side for this reason: Pro-choicers are far more adept at presenting the public with popular, pro-choice personalities.

The anti-abortion movement, it seems, is ashamed to be associated with long-haired rock stars. After all, they might ruin the mood at the luxurious Waldorf.

A few years back the chief planner of the Proudly Pro-Life Award dinner offered this response when asked why rock stars weren't honored: "It takes more than singing a song to make one a champion of life." By contrast, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president, understood the link between popular culture and the social conscience of his nation. Upon meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of the anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, he is said to have remarked, "so this is the little lady who started this great war." The Pro-life movement needs more Lincolns.