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As Oldmixon's book warns, the elements described above create a combustible mix: combining deeply held beliefs, passionate activists speaking in black and white terms, and an unwieldy legislative body that does much of its best work through compromises behind the scenes is often a recipe for disaster. And this disastrous combination is exactly why Uncompromising Positions is such an important read for those seeking to integrate their religious values and worldviews with the political process.
Oldmixon enters this minefield by examining three moral issues on the agenda in the House of Representatives: abortion and reproductive policy, gay and lesbian rights, and school prayer. She traces the rival cultural streams that represent powerful currents underlying much of contemporary American politics: the culture of progressive sexuality and the culture of religious traditionalism. Although this section is essential to establish the book's argument, Oldmixon relies too heavily on a small number of sources. Thus, while her account provides a useful timeline, it should not be read as a comprehensive and multi-faceted treatment.
Chapters one and five rely extensively on data collected from Oldmixon's interviews with legislators and their aides; the general reader will likely find these chapters most compelling. Oldmixon's generous use of direct quotations from these interviews adds depth and richness to her arguments. Consider for example this description from a Republican representative:
My decision making process is as follows… . If my district indicates, and I have a pretty good idea that this is a fair representation of my district, if they indicate somewhere between 45 and 55 percent on a certain issue, I vote the way I want to. If it gets between 40 and 45, 55 and 60 percent on an issue I begin to really weigh what they think, if it happens to be different from mine. I factor that in. If it's over 60 percent I factor what they think heavily into my decision-making process, and if it's more than that I generally vote with them… . But on moral issues, this is the thing that I am getting to: I decided before I came up here that I was going to vote exactly the way I thought I should vote, regardless of what everyone thought about it, and let the chips fall where they may.
Oldmixon's interviews with legislators suggest that most lawmakers view moral issues as a distinctive policy domain, deferring to their own values and beliefs when deciding how to vote on cultural issues. These findings highlight an interesting irony: on those issues characterized by such heated and polarized rhetoric along with strong grassroots lobbying, outside pressure on legislators seems least effective.
The fourth chapter presents quantitative models to predict a legislator's support for bills relating to each of the three issues (reproductive policy, gay rights, and school prayer). Oldmixon includes variables to account for the demographics of congressional districts as well as characteristics of individual legislators. The models explain much of the variance in legislator support (at least by the standards of social science), but the district-level variables have more predictive power than those describing individual legislators. In particular, once the models control for a representative's sex, partisanship, ideology, and interest group affinity, religious variables often lose their significance. For example, identification as a white religious conservative is rarely a significant predictor of legislative behavior. The noted exceptions in the analysis are Catholics; at both the individual and district level, Oldmixon finds strong relationships between Catholic religious identity and legislative support for moral issues.
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