I Learned How to Make a Christian Conservative Meme at the Values Voter Summit, and You Can Too

Washington D.C.—On Saturday, across the street from Omni Shoreham Hotel, where this year’s Family Research Council-sponsored Values Voter Summit was being held, groups of high-school girls in oversized blazers and too-tight french braids, and high school boys in too-tight button-down shirts and oversized “Make America Great Again” hats crammed into line at a Chipotle, effectively rendering that Chipotle closed.

But inside the hotel, where, on Friday afternoon Donald Trump spoke to thousands of Jesus-endorsed homophobes, things seemed quieter. The presence of national media and secret service agents had largely dissipated after Trump and Saturday morning’s speech from his running mate Mike Pence. Most of the devoted attendees who had chosen to stay for the second day of the conference sat in the main ballroom, listening to speakers like David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress, who in his speech vowed that more Planned Parenthood sting videos would be coming, and Virginia Prodan, a Christian, Republican, human rights attorney who—appealingly to this crowd—escaped from communist Romania.

The hotel hallways were basically empty, as was the exhibition hall, where anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-Communist, pro-modesty groups of all stripes had set up little booths covered in pamphlets and Hershey’s Kisses.

(I got one pamphlet that told the story of Stephen who “used to be gay” but “now has two kids,”; a bumper sticker that says “Trevor Loudon Commie Hunter,”; a print out titled “Media Myths of the Homosexual-Transgender Agenda” which, among other things, claims that being gay is bad for your health. I loitered by a table advertising Samson, a large theme-park-style biblical play in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, until a guy who appeared to be in high school tried to flirt with me. I inhaled an imaginary cigarette, blew it in his face and said with my eyes, You don’t know the things I’ve seen.)

Over and over I was told: the youth are the future of this movement. We need to make our way of life seem cool to the youth. Do you hear us, youth?

After the speeches concluded, conference attendees had the option of attending two breakout sessions on topics that ranged from “How to Protect Yourself and America Against Attacks on Religious Freedom” to “How to Be a Christian Statesman-Citizen,” and “Intellectual Freedom or Ideological Fascism?” I chose to attend “The Roadmap to a Conservative and Pro-Life Culture in America” because I work for Jezebel, and something called “Social Media Trends” because I love social media and also trends.

The first panel, which was held in a freezing, unnecessarily large conference room, attracted maybe 25 attendees, leaving the set up chairs at least half-empty. The overall gist of the panel, which was, in theory, about advancing a pro-life agenda in the United States, became about social media and digitally pummeling organizations into ceding to ultra-conservative wishes. Panelists spoke about the victories of pressuring corporations to stop supporting Planned Parenthood, and, most recently, of getting Lands’ End to disavow its own Gloria Steinem cover story.

Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life, and one of the panel’s leaders, also gave us an almost charmingly basic lesson in social media: “We at the March for Life, we try to engage in all the different kinds of social media. For example, my understanding right now is that Instagram is one of the most popular kind of mediums of social media that the young people really love. We are very active on Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo is one, and then there’s one I’m forgetting now that starts with a P—”

“Pinterest,” suggested one of her co-panelists, helpfully.