Moonies
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The term "Moonies" refers to members of Sun Myung Moon's controversial Unification Movement. Members prefer the term Unificationist. The term was coined by the New York newspapers, The Daily News and The New York Post in 1974, during their "Madison Square Garden" campaign. The prevailing media-created term "Moonchildren," didn't easily fit a tabloid-size headline.
A kind of urban legend among Unificationists holds that Cat Stevens had studied the Divine Principle in the early 70s and had incorporated some of the church's themes in his rock music, particularly in the song Moonshadow. Some also said, in "Morning Has Broken." However in a 2004 interview with United Press International vice president Larry Moffitt (a Unificationist) the singer, who had left the music business in 1974 and adopted the name Yusuf Islam, set the record straight. He said "Moonshadow" was inspired by seeing his own shadow by the light of a full moon on a beach in Spain. He said, "I looked down and, even though it seems like an obvious thing, I noticed for the first time that the full moon is bright enough to cast shadows." He said he had never studied the Divine Principle.
After some years of going along with the media's use of the term, the Unificationists did an about face in the mid 1980s, when they asked major media organizations to stop referring to them as "Moonies," on the grounds that it is demeaning. The term has since fallen into disuse, except as a pejorative, such as when The Washington Times (owned by Moon) is referred to as the "Moonie Paper."
See also:
The term "moonie", when written with a lowercase "m", can refer to a fan of the anime Sailor Moon. This meaning of the term may be more common on the Internet.