Ok, now that I've hopefully elicited a cheap laugh with the subject line, I am allowing myself a brief glimmer of hope over some of the political news from yesterday. I like to go out for the weekend on a good note. While McCain suffers for choosing Bush regime friends to run with, Obama's pitch to evangelicals is finally making some of them think about expanding their interests beyond abortion and gay marriage.
"The evangelical movement is changing," says a major McCain fundraiser. "It's moving to a bigger place—it's not just pro-life, but includes people who care deeply about homelessness, the environment, Darfur."
Bush-era partisans, of course, continue to hold the line and try to convince evangelicals that abortion and gays are really all that matter. Why are these two issues their core? Why are they even equally important? Gays getting married vs. babies living or dying. Why is this even close?
Obama's faith-based appeal has also been making traditional conservative Christian power players like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council nervous. "I was at a conservative evangelical church in Louisiana," Perkins says, "and a man came up to me and asked: 'Barack Obama or John McCain—which way are we going?' "
Perkins says he thought the man was joking, but "he was serious." So Perkins says he outlined McCain's bona fides on threshold issues for many conservative Christians: the candidate, he told the man, is anti-abortion and opposed to same-sex marriage. Obama supports legalized abortion and civil unions for gay partners.
I'm hopeful that at least a few of these people will get wise to being used by the GOP to ram through tax cuts, war profiteering and curtailing our freedoms while leaving the abortion and gay marriage issues hanging as much as possible -- the better to keep the evangelicals coming back, of course.
Apparently I'm not the only one hoping. One of the comments to the article spoke of expanding the notion of 'right to life' beyond birth...imagine that! I always thought the GOP way was right to life till you're born, then all bets are off. This is the kind of 'pro-life' position I could consider, and I'm not even religious.
One of the more encouraging developments I've seen is the refocusing of the concept of "right to life" to include those already born! Finally, finally, some evangelicals are considering the right to life of young men sent to fight in an unjust war; and the right to life of victims of war and genocide across the world; and the right to life of women who are killed in "honor crimes;" and the right to life for prisoners facing execution.
AT LAST it's not just about forbidding women the right to choose when confronted with a life-threatening pregnancy -- or about voting automatically for the candidate who *claims* to be the MOST anti-abortion candidate. That sort of thinking got us two terms of George W. Bush, and sent our country into a downward spiral from which it may never recover.
Will evangelicals vote for Obama? God willing!!!
