It amazes me how many self-described evangelical Christians are rabidly supportive of John McCain and Sarah Palin. How many commandments must McCain and Palin break before these Christian phonies finally reject them?
Let's see. How about the commandment about not bearing false witness, or not lying about someone else? McCain and Palin are outright lying about Obama. Obama is not a socialist. He has no desire for the government to control the means of production. He isn't for state sponsored universal health care, for example. He's for continuing the system of employer sponsored health insurance, with help offered to those who must buy their own policies. That isn't socialism.
Neither is giving tax breaks to the middle class or returning to a more progressive income tax, all policies which have been used for decades in our capitalist system.
So the accusation that Obama is a socialist is a lie, as is the accusation that Obama "pals around with terrorists." First of all Obama doesn't even pal around with one terrorist. He sat on a board with William Ayers, a radical from the sixties who turned himself in and was not convicted of anything. Ayers is now a college professor and a well known advocate for better education policy. If he was once considered a "terrorist," he is not now. (Most real Christians believe in redemption and forgiveness anyway, so why is this an issue?) And Obama has nothing to do with him today and hasn't for years. As for the plural "terrorists," this is even more of a lie. No one has been able to name any former radical other than Ayers or any current terrorist that Obama associates with. So Palin is lying.
How about the commandment to not steal? The republicans are trying desperately to steal the election, by knocking people off voting rolls illegally, by sending out notices that democrats must vote on November 5th, and by using voting machines that have no paper trail and are in some cases recording the votes wrongly.
The republicans in this election (and in the past two) lie, cheat and steal. They slander and whip up hatred in their rallies. Obama, by way of contrast, praises McCain's service, never attacks him for who he is, and tells his listeners not to boo, but just to vote. Obama's behavior is far more Christian than that of Sarah Palin.
I am sick of these "Christians." I am sick of their hatred for gay Americans and black Americans and Mexican Americans, all of whom are children of God. This is a violation of one of the two commandments Jesus gave: love your neighbor as you love yourself.
I am also sick of the gullibility of these Christians-in-name-only who still believe that the republican party will actually do anything to stop abortion. They have had thirty years to do something and they have done nothing. And they never will, because they know there will always be gullible self-righteous "Christians" whom they can deceive into believing that democrats have a "pro-abortion" agenda, which they most definitely do not.
Obama is not pro-abortion, in fact he intends to implement policies to reduce the number of abortions. Abortions generally are reduced in democratic administrations when poverty is reduced, but are increased in republican administrations when poverty levels rise. (70% of all abortions occur in the poor segments of society.) But republicans have decided their one political strategy is to elect "pro-life" candidates who promise to appoint supreme court justices who will overturn Roe V. Wade. There are three flaws with this argument:
1. Republican presidents probably won't nominate justices who will overturn Roe V. Wade because it will mean the end of Republican dominance of the presidency. Once you lose that issue, what else do you have? War and depression?
2. Even if Roe V. Wade is overturned, it won't limit abortions as many states will make abortion legal, and women in states where it is illegal will simply travel to another state, or find an illegal way to have an abortion.
3. Women always have and always will have abortions, legal or not. The legal strategy may change federal law, but it will not likely reduce abortions. Only persuasion and policies to help prevent unwanted pregnancies and reduce poverty levels will do that, and Republicans are failures at all of those things.
Democrats reduce the number of abortions by addressing underlying reasons for abortion: lack of education about contraception, lack of access to contraception, poverty, violent sexual crimes against women. Republicans do just the opposite. They ignore or make worse every possible strategy that could help desperate and vulnerable women, but are all too willing to condemn them when they seek an abortion because someone rapes them, or molests them, or when they are too poor to raise another child but have no access to birth control to prevent pregnancy.
Republicans say abortion is murder. Perhaps so, perhaps not. But Roe V. Wade does not mandate abortion, it simply permits it within the law. On the other hand, war is state sponsored murder. Soldiers are mandated to kill both combatants and civilians. And war waged for false reasons is especially heinous, as is this Iraq War. Yet Republicans, including many "Christians," seem almost universally in favor of both war and capital punishment, two types of state sponsored killing. I find this the ultimate in hypocrisy.
Most democrats I know are morally opposed to abortion and would not have one themselves. But they simply do not think that in the first trimester the government should intervene in a decision a woman makes with her doctor. They also think a woman has a right to protect her life when pregnancy threatens it, and that rape and incest are special circumstances that a woman must be allowed to consider in deciding whether or not to continue a pregnancy. No one I know likes abortion. But democrats believe making abortion illegal is a violation of medical privacy, would be difficult to enforce, and would not likely make much of a dent in the number of abortions anyway. On the other hand, they believe the numbers of abortions can be reduced with the strategies listed above.
I'm tired of being preached to by Christians-in-name-only who slander others, lie about political opponents, try to steal elections, and cheer state sponsored killing. I'm tired of them using the Bible as a weapon. And I'm really tired of being attacked by "pro-life" people because I don't think abortion is the business of the state.
I'll take my chances with the version of Christianity I learned growing up. Love your enemies, be good to those that persecute you, don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal, take care of the poor, and judge not lest you be judged.
And I'm voting for the man who best embodies those principles: Barack Obama.
