The Fear Merchants
The 2004 Election
A lot of black Christians, obsessed with gay marriage and abortion rights, will be voting for the president, who all but wrote off the black vote. Many black Christians are, ironically, following an agenda white Christian conservatives have set, knowing only that the president is against abortion and gay marriage, the only two issues the religious right seem to care anything about. It's an unexpected bonus for the Republicans: black votes by default.
Part
1: What's At Stake
Abortion. Gay Marriage. Family values. President Bush enjoys the
strong support of the religious right, largely on the basis of
his strong moral values and his close walk with God. But this is
a president who almost never goes to church. A president whose
expression of his faith sputters out two or three sentences in.
Who cannot speak articulately about matters of faith and who
apparently cannot quote even one Biblical scripture without a
TelePrompTer. I've heard a great many Christians tell me they
will vote for the president because John Kerry supports stem
cell research which equals John Kerry supports abortion. Which
is patently untrue. A faithful Catholic who actually does got to
church, Kerry personally opposes abortion but supports a woman's
right to chose; the same right, incidentally, that God has
granted all of us— to accept His truth or reject it. Also,
embryonic stem cells have almost nothing to do with abortion
(though the religious right has done its best to link the two).
Embryonic stem cells are byproducts of in vitro fertilization,
and would be destroyed anyway if not used for research. There's
been no outcry from the Religious Right over in vitro
fertilization (and it's fair to assume some percentage of in
vitro fertilization is done for conservative Christian couples,
who must implicitly understand their unused embryos will
eventually be destroyed. Check this web site for additional
information about stem cell research.
Which ever way you are leaning, it is extremely vital that you
ask questions. Don't just believe the TV commercials, ask real
questions. Do some homework. More than any election in this
century, this election is too important to our future, to the
future of our children. We should not oppose the president
simply because he is Republican any more than we should support
Senator Kerry simply because he is a Democrat. The Democrats
have enjoyed a relatively free ride at the expense of the Black
community for decades. But where are The Reverend Al Sharpton
and Senator Carol Mosley Braun? Why have they been shunted to
the sidelines? Voting for the president because he is
anti-abortion doesn't help anything because no president alone
will ever manage to overturn Roe vs. Wade. Voting for the
president because he opposes Gay Marriage doesn't help because
no president alone is going to get a constitutional amendment
passed banning gay marriage. These two hot button issues, upon
which the religious right has built their support for the
president, will see absolutely no change one way or the other,
regardless of who is elected in three weeks.
So, What Will Change?
Several weeks before 9/11, the president was handed a security
memo entitled bin Laden Determined To Attack Within The United
States, along with other intelligence warnings of a possible
plot to use airplanes as weapons. By all available testimony and
evidence, it is apparent the president, enjoying a month-long
vacation at his Texas ranch, never read it.
Over 5,000 U.S. soldiers have been wounded or killed in a war
that has nothing to do with 9/11 and nothing to do with
terrorism other than, by killing thousands of innocent Iraqis,
it is creating terrorists at an exponential rate. The president
has absolutely no plan for getting our troops out of Iraq. Of
course he stands by his decision to invade— he HAS to. Of course
he says it's the right decision, he HAS to. The flag-waving
right wing who claim that Bush is a patriot for supporting a war
he started and Kerry isn’t a patriot because he criticizes it
are hopelessly naive.
The president inherited a trillion-dollar surplus and now leaves
us with a trillion-dollar deficit. The president has spent $120
billion and counting in Afghanistan and Iraq, $70 billion of
which went to no-bid contracts for, among others, Halliburton
(the Vice President's former company) and United Defense
Corporation, which manufactures the Bradley Armored Fighting
vehicle, the ubiquitous tank used in Afghanistan and Iraq (and
whose investors included the Saudi bin Laden Group and the Bush
family).
The president has lost over a million jobs. Millions of people
have lost their health care. Fuel prices are at unprecedented
highs, and people are having to choose between having heat and
having food. The “jobs” being created under the president's
economic plan are, on average, lower-paying jobs than those lost
during his administration.
This is, by any reasonable and objective measurement, one of the
worst presidents and worst records in our nation's history. But
nearly all of the major conservative Christian ministries back
him. Most Catholic and Episcopal institutions are firmly backing
the president. Why? Abortion. Gay Marriage. Family Values.
Things that absolutely will not change, one way or another,
regardless of who is elected.
Voting for the president on the basis of Abortion, Gay Marriage
and Family Values while turning a blind eye and deaf ear to tens
of thousands of dead, blinded, crippled and maimed in
Afghanistan and Iraq, to the hobbled economy and to genuine
questions about this president's motives and his truthfulness,
is an abdication of our responsibility as citizens and as
Christians. Most people supporting the president never even ask
these questions. Most believe whatever the GOP party line of the
day is, as well as the president's constantly-revised motives
for invading a sovereign country that never threatened us, that
never harmed even one of our citizens.
The message seems to be, Bush is saved, Kerry is a sinner.
Neither are entirely true. While I don't claim to know where the
president stands in terms of his relationship to a risen Christ,
Kerry's own claims to faith seem at least as credible as the
president's. The difference between the two seems to be the
president is trying to lead us to believe there'll be no
abortion or gay marriage if he is reelected— which is simply not
true. Regardless of who is elected, the key planks of the
religious right's political platform will not change. But the
larger issues, the catastrophic ones, remain largely ephemeral
and vague, glossed over by the pulpit pounding gay bigotry and
anti-abortion rhetoric.
The religious right has been aptly described as the foot
soldiers of this president's domestic initiates, and the
broadest base of his reelection campaign. His most enthusiastic
and energized demographic, the masses of white evangelicals,
Catholics and Baptists follow the president as a kind of
religious mission: to keep the heathens out of the White House.
Which is ironic considering, by most any reasonably objective
viewpoint, the heathens are already in. And this president is
Heathen-In-Chief.
This nation impeached a former president for telling a lie about
an affair with a college intern. But this country turns a blind
eye and deaf ear to a president who has lied in order to send us
to war. We scorn and ridicule the former president who has
confessed many faults and admitted many mistakes, but we rally,
blindly, behind this president who refuses to admit he's ever
made any. A candidate who promised to unite us, this president
is, in fact, the most polarizing president in thirty years. Both
he and the vice president often appear smug, dismissive,
sneering and contemptuous of anyone who does not agree with
them. Their current struggle is the effort to appear human and
nice, with phony, cheese-eating smiles, as they try and win the
hearts of the small handful of undecideds who will, in fact,
decide this election.
Just as Black America has blindly followed the Democrats, the
religious Right has blindly and solidly backed the Republicans.
It is a terrible thing to abandon one's own conscience, to
ignore the very obvious and cruel and most certainly
un-Christ-like nature of this administration, and make a cal to
arms to re-elect him simply because he has “conservative family
values.” The president should not enjoy a free ride from you
simply because you are a Christian any more than the Democrats
should enjoy a free ride simply because you are a minority.
Church, we simply have to do better than that. We have to start
demanding accountability of our leaders. Our pastors as well as
our presidents. The pastors are shouting “Vote Your Conscience,”
which is code for Abortion, Gay Marriage and Family Values. I
say, “Vote Your Intelligence.” Vote not only for what is right
but for what is a responsible choice.
Look at both candidate's records objectively, outside of the
useless argument over Abortion, Gay Marriage and Family Values—
things that will not change no matter who wins. And vote for the
candidate that will make a real difference in mending fences
with our allies across the globe, in implementing sound fiscal
policy, in a reasonable education and health policy, in
developing a real exit strategy for Iraq.
If you can objectively and faithfully conclude the best person
to accomplish these things is the president, by all means vote
for him. But don't NOT vote for Kerry because somebody told you
he's a sinner who's going to take your gun away, triple the
number of abortions and open the flood gates for gay marriage.
That's a lie. And it's a lie being promoted by pastors, which is
absolutely shameful. Kerry could no more do that than the
president could get Roe v. Wade overturned.
The church, ideally, should not be involved in politics. The
church should not be buddying up to Bush or promoting Kerry.
It's just wrong when the church endorses either candidate. But
it is absolutely heinous when the church knowingly endorses a
lie. Even worse when it sins by silence.
Don't be used. By the Republicans, by the Democrats, by Jerry
Falwell, by the American Council of Churches, by the Christian
Coalition of America. Vote your conscience, yes, but don't JUST
vote your conscience. Vote your intelligence. Put your faith
into action. Ask questions. Be tough on both candidates. Be
responsible.
This time, it really is much too important for the Black Church
to just sleep through it.
Christopher J. Priest
18 October 2004
editor@praisenet.org
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