They may say that, and they may even believe it, but they’ll still vote for pro-abortion Republicans over anti-abortion Democrats.
For proof, I offer the Stupak Amendment. When Senate Republicans found that they couldn’t kill the Affordable Care Act, they settled for killing as much of it as they could. Which was an amendment added by Bart Stupak (D), which would have prohibited any federal funding from going towards abortion. If passed, this would have been the strongest federal anti-abortion legislation since Roe V. Wade. And the Senate Republicans unanimously killed it, 40 out of 40.
For that to be even a half-way convincing example, you’re first going to have to offer evidence that ANY of the Senate Republicans are actually Christians. I am not at all certain that any of them actually are.
Well, they have appointed Supreme Court justices who would be slightly more likely to overturn Roe, which then incrementally could make abortion more illegal, etc.
But even if there is no concrete improvement on the abortion issue, people still naturally vote for the side that “sounds” more right. Imagine a pacifist faced with the choice between the Democrats and Republicans. Both sides have overwhelmingly approved massive military budgets. But at least the Democrats are more likely to say the right-sounding things like “Imagine if all these billions spent on wars were spent on schools and hospitals,” etc.
Maybe a Democrat could run with something like “hey the way to lower abortions without removing rights from people is to ensure other options, insurance for babies, health care for the mother and readily available birth control, streamlining the adoption process…blah blah blah.”
If it was really about stopping abortions that would be a great place to start and meet in the middle. I get the vibe from a lot of the anti-choice crowd that it’s more about punishing women for getting pregnant then actually preventing the abortion, because if you could take away the need for an abortion there wouldn’t be abortions?
I don’t really like the idea of abortions but I don’t like the idea of taking away someone else’s choices over their body more.
I question the validity of calling this voter group white evangelicals. Their core values seem to be more of ideological positions rather than a religious ones. The main value is opposition to abortion. A strong secondary value is opposition to gay rights.
I agree with what others have said. As far as I’m concerned, those two positions are wrong and I don’t want to see the Democratic Party compromising on them in order to win votes. The Democratic Party should remain committed to equal rights for everyone.
As for the supposed hostility Democrats have for straight white men, I’ll note I am a straight white man and I don’t see it. I think the problem is some straight white men are being offered equality when what they really want is to be given supremacy. I feel about that the same way I mentioned above; these people are wrong and we should not seek their votes by agreeing with them.
If Republicans really wanted to reduce the number of abortions, they’d want to make contraception and family planning more readily available. Instead, they attack the organization that probably has prevented more unwanted pregnancies (and therefore abortions) than any other- Planned Parenthood. They trot out wild conspiracy theories about PP selling baby parts and so on and their gullible teeming masses swallow it up like popcorn. Personally, I don’t think it’s the abortion that they hate, it’s that people (especially people they feel morally superior to) are having sex and “getting away with it”.
I for one do not want the evangelical vote. Those people are the most intolerant, hypocritical, bigoted and hateful people you’d ever want to meet.
I largely agree with this comment. There are a lot of white evangelicals who really want to keep voting for “Republicans” and/or “conservatives” and just wish their team would behave better. Getting out of that mindset is hard.
We do need “progressive evangelicals” to act as examples of a different approach to politics and as a sort of gateway out of the fenced-in area of right-wing fearmongering.
I went to a Christian (not evangelical) conference a decade or so ago. The keynote speaker said that if you took all the references to homosexual behavior out of the Bible, you’d be hard-pressed to identify what was different about it…particularly the New Testament, and most particularly the Gospels. That’s because there are about seven such references, and they’re all pretty tangential and many are rather ambiguous.
If, he went on, you took out all the references to society’s need to assist widows and orphans, you’d notice, and you’d notice right away…again, particularly in the New Testament and most particularly in the Gospels. That’s because there are dozens of such references, and they’re pretty central to the point of the book.
He didn’t mention abortion. But i imagine the situation would be similar.
Yes, when what you mainly get out of the Bible is “no abortion and no gay marriage,” I agree that convincing people to vote for a party that thinks differently is going to be problematic.
As a Christian who believes all of the following: homosexuality is disordered, abortion is objectively wrong, and that assisting windows and orphans are Christian duties; my response to that speaker would be “Why is it relevant in determining morality whether or not something is explicitly mentioned in the Bible?”
I wish I believed that. I did once, sort of. Back in the nineties it seemed like evangelicals were actually a bit embarrassed about supporting someone like Henry Hyde (I know he was Catholic, not evangelical, but the point is that he was an anti-abortion republican) and his “youthful indiscretion” affair while deciding at the same time that Bill Clinton was the worst possible human being on earth. Seemed like they were aware there might be, oh, a little cognitive dissonance going on.
In this current climate, though, I see just about no indication among the bulk of white evangelicals that there’s anything wrong with the way their “team” is behaving. Here’s James Robison, televangelist, on trump: “He wouldn’t be our Sunday School teacher necessarily, but he’s doing a great job of leadership. I love him so much I can hardly explain it.” Lies, no problem. Gratuitous insults, A-okay. Defrauding students, shorting contractors, what’s not to like? Adulterous affairs, sexual harassment, mocking of people you hate, what’s the issue?
–You know, Mr./Ms. White Evangelical, you could put someone into the White House who would carry out your political agenda and do so by giving at least lip service to the morals you say you believe in. The fact that Trump is just peachy with so many of them suggests strongly to me that as a group they don’t actually pay attention to those “morals”–and that they don;t see anything wrong at all with the way the Republicans are behaving.
It’s even more extreme. The only mention of abortion in the Bible is Numbers 5, which sanctions abortions.
The Bible also connects the idea of life with the act of breathing at several points. Which indicates that a scriptural definition of when life begins would be when a baby is born and begins to breathe.
So the modern pro-life position is not based on the Bible. It’s something that religious conservatives adopted independently. They then performed an equivalency in their minds; “I oppose abortions and I believe my actions are in accord with God’s wishes. Therefore, God must oppose abortions.” But you can make the same reasoning apply to other things; “I drive a stick and I believe my actions are in accord with God’s wishes. Therefore, God must oppose automatic transmissions.”
HurricaneDitka, what happened was that the version with the Stupak Amendment passed the House, and the version without it passed the Senate, and then before the normal bicameral process could go through, Sen. Kennedy died, leaving the Senate majority incapable (under the rules at the time, which they actually followed) of stopping a filibuster. What happened, of course, was that the House then voted to pass the exact version that the Senate already had passed. The Senate Republicans knew that this would happen, and that they couldn’t stop it. They could, however, have instead voted for the House version with the amendment, if even one of them had chosen to do so. They had a choice between the version of the bill without the amendment and the one with it, and every single one of them chose the version without the amendment.
Only God knows what’s truly in their hearts. But the point is, they identify themselves as Christians (and more importantly, as the Right Sort of Christians), and for the sorts of voters we’re talking about here, that’s good enough.
Aside from the Stupak Amendment, there were various differences between the House and Senate versions of the ACA, right? Given your answer to that question, do you concede that it’s even-just-a-little-bit misleading to say “the Senate Republicans unanimously killed” the Stupak amendment? After all, they weren’t offered a straight up-or-down vote on just the Stupak Amendment. They did not support the House version, which had the Stupak Amendment mixed in with a big pile of garbage, but that’s not nearly the same thing.
Right. Some would say that Exodus 21:22 plays a role in the debate as well, though this depends slightly on the translation: If two men fight and smash into a pregnant woman and she miscarries*, they are to be fined. If they smash into the pregnant woman and she is seriously injured, however,then they pay a physical penalty based on the injury she sustained. If they kill her in this manner, they are put to death.
[*Some say this is actually “giving birth prematurely” without a clear statement of whether the fetus survives. I am not a Biblical scholar and know nothing of gthe ins and outs of translations. I’ll just put that out there.]
It’s easy to see this as a statement about how the ancients viewed the not-yet-born: specifically, as “Not as Important As Those Already Born.”
Anyway, the speaker at the conference didn’t mention abortion, as the Biblical view of sexuality was really his topic for the speech, so when I say “I imagine it would be the same” I only meant that I wasn’t gonna put words into his mouth.