Romney v. Obama:
How should a Christian vote?

9/17/2012

A friend forwarded me a note from a pro-life, moderate-to-liberal, Christian friend of hers, who thinks things aren't really so bad with Democrats in power, and thinks the choice between Romney and Obama isn't very clear. I sent her these responses to some of his questions & comments:

 
Q: What's the big deal about school prayer? "We [already] have moments of silence in our public schools for prayer."

A: Actually, even moments of silence for silent prayer have been banned from public schools, by activist liberal judges who weren't appointed by President Obama, but who very much resemble the judges appointed by Obama. Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U. S. 38 (1985)

 
Q: "Why would [David] Barton be so concerned about Obama's religion?"

A: Just google his longtime pastor and "spiritual mentor," the man who performed the Obamas' wedding ceremony and baptized their girls, Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jeremiah_wright.html

    About HIV/AIDS: "The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied. ... We [the USA] started the AIDS virus. We are only able to maintain our level of living by making sure that Third World people live in grinding poverty."
    About 9/11: "The stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."
    "America is still the No. 1 killer in the world."

 
Q: "At no time has Obama shared a view that radical Islam is our friend."

A: It is true that Obama's fawning words about Islam never specify "radical Islam." An example is his 2009 speech in Cairo when he said, "I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear."

But actions speak louder than words, and Obama certainly supported the Muslim Brotherhood over Mubarak. (Hindsight is 20-20, and perhaps Obama is having second thoughts about that, but, if so, he hasn't said so.)

Consider, too, that Obama's spiritual mentor, Jeremiah Wright, is a good friend of Louis Farrakhan, who's not exactly a "moderate" Muslim. Wright's church (and Obama's church, for over 20 years) published Trumpet Newsmagazine, and Wright's daughters worked for it as publisher and executive editor. They repeatedly featured Louis Farrakhan on the cover, and they awarded Farrakhan the "Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Trumpeter Award" because, they said, he "epitomized greatness." Here's what Farrakhan says:

    About Jews & Hitler: "The Jews don't like Farrakhan, so they call me Hitler. Well, that's a good name. Hitler was a very great man."
    About whites: "The honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us that Almighty God Allah revealed to him that the white race is a race of devils."

 
Q: "I think the Republicans have conned the Christian right on [the abortion] issue. They bang the gong saying 'We hate abortion' but what results have they produced? ... One reason abortion is still legal is because a president can't strike down the law."

A: Can your friend really be unaware of the fact that legalized abortion-on-demand is the result of liberal activist judges, of the sort appointed mostly by liberal Democrats? The reason that Republicans have managed only modest pro-life reforms, like informed consent laws, parental consent laws, etc., is that liberal activist judges block stronger reforms, by lying about the Constitution.

Your friend says, "one reason abortion is still legal is because a president can't strike down the law" -- and I say that's ridiculous. Presidents appoint Supreme Court Justices, and they uphold or strike down laws. Obama has appointed two, so far: Sotomayor and Kagan. They are both radically pro-abortion activist Justices. If Obama had appointed honest strict-constructionists in their stead, then the court's anti-democratic grip on abortion policy would be over, and the States would be free to regulate and restrict abortion as they see fit.

Hundreds of thousands of babies have already died because of Obama's pro-abortion activism and pro-abortion judicial appointments.

Here's a fact that ought to scare any pro-life Christian to death: four of the seven remaining Supreme Court Justices not appointed by Obama were born in the 1930s. How many of them do you think will die or retire in the next four years?

 
Q: "Republicans aren't really serious about stopping abortion. They know at the end of the day that abortion is an option mostly taken by poor young women and that's one less baby on welfare." And "Romney has already been race baiting the whites, just as Nixon did."

A: This is the sort of baseless smear that seems to typify the tactics of most Democrat politicians these days. That kind of rhetoric is just plain disgusting. There's not a speck of truth to either accusation. In fact, the second accusation is the precise opposite of the truth, because the 2008 Obama campaign ran an explicitly racist stealth campaign in the back community (which, ironically & hypocritically, accused Republicans of racism), and there's every reason to believe he'll do it again this year: Poor easily-confused Joe Biden apparently forgot that the racist rhetoric intended to rile up African-Americans is supposed to be used only in front of black audiences, when he said that Romney wants to put black people "back in chains."

The sad thing (which is also an indictment of our public schools) is that such dishonest gutter politics is actually effective at swaying many undiscerning voters.

 
Q: The economy.

A: As for the economy, I suggest that everyone contrast the spectacular success of President Reagan's supply-side reforms with the dismal failure of Obama's neo-Keynesian stimulus. It's not primarily "global financial issues" that ought to scare you, it's the fact that the federal government is borrowing 40¢ of every dollar it spends, year after year (including many purely-wasted billions), while pursuing regulatory policies that cripple U.S. economic growth.

And don't let anyone tell you the lie that Reagan's pro-growth, supply-side reforms caused big deficits. If they try that lie, give 'em this link:
http://www.mooregop.org/letter_about_reagans_deficits.html

 
Q: "Which values of Romney's line up with Christian ones? And which ones of Obama's are opposed to Christian ones?"

A.1: Romney is (belatedly) pro-life, and Obama is virulently pro-abortion.

Obama opposes anything which discourages abortions, for any reason, at any stage of pregnancy.

He appoints only pro-abortion activist judges.

His new 2012 Democratic Party Platform calls for taxpayer-funded elective abortions.

He uses American foreign policy to promote abortion overseas. One of his first actions as President was to void the Mexico City Policy, and the Obama State Department has been very heavily pushing abortion in the third world, often even at the expense of good relations with foreign governments. The Obama Administration sends an average of more than $45 million per year to the UNFPA, and also uses USAID resources (funded to the tune of nearly $600 million/year) to promote abortion.

Before he was President, he voted against banning partial-birth abortions, and also voted against notifying parents of minors who get out-of-state abortions. He boasted on his 2008 campaign web site of being "a leader in the Illinois legislature in the battle to protect a woman's right to choose" abortion.

Speaking at a Planned Parenthood Action Fund event on July 17, 2007, Obama said that the Supreme Court's 5-4 Gonzales v. Carhart decision (upholding the ban on partial-birth abortions) was part of a "concerted effort to steadily roll back the hard-won rights of American women."

He was a co-sponsor of the so-called Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), which would abolish almost all constraints on abortion, and would legalize partial-birth abortion. During the 2008 campaign he said that, if elected, one of his first acts as president would be to sign FOCA. (Of course, that was an obvious lie, since the votes weren't there to pass it in Congress.)

Most incredibly, as a committee chairman in the Illinois Senate, when a hospital in his own district was discovered to be killing accidentally-born-alive infants after induced-labor abortions, Obama defended those murders, and repeatedly blocked passage of the Illinois Born Again Infant Protection Act. (It passed only after he left the IL Senate.)

A.2: Romney opposes same-sex marriage, and Obama supports it. Same-sex marriage gives the same adoption rights to couples like Frank Lombard and Kenneth Shipp that are enjoyed by traditional families. Never mind that children are far better off in traditional families.

In 2008 Obama claimed to be opposed to same-sex marriage, but also opposed the Marriage Amendment and supported "civil unions." In defense of this stance, he wrote, "...nor am I willing to accept a reading of the Bible that considers an obscure line in Romans to be more defining of Christianity than the Sermon on the Mount." That rationale is hard for me to understand because what he calls "an obscure line" in Romans is actually a sizable chunk of the first chapter of Romans (and it is consistent with several other passages of scripture), and it doesn't conflict with the Sermon on the Mount because there is no mention at all of sodomy or homosexuality in the Sermon on the Mount.

A.3: Obama's longtime (but now former) church, Trinity United Church of Christ of Chicago bears even less resemblance to a Christian church than do Mormon temples. You can read about his radical church on their own web site:
http://www.tucc.org/talking_points.htm
http://www.tucc.org/about.htm

Quoting from the church web site, "We are a congregation which is Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian... Click here to read about Dr. [Jeremiah] Wright's talking points for Trinity United Church of Christ its Web site and the Black Value System."

If you click there you will read that, "The vision statement of Trinity United Church of Christ is based upon the systematized liberation theology that started in 1969 with the publication of Dr. James Cone's book, Black Power and Black Theology." To that, someone on FreeRepublic.com wryly responded, "Their Black Value System seems at odds with Galatians 3:26-28: 'You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.'"

If you're not bothered by the Trinity UCC web site, then you must be insensitive to racial bigotry. Imagine what Trinity UCC's talking points would sound like if you changed the word "black" to "white." Imagine if a candidate for President belonged to a church with a web site that said, "We are a congregation which is Unashamedly White and Unapologetically Christian... click here to read our pastor's talking points for our church and the White Value System." That sounds like Ku Klux Klansman David Duke!

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I am a refugee from the United Church of Christ, which is easily the most extreme liberal and pro-abortion Christian denomination in America. (Paraphrasing Reagan, "I didn't leave them, they left me.") But, even within the UCC, Obama's (now former) church represents the far Left fringe

A.4: Obama and his liberal allies oppose conscience-protection provisions, which allow Christians to opt-out of participating in morally objectionable practices. I'm talking about things like requiring that pharmacists dispense abortifacients, requiring that nursing students and medical students to do abortion rotations, requiring that Christian counselors renounce their Biblically-based opposition to sodomy, prohibiting Christian organizations from doing pre-adoption home-studies, etc.

A.5: The Obama Administration is refusing to enforce (even weak) anti-pornography laws. That might be because Obama gets campaign money from pornographers:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/obama-thanks-bundler-who-managed-top-hardcore-gay-porn-estate

 
Dave Burton