An open letter to evangelical Christians

If you are a “moral values” voter and you’re reading this post (as unlikely as that may seem), I have a few things to straighten out for you. You know those two issues that filled you with the holy spirit and sent you to the voting booth in November? The two evils that Bush was ordained by God to eliminate?

[dramatic music]

Abortion and Gay Marriage.

Well, I’ve got news for you. Your guy isn’t very likely to do much to outlaw either. First, his interest has waned considerably on these issues since November (funny that), and he knows (and always has known) that the chances are slim to none that he’d even be able to do much anyway.

You been 'hoodwinked and bamboozled' (as Malcom X would say). You were willing to endorse tax cuts for the rich, the gutting of your Social Security system, a $10 trillion bill for your children to pay, and an immoral and unjust war for issues that this president (or any president) has very little chance of affecting.

Abortion Rights

Hoping to pack the Supreme Court with Roe-v-Wade haters? Don't hold your breath. The current tally on the abortion issue in the court is 6-3. You have Justices Renquist, Thomas, and Scalia firmly opposed to abortion rights, and you have O’Connor, Stevens, Ginsberg, Souter, and Breyer firmly in favor. Justice Kennedy is a bit of a wild card. He has voted several times to uphold the “right to privacy” that Roe v. Wade is based on, but has shown some willingness to place limits on abortion (although he is unlikely to vote to overturn it).

Bush is most likely to be able to make only one appointment to the court—to replace Justice Renquist who is quite ill, and he has an outside shot of replacing O’Connor and Stevens. Renquist’s replacement does nothing to affect the likelihood of overturning Roe v. Wade, and the justice that is confirmed may be less likely to make a decisive move (Renquist has said that Roe was a “mistake” many times). Even though I am certain that Bush will at least try to nominate someone who is hostile to Roe, it’s unlikely that that nominee will make it through the Senate (as Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) famously said shortly after the election).

Even if Bush somehow gets a conservative anti-choice justice though the Senate, Supreme court justices have a funny way of thinking for themselves once they are appointed for life to the highest court. Keep in mind that 7 of the 9 current justices are Republican appointees.

So what happens if O’Connor and Stevens retire and Bush somehow manages to get the court packed with enough conservatives to be a threat to Roe v. Wade?

He will still have an uphill climb—Roe v. Wade has been the law of the land for 32 years (today is the anniversary, in fact) and the Supreme Court has historically been reluctant to completely reverse its own decisions. There is a principle that justices have applied in cases concerning Roe v. Wade called “stare decisis” (latin for “to stand by that which is decided”), which means that justices will need overwhelming evidence of a need to overturn the decision, even if they would not have voted for Roe in 1973. For you football fans out there, think of it as the NFL’s replay rule. You need to see something on the replay that definitively contradicts the ruling on the field to reverse a call.

Ok. Now let's assume that all of these unlikely events occur. Bush gets two more conservative justices on the bench, and Roe is overturned 5-4. Abortion is illegal in America, right?

Wrong.

Overturning Roe v. Wade puts abortion rights back in the hands of the individual states (where it was pre-1973). True, several states will outlaw abortion (some even have laws on their books waiting for the court to act), but many will not. Safe, legal abortions will likely remain available via a short car ride to a sympathetic state (or a long car ride if you live in the South).

In my opinion, the only thing that overturning Roe v. Wade will really do is confirm for the rest of the world that we have taken another large step towards theocracy. A quick look at world abortion laws shows that we'd suddenly have more in common with Latin America, the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia than with our traditional European allies. With a few exceptions (heavily Catholic Ireland and Poland) the members of the European Union have moved further and further towards more freedom and choice for women. Thanks to Bush, we're already moving ideologically closer to the developing world.

In a recent poll in the New York Times 43% of Americans expected most forms of abortion to be illegal throughout the United States by the time Bush leaves office. I have to believe that this group is made up of both evangelical Christians and discouraged pro-choice advocates. The truth is, however that there is practially zero chance of criminalizing abortion in all fifty states in the next four years, and there is very little chance that there will be any change to the current law.

I had a co-worker who was an evangelical Christian. He was, however, committed to voting for candidates that he thought would work for better health care, reducing poverty, and other Christian values. He urged his fellow Christians to avoid being "one issue voters" and vote for candidates who would encourage social justice. I urge you to do the same.

In addition to the question of abortion's legality, there is the real question of how to reduce the need for abortion. Despite what the pro-life movement would have you believe, there is no such thing as a politician who is pro-abortion. It's tragic that we live in a world with hard choices that must be made about the quality of life for a mother and an unborn child. I think that every most reasonable people would prefer to live in a world where abortions are not necessary. We do not, however, live in such a world. Abortions will be performed in this country. They were
performed before 1973 (mostly illegally), at a rate of anywhere between 200,000 and 1.2 million a year before Roe v. Wade. If you are serious about reducing the number of abortions, vote for politicians that will fight the root causes that force women to make this choice: Poverty, lack of education (about sex and in general), hopelessness, and, yes, the lack of "family values."

The solution does not lie in limiting a woman's right to choose, but in presenting her with more viable choices for keeping her baby or avoiding pregnancy in the first place. Don't confuse criminalizing a problem with stopping it.

Gay Marriage

Here's the other "wedge issue" that drove evangelicals to the polls in vast numbers. This is, and has always been a purely political manuver by the Bush team. They had no intention of going ahead with a Constitutional amendment to ban Gay marriage. Bush made this clear this week, when he backed off his "committment" to the amendment. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post summed it up best, I think. An excerpt:

There is no reason to press for the amendment, Bush told two Post reporters on Air Force One, because so many senators are convinced that the Defense of Marriage Act -- which says states that outlaw same-sex unions do not have to recognize such marriages conducted outside their borders -- is sufficient. "Senators have made it clear that so long as DOMA is deemed constitutional, nothing will happen. I'd take their admonition seriously . . . Until that changes, nothing will happen in the Senate."

Are we supposed to believe that this information was unavailable before Election Day? Or that Bush was simply exploiting passions on this hot-button issue without really intending to follow through? If I was an evangelical Christian who felt strongly about this issue, I'd be plenty mad. And liberals can be forgiven for concluding that Bush was just interesting in demonizing them on the issue.

Funny how he can pick up more seats in the House and Senate, and then announce, after the election that he suddenly realized that he couldn't get the amendment through. Come on, Bush LIED to you, evangelical moral values voter. He wanted you to come to the polls and put him in office, and he would say anything to get you there. Anyone who had taken a government class knew from the beginning that the odds of 2/3 of each house of Congress and 3/4 of state legislatures voting for this bigotted amendment were a million to one. Count the blue states, people!

Not only was it unlikely to pass, but wildly unneccesary, as John Edwards pointed out in the VP debate:

I want to make sure people understand that the president is proposing a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage that is completely unnecessary. Under the law of this country for the last 200 years, no state has been required to recognize another state's marriage. Let me just be simple about this. My state of North Carolina would not be required to recognize a marriage from Massachusetts, which you just asked about. There is absolutely no purpose in the law and in reality for this amendment. It's nothing but a political tool. And it's being used in an effort to divide this country on an issue that we should not be dividing America on.

Hmm. Seems like he was right all along.

Please, please, please think about these things before you vote next time. The President, and the Republican party know the political realities here. They know that they don't have a snowball's chance in hell of criminalizing abortion nationwide, or banning gay marriage through a Constitutional amendment. But they rely on the fact that you don't know the facts. Don't let them use your fear, religious views, and homophobia to make you vote against your interests. If you are poor or middle class in this country, you have no excuse for voting for someone who wants to give handouts to corporations and the richest one percent--the "moral" issues that the Republicans embrace will have no effect on you.

To paraphrase John Stewart:

People who live in red states are very worried about terrorism and gay marriage when they don't have any of either. Here in New York, we have both, and we voted overwhelmingly for John Kerry.

Tinfoil out