Tag: Barack Obama

Why vote for Sarah Palin?

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There are many times you can end up in a place and wonder how you got there. I think that kind of experience has happened for many who have grown up as Democrats but call themselves pro-life. In an essay at First Things, Suann Therese Maier lays out her journey that has led to her decision to vote for John McCain and Sarah Palin this November. Of note:

I remember my father, a successful young Chicago attorney, telling me why the Democratic party was the party of “our people,” and why so many Catholics were Democrats, and why the party stood for the little guy, the poor and the defenseless. I remember listening as a young girl in our kitchen as Saul Alinsky organized my parents’ Catholic friends on racial and economic issues in our Chicago living room. And I remember the night in 1992 when Pennsylvania’s governor, Robert Casey, was denied a chance to talk against abortion at the Democratic national convention.

I will vote for Sarah Palin because Roe v. Wade is bad law, and it needs to fall. I don’t doubt the intelligence and character of men like Doug Kmiec, the younger Bob Casey, and others who sympathize with the Obama campaign. But I do doubt their judgment. At the end of the day, the Democratic party in 2008 has conceded nothing to pro-life Democrats. The fact that Sen. Obama listens respectfully to pro-lifers without calling them reactionary dunces does not constitute progress. Results and behavior are what matter. On both those counts, the party has again failed to show any real sensitivity to pro-life concerns. In that light, high profile Catholics who support Obama are simply rationalizing their surrender on Roe.

Finally, I will vote for Sarah Palin, not because I’ve left the Democratic party of my youth and young adulthood, but because that party has left me. In fact, it no longer exists. And no amount of elegant speaking, exciting choreography, and moral alibis will bring it back.

What of the unwanted pregnancy?

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Two views:

“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents.” — Sarah and Todd Palin, in a statement to the Associated Press on the disclosure that their unwed daugther, Bristol, was five months pregnant.

“Look, I got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.” — Barack Obama, on the campaign trail in March in Pennsylvania.

Sizing up the presidential election

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RealClearPolitics has a rundown on what the Electoral College map looks like at this point in the election season.

What to do with a pro-choice president?

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UPDATE: The headline has now been corrected to what I intended it say. Everyone needs an editor!

Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. — I Peter 2:17

How should Christians who honor the life of the unborn respond if pro-choice Barack Obama is elected president of the United States? John Piper gives eight ways to honor the president, as the verse above says we must:

1. Humbling Ourselves

We will honor you, Mr. President, by humbling ourselves under the mighty hand of God (1 Peter 5:6) and acknowledging that we are ourselves sinners and in need of mercy and forgiveness from God. We are not infallible. We are open to new light on this and every issue. We are not the final judge in this matter. God is. We stand before the cross of Christ on level ground with you, not above you, utterly dependent on mercy and seeking to live by the will of Christ.

2. Acknowledging God’s Image

We will honor you by acknowledging that you are a man, created in the image of God, and distinct among all the beings in the world (as it says in James 3:9). You are not a mere animal. You have the glorious potential, like all humans, of being a child of God (if you aren’t already) and shining like the sun in the kingdom of God forever and ever. We honor you as an utterly unique, human being created in the image and likeness of the living God with untold potential.

3. Acknowledging God’s Institution

We will honor you by acknowledging that government is God’s institution. He wills that there be leaders like presidents and governors. You are in power by God’s appointment and we honor that. In Romans 13:4 the Bible even calls you, “God’s servant for our good.” It grieves us that you do not intend to enact laws to protect the good of the unborn the most innocent, weak, and helpless group of Americans. But we have seen from Somalia that bad government is better than no government. The absence of some laws to protect some people is better than the absence of all laws to protect anybody. We honor your stabilizing role in this sense as a blessing from God.

4. Honoring Laws Not Conflicting with Christ’s Lordship

We will honor you by submitting to the laws of the state and the nation wherever they do not conflict with our higher allegiance to Christ the King of kings and Lord of lords. We will submit to the laws that take away

  • our “right” to chose to go 75 miles an hour,
  • our “right” to choose to keep our lights off when our windshield wipers are on,
  • our “right” to choose to drive without a seat belt,
  • our “right” to choose to fish without a license,
  • our “right” to choose to make loud noises in the middle of the night,
  • our “right” to choose to keep our kids out of schooling,
  • our “right” to choose to send them to school without DPT shots,
  • our “right” to choose to use leaded gas,
  • our “right” to choose not to pay taxes,
  • our “right” to choose to smoke on the other side of the restaurant, etc.

We submit to the right of government to limit our right to choose in hundreds of areas, especially when the good of others is at stake. We understand that governments exist to limit the right to choose and we submit to that.

1 Peter 2:13 says that we are to submit not for your sake but for the Lord’s sake. Verse 16 says that we are free in respect to you but slaves of God. We will submit not because you have power, but because our King commands it for the honor of his institution of civil government. Yet our submission is an honor to you because under God and from God you bear the authority to enforce the laws of the land.

5. Not Withdrawing into Isolation

We will honor you by not withdrawing into little communes of disengaged isolation from American culture. But according to 1 Peter 2:15, we will honor you by trying to do as much good as we possibly can for the unborn, and for unwanted children, and for women in distress, so that we will not be thought insolent or inconsistent in asking from you what we are not willing to do ourselves. We do this because the Bible says, “It is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men” (1 Peter 2:15).

6. Opposing with Non-Violence

We will honor you by opposing your position as long as we can with non-violence instead of violence, with reasoning instead of rocks, with rational passion instead of screaming, with honorable speech instead of obscenities, with forthright clarity of language instead of dodging the tough realities and tough words, with evidence instead of authority, and with scientific portrayals of life instead of authoritarian blackouts (cf. 2 Corinthians 4:2). We will honor you by a relentless effort to put truth, and not mere emotion, before you in the White House.

7. Expecting Straightforward Answers

And we will honor you by expecting from you straightforward answers to straightforward questions. We would not expect this from a con-man or a chimp. We expect it from an honorable man.

For example, are you willing to explain why a baby’s right not to be killed is less important than a woman’s right not to be pregnant?

Or are you willing to explain why most cities have laws forbidding cruelty to animals, but you oppose laws forbidding cruelty to human fetuses? Are they not at least living animals?

Or are you willing to explain why government is unwilling to take away the so-called right to abortion on demand even though it harms the unborn child; yet government is increasingly willing to take away the right to smoke, precisely because it harms innocent non-smokers, killing 3,000 non-smokers a year from cancer and as many as 40,000 non-smokers a year from other diseases?

And if you say that everything hangs on whether the fetus is a human child, are you willing to go before national television in the oval office and defend your support for the “Freedom of Choice Act” by holding in your hand a 21 week old fetus and explaining why this little one does not have the fundamental, moral, and constitutional right to life? Are you willing to say to parents in this church who lost a child at that age and held him in their hands, this being in your hands is not and was not a child with any rights of its own under God or under law?

Perhaps you have good answers to each of these questions. We will honor you by expecting you to defend your position forthrightly in the public eye. You have immense power as President of the United States. To wield it against the protection of the unborn without giving a public accounting in view of moral and scientific reality would be dishonorable. We will honor you by expecting better.

8. Trusting the Sovereign, Loving Purpose of God

Finally we will honor you by trusting that the purpose of our sovereign and loving God to defend the fatherless and contend for the defenseless and to exalt the meek will triumph through your presidency. And to that end we will pray for you as Christ our King commands us.

Read the whole article from Piper here.

She won’t be voting for Obama

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Barack ObamaWho? Gianna Jessen for one. Why? Daniel Allott explains:

Miss Jessen is an exquisite example of what antiabortion advocates call a “survivor.” Well into her third trimester of pregnancy, Gianna’s biological mother was injected with a saline solution intended to induce a chemical abortion at a Los Angeles County abortion center. Eighteen hours later, and precious minutes before the abortionist’s arrival, Gianna emerged. Premature and with severe injuries that resulted in cerebral palsy. But alive.

Had the abortionist been present at her birth, Gianna would have been killed, perhaps by suffocation. As it was, a startled nurse called an ambulance, and Gianna was rushed to a nearby hospital, where, weighing just two pounds, she was placed in an incubator, then, months later, in foster care.

Gianna survived then, and thrives now, because, as she told me recently with a laugh, “I guess I don’t die easy.” Which is what the abortionist might have thought as he signed his victim’s birth certificate. Gianna’s medical records state that she was “born during saline abortion.”

Allott goes on to explain that, as an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama twice opposed legislation that would have defined as “persons” babies who survive late-term abortions. According to Allott, “Mr. Obama said in a speech on the Illinois Senate floor that he could not accept that babies wholly emerged from their mother’s wombs are “persons,” and thus deserving of equal protection under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.”

By contrast, a federal version of the same legislation passed unanimously through the Senate and with the support of all but 15 members of the House. When President Bush signed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act into law in 2002, Gianna was present.

The link above is to the article. Read the whole thing and consider the man who wants to unite America and ask yourself, “United behind what?”

Barack Obama, unapologetic abortion supporter

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Just to be clear, this is what Barack Obama, the most likely Democrat nominee for president, sees as a key issue in this election. He is very clear on where he stands. He is pro abortion. His reaction to a Supreme Court ruling upholding a ban on partial-birth abortions? “It is time for a different attitude on the Supreme Court. It is time to turn the page and write a new chapter.”

HT: Justin Taylor

When is abortion racism

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I am one of many, I suppose, who have received a forwarded e-mail saying that Barack Obama is a Muslim who was sworn into office on the Koran and talked in hysterical tones about what he will do if he becomes president. And then, I have received a followup e-mail from someone else on that list who has pointed out that Obama points to ‘affirming his Christian faith’ at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and that he has been attending the same church for 20 years. He talks about his faith in this interview with Christianity Today.

I wouldn’t say the man is a wild-eyed Muslim trying to take over the United States in the name of Allah. Rather, he is a Christian like many others in that he believes in a gospel that, in his words, is about “prioritizing the least of these over the powerful.” In other words, he is about a social gospel that makes Jesus the great equalizer and defender of the poor. There’s nothing wrong with that, except that his gospel stops when it comes to defending the most vulnerable — the unborn. While he carefully crafts his words in the CT interview, there is no doubt about his position concerning the rights of those who are unborn.

Obama is absolutely right that we should encourage adoption and really care for the women who are going through pregnancy. Obviously, there is a need to strengthen families and we all need to look for ways to build up families in our communities. Yet his talk about unwanted pregnancies belies his real beliefs concerning the issue and puts him at odds with what he says he’s all about — looking out for all people.
Barack Obama

The celebration of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision coincide during this month. If we think about the struggles for civil rights for blacks and the struggles for life for these tiny people, we see that there is a great evil that is being perpetuated daily in our country.

Consider this from John Piper:

My aim is that just as once even though the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case of 1857 held that Black slaves were property without rights as free persons, yet today we view that as unthinkable; so also even though the Supreme Court in the Roe v. Wade case of 1973 did not give the unborn the rights of free persons, nevertheless the day may come when that too is viewed as unthinkable. Racism might—and often did—result in the killing of innocent humans; in our history, it often did. But abortion always results in the killing of innocent humans. Between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 Black people were lynched in America. Today more Black babies are killed by white abortionists every three days than all who were lynched in those years (Life Education and Resource Network).

This is a tragedy of huge proportions. I would suggest looking at the link below to challenge your thinking as a Christian.

When Is Abortion Racism