Evangelicals for Obama?

I had considered putting up a post about the latest nonsense from Bill Keller, who just has to push buttons.

In fact, I had been writing it in my head most of the day … but then I came home and read OneMom’s comment on my previous post, and had to agree with her. To say the least, I don’t want to be mistaken for an Obama supporter. I think that I’ve made that clear. So, instead, I’m going to talk about Frank Schaeffer and his comments about Sen. Obama’s candidacy.

I have to say that I appreciated one of his articles, talking about the Jeremiah Wright controversy. Frank Schaeffer breaks with his father, and even his own record, in his more-recent accusations of the Religious Right. I admire that about him. Frankly, I’m right there with him in a lot of ways. Like him, I’m not a Republican. I do not appreciate the intellectual inconsistency of those who moralize about homosexuality and Harry Potter books but bristle at the moment we talk about caring for the poor or being responsible stewards of Creation.

However … Frank Schaeffer goes too far in his support of Barack Obama. A friend of mine in real life (yes, I do have real life friends … in fact, yes, I do have a real life!) has pointed me in the direction of Mr. Schaeffer’s writings, and I do enjoy them.

That article, by the way, is a very good one up until its conclusion. I think that Mr. Schaeffer accurately diagnoses the problems with a lot of the Republican Party, the political arm of the Evangelical movement, and a lot of other things.

He’s dead-on accurate with this charge:

Similarly the Republicans have also been hypocrites while talking big, for instance about their pro-life ethic. But what have they achieved? First, through their puritanical war on sex education they’ve hindered our country from actually preventing unwanted pregnancy. Second, through the Republican Party’s marriage to the greediest and most polluting earth-destroying corporations they’ve created a climate (both moral and physical) that has scorched the earth for-profit, with no regard to future generations whatsoever. The Republicans are to the pro-life movement what the Clintons are to selfless public service.

He’s brilliant in the next paragraph, in which he goes on to prescribe a solution to the problems …

The real solution to abortion is to change the heart of America, not the law. We need to stop seeing ourselves as consumers. We need to stop seeing ourselves as me and begin to think of we. Our country needs someone to show us a better way, a president who is what he seems, someone with actual moral authority that our diverse population can believe in who has the qualities that make us want to follow him.

That is, until he ended the paragraph (and the article) with this sentence:

Obama is that person.

I don’t see how one could possibly reach that conclusion. Sen. Obama has no commitment to ending abortion. He’s an advocate for expanding abortion. The real question here is going to come down to whether abortion is a major consideration in one’s Presidential choices.

There are many things that I admire about Sen. Obama. I think that I’ve listed those, far more than I want to do. I can and will continue to defend him against stupid charges, and I resent the insult to my intelligence presented by those who mock his name or try to tell me that he’s a militant atheist black liberation Christian leftist Muslim extremist.

But there’s a line with supporting Obama that I simply cannot cross. Ever.

He is not merely pro-choice. He is not merely pro-abortion. Barack Obama fought hard to protect the practice of infanticide. A small snippet of that article by Jill Stanek:

In 2003, as chairman of the next Senate committee to which BAIPA was sent, Obama stopped it from even getting a hearing, shelving it to die much like babies were still being shelved to die in Illinois hospitals and abortion clinics.

(As chair of that same committee, Obama once abruptly ended a hearing early, right before Scott and Janet Willis, the parents of six children killed as a result of Illinois’ drivers licenses for bribes scandal, were to testify in favor of Choose Life license plate legislation. I was there for that one, too. The Willises had traveled three hours. Reporters filled the room. Obama stalled. He later killed the bill when no one was around.)

BAIPA is the Born Alive Infant Protection Act. It’s a law that protects the lives of babies who survive abortions and are alive, no longer attached to their mothers. The law sailed through the US Senate, without a single no-vote. NARAL did not oppose BAIPA. Barack Obama, however, prevented it from getting so much as a hearing. This isn’t pro-choice. At the very least, this is the pro-abortion position that many pro-choicers claim doesn’t exist. The idea that infanticide is a vital part of “protecting a woman’s right to choose” is more than a little ridiculous … which is why even Barbara Boxer, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, and their ilk did not oppose the bill in the US Senate.

Frank Schaeffer has rejected John McCain as a Presidential pick, and that makes interesting reading (Schaeffer backed McCain in 2000, by the way). I’m with him on that. I also reject Sen. McCain as a good choice for President. However, I’m not willing to run to Sen. Obama when he so completely offends my values on an important issue.

Frankly, I think that Schaeffer might want to consider looking into other candidates, ones who share all of his values. It’s about time that I put up another post about Joe Schriner, isn’t it?