Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Politics

  • Muslim Protests of the Pope’s Remarks

    I have not been very excited about the vatican over the last few years, and I was not overjoyed when the current pope was elected, but in general since I’m not a catholic, it’s not something I get very excited about.

    But the current round of protests about the Pope’s quotation of a medieval text on Islam in a speech to college professors just emphasizes again that there is an element in modern Islam that simply cannot tolerate freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry. Now the words of a major Christian leader are different from the publication of one person’s cartoons, and the history of the crusades adds a negative element to the context, but nonetheless this kind of universal protest and anger in Islam is, to put it mildly, inappropriate.

    I know that Christians also protest negative things said about them, and the Muslim world provides plenty of opportunities with a number of grossly irresponsible leaders who have serious mouth control problem. Still, I don’t think they should be forced to shut up. That’s freedom of expression. I’m not talking about the legal right of free speech, but of the concept of freedom of expression.

    But many Muslims are reserving to themselves the right to insult practically everyone else, while protesting any effort to respond. Let me be clear. There are moderate Muslims with whom I have no problem. In fact, I have no problem with any Muslim who is not planning to try to use force to impose their views on me or on my country. They can use as much peaceful persuasion as they wish. At the same time, I condemn every person who feels that they should be able to shut up their opponents by threats of violence. I would suggest that western leaders, religious or otherwise, refuse to apologize or respond in any way while angry crowds run around the streets protesting words and images.

    The behavior in these protests is stupid, and it should be condemned as such. The behavior of those who threaten death to westerners is evil, and it should be condemned as such. If protesters want to burn down pieces of their own countries, that is the problem of those countries and those people. And yes, when Muslim countries deny rights to women, or impose cruel punishments on their people, it is appropriate for people to condemn those activities and those laws.

    Having said that, if westerners or Christians call for violence against civilian populations in the Muslim world, or any unjustified violence against anyone, they should also be condemned. At the same time, their right to express their view should be protected. The pope may have made less than the best choice of words, but thus far, I don’t even see that much of a problem in his speech.

    Freedom is threatened right now on every side, in our own government here in the United States through authorization of torture and indefinite incarceration, in Europe through the imposition of politically correct speech, and in the Muslim world by the advance of fundamentalist Islam. The only remedy is for those who love freedom to defend it by word and deed at all times.

    (OK, I’ll get off the soapbox!)

    Note: Actually let me note that as long as the protests are non-violent, the protesters also should be allowed their expression. I would certainly consider it hypocritical, however.

  • Nation Whose God is the LORD?

    Today while doing grocery shopping, I saw a T-Shirt with the slogan: My faith and my freedom are one. Underneath was the verse: Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD (Psalm 33:12).

    I don’t know who provides such a shirt, but that slogan troubles me deeply. I think it reflects the problem that many Christians have with unhypocritical support of freedom of religion in this country and elsewhere in the world. Now there is a theological sense in which I can understand the claim that faith and freedom are one. There is a point of spiritual freedom, the freedom to make spiritual choices and to build a healthy relationship with God that comes, for me, through my faith. But a key element of that spiritual freedom comes from the fact that it was freely chosen. That faith is my faith, and even though I share a fellowship with Christians because it is also Christian faith, it bears a distinct stamp.

    But with the accompanying text (about which more below), I’m pretty sure that’s not the freedom we’re talking about. There are a number of groups that advocate a Christian nation, one built on Biblical principles and enforcing Biblical laws. Let’s ignore, for the moment, the incredible problems there are with simply producing a “Biblical” system of law. One’s hermeneutic is quite determinative of what one holds to be applicable, and even amongst people who advocate a Christian nation, there is considerable variety of interpretational principles.

    There are those who advocate a nation that lives a life of holiness. What this means, in practice, is that they want a single set of moral standards enforced on everyone, derived from the Bible in whatever way they derive things. This will mean marital fidelity in the strongest sense–not only no sex outside of marriage, but no premarital sex, no common-law marriages, and modest apparel and lifestyle. It will mean that homosexuality cannot be tolerated anywhere in the nation. Blasphemy, of course, cannot be allowed, because how can a “holy nation” allow such a thing? Thus freedom of speech will be prohibited. Of course, idolatry and worship of any other God but “the LORD” however defined, must be eventually forbidden.

    Now I’m not arguing against anyone’s advocacy of a particular code of morality for their lives and for those in their spiritual community. I do that myself, and my own code is actually quite conservative and restrictive–to me! But for various reasons, many groups of Christians have decided that somehow true freedom can only come with the practice of Christianity. At the moment, they will advocate permitting other groups, but they want them to exist in a Christian nation and live up to Christian principles.

    They do so often for quite contradictory reasons. One broad grouping believes that Christianity has replaced Israel in God’s scheme, and that America is a new Zion, a new promised land, in which all the promises of blessings will be fulfilled if only we will follow the laws and purify the land. If you encounter such a view, don’t let them claim moderation. That slope is a very slippery one, and unless you are 100% in agreement, eventually you’re going to find yourself on the outside.

    Another broad group continues to believe that Israel is the benificiary of God’s promises to Israel, but they believe that those promises can be extended to our nation if we behave, as a nation, in the same way. This is a bit more logical on the first point–the promises after all were made to Israel, and there is nowhere in the Bible that might indicate a transfer to the United States of such blessings. But it is less logical on the second point, because we take random promises and random blessings and apply them on a national scale.

    Either of these groups needs to read the second half of the verse I quoted above: and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance. Clearly the reference was to Israel, and “the LORD” is YHWH, the proper name of Israel’s God. God does promise blessings to other nations, but not on the same covenant basis as he does for Israel itself. Either transfer or extension of that covenant needs some serious theological undergirding, and none is forthcoming from advocates.

    Jesus never advocated establishment of a physical nation. What he did was advocate people, with the kingdom of God in them, living kingdom lives. I challenge you to find Jesus advocating anything similar to the seeking of blessing on a national scale through somehow forcing them all to agree to identical moral codes. In fact Jesus seemed to be against the imposition of any detailed sets of laws on people; he was a revolutionary advocating the spirit rather than the letter.

    Freedom will not survive in a Christian nation, not because Christianity is bad but because it is a spiritual faith offering a relationship with God to individuals. Christianity applied by force should be regarded as an oxymoron. In fact, Christianity applied by force has repeatedly resulted in persecution of opponents and dissenters, and in a faith that bears little relation to Jesus. Non-Christians should be very careful to guard against the type of Christian who says that his faith and his freedom are one. But Christians should be equally careful. We are commanded to make disciples from all nations, but that does not mean that we should try to make the nations themselves into disciples. Christianity does not work that way and was never intended to do so.

    Freedom is freedom and faith is faith, and neither will flourish unless faith is freely chosen or rejected. Because of this I am absolutely opposed to the notion of a Christian nation. A nation with lots of Christians in it, yes. But even if 100% of the population were to choose freely and without pressure to be Christians, I would advocate complete freedom of religion, because anything else would be destructive to faith (and of course to freedom).

  • Red State Rabble on Enemy Recognition

    I really appreciate the post Uniting Against the Common Enemy. As I said in an earlier post, I don’t expect others to back off about their positions on various issues. But we also don’t need to have those additional disagreements prevent us from cooperating on issues about which we do agree.

    I particularly like the following:

    RSR is fighting against those authoritarians who would impose their religious views on the rest of us. We don’t believe giving church-goers two days to dismantle the entire apparatus of their religious belief — or else — constitutes a workable strategy.

    We’re not interested in philosophical purity, either.

    Bravo! And as a religious person I’m with you 100% in preventing anyone from imposing religious views on anyone else. I know that there are some other Christians who do want to impose their beliefs through the law, and I will fight against them both inside the “large tent” of Christianity, and in the political arena.

    We want to work closely with activists like Ken Miller to defend science education in public schools. Moreover, we respect him for his many contributions to that struggle. In fact, it’s hard to think of many people who’ve done more. We frankly don’t care what his religious views are. It’s his actions that count in our book.

    Excellent point again. I just had to quote it to emphasize it.

    For our part, RSR is proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with people of faith who want to defend America’s secular institutions from attacks by the radical right.

    And I’m happy to work with you on that. The radical right doesn’t like people like me any more than people like you. We can stand together to defend freedom.

    In the discussion of sides, I think we should consider two substanstial positions: Freedom–free inquiry, freedom from compulsion in religious and philosophical issues, and authoritarianism, especially of the religious sort. In that fight, those who are interested in freedom share a common interest that I think overpowers everything else, and we need to stick together on those points.

  • Allies for Evolution, not Everything

    Update: Jack Krebs has now posted a longer summary of the talk and links to audio files. I haven’t listened to the audio yet, but I don’t see anything in the summary that would alter my view on this. I’m glad Jack and Kansas Citizens for Science made sure to get good audio of this. (2nd update: I somehow left out the link to Jack’s post, and have now added it.)

    I’m regularly annoyed by angry recriminations that occur when someone discovers that the various people in favor of sound science education and specifically on the teaching of evolution don’t actually agree on all aspects of life, the universe and everything. Currently there is a flap about remarks by Kenneth Miller. Since I don’t have a transcript of those remarks I’m not going to try to critique those remarks. PZ Myers, however, has a rather angry post on Pharyngula calling Ken Miller a creationist because he suggested that creationists’ attacks were misdirected, and should be directed instead at folks like Dawkins.

    (more…)

  • Free Speech, Gay Rights, and the Bible

    I want to call attention to this post and to the story behind it. An evangelical Christian was arrested in south Wales and charged with using “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour.”

    Ed Brayton said:

    I am obviously a staunch advocate of gay rights, but some of the people who claim to be on the same side need to get something through their skulls: you do not have a right to never encounter the opposition of disapproval of others.

    Very frequently I have to point to problems like this on the other side, i.e. as a Christian I’m busily telling my fellow-Christians that we need to support free speech for everyone, and freedom of religion for everyone. Christians should, for example, be at the forefront of the battle for freedom of religion for Wiccans in the military. We know from both sides the danger of persecution. We’ve been and still are persecuted in parts of the world. We have been, and still are persecutors. We have every reason to know it’s bad.

    I was glad to see several non-Christian posters who support the freedom of speech of this evangelical Christian. My question is will this story simply make evangelical Christians angry about a “homosexual agenda” or will it alert all of us, whatever our persuasion, to the problems of restricting freedom of speech and of expression? I hope it is the latter. We need to keep speech free, or we may be the next target.

  • Lying by Format

    In yesterday’s mail I got a political ad. With Florida’s primary just a few days away, that’s not unusual, but this one was particularly interesting. On the front it reads “Republican Voter Guide” with the admonition under it “Vote September 5th.” Now a reasonable person might conclude that one is going to find a guide to the available Republican candidates for the various offices. That would be pretty useless to me, seeing as I’m an independent.

    But being the generally curious sort I opened the ad to see what was on the inside. There we have two columns, comparing just two candidates, and doing so in such a way as to make the candidate on the left column (who ironically claims to be more right wing) look good and the candidate on the right look bad. They go so far as to use a grainy black and white picture for the opponent, and a nice color picture for the candidate they support. (The two candidates are both Republicans seeking a place on the November ballot running for Chief Financial Officer of the state of Florida. Why CFO is an elected position probably doesn’t bear examining.)

    My question is why such ads work. I’m not a voter in the Republican primary, but I certainly will vote in the November election, and there’s one candidate who has a serious negative mark against his name for the general election, simply because I know he lied. I don’t think that’s too strong a word. A “voters guide” is generally understood to be a listing of candidates with a comparison of their positions on a selected list of positions. Christian Coalition guides have been challenged for using a much less blatant selection of topics than this, and in addition we have the visual portrayal.

    Well, the answer to my question is that we, the voters, simply don’t take responsibility and don’t hold politicians accountable for their behavior. Such an ad should result in the candidate getting a nice checkmark in the “liar” column for every voter who received it, and in this case I mean liar above and beyond the average for politicians.

  • Faith, Medicine, and Choice

    MSNBC.com has an interesting article today on medical practices and faith. The general title belies the content which is almost exclusively about clinics that do not offer birth control, sterilizations, in-vitro fertilization, or abortions.

    According to the article there is a growing trend. The article notes:

    The number of “NFP-only” practices is unknown, but an Ohio-based Web site promoting them has a registry of nearly 500 doctors who have pledged to practice this way. Most are obstetrician-gynecologists and family practitioners.

    Some medical ethicists have a problem with this practice, and the story reports a number of women who have been annoyed when such practices refused to offer certain services. Other ethicists believe that if the advertising is clear, then the practice is acceptable. The story quoted one annoyed patient as follows:

    “It caught me completely off guard,” said Elizabeth Dotts, 25, who had a similar experience in Birmingham. “I felt like he was judging me and putting pressure on me. . . . I am the patient. I am the client. It should have been about me — what I needed. Not what he needed or believed.”

    And here’s where I have a problem. Provided there is no false advertising, and information on the doctor’s practices are available, I think the patient should be responsible for choosing a doctor that is appropriate. I realize here that people often miss notices, not just in the fine print, but even on large signs in the office. They are focused on something else. But I think people who are focused on something else need to take responsibility for what you get. You don’t see the “we don’t do contraception” notice in the office, go to another one.

    Now don’t make any mistake. I personally do not agree with the position that these doctors are taking. I do have a problem with the individual quoted in the story who felt it would be unethical to refer the patient to a physician who would take care of them as they desire. I would also expect ethically that they should inform patients clearly of what their beliefs are, what they will do, and what they won’t, giving the patient an opportunity to choose a different doctor. With all of that, however, I would leave primary responsibility on the patient to make a selection based on their desires and their choices.

    This position stems from my broader position that people should be able to make any business relationship they desire, provided fraud or other deception is not involved, and I believe this should be true even in medical care. The final responsibility for your health is yours, and it is not possible to protect you from all negative experiences with medical practitioners. Plan on problems. Investigate your health care provider. Make an informed choice. Even if you do not encounter a doctor whose faith stance causes him to refuse you the kind of treatment you want, let me assure you that you will encounter physicians out there whose care you should avoid.

    Doctors should inform, but to make that work, patients should demand the information and refuse to settle for less. If, in the end, that means you change doctors, then it’s time for a change.

  • More on Walmart

    I’ve written a few posts that reference Walmart (here, here, and here) and the various accusations and calls for boycotts that have come out about it. This is one area where my free market bias comes into play. I think that low prices are a good thing, and I don’t believe that Walmart wages and benefits are that far out of line for their industry.

    Today on Newsweek business, Robert J. Samuelson has an excellent column on the topic, Walmart’s a Diversion, in which he suggests that democrats should leave the topic alone. Tongue in cheek he suggests that the government nationalize it, and then we see what happens. In conclusion he mentions some numbers, dealing with prices Walmart has forced lower:

    All told, these cuts have significantly raised living standards. How much is unclear. A study by the economic-consulting firm Global Insight found that from 1985 to 2004, Wal-Mart’s expansion lowered the consumer price index by a cumulative 3.1 percent from what it would have been. That produced savings of $263 billion in 2004, equal to $2,329 for each U.S. household. Because Wal-Mart financed this study, its results have been criticized as too high. But even if price savings are only half as much ($132 billion and $1,165 per household), they’d dwarf the benefits of most government programs.

    Just so! Perhaps attacks on Walmart are not only a diversion; they’re a mistake.

  • Moderate Thinking

    Since starting the Moderate Christian Blog Aggregator, I’ve gotten a few comments on what it means to be moderate. One very reasonable question is how I can combine the words “moderate” and “passionate,” as in “passionate moderate.” It seems like a contradiction in terms. And I do do intend the two words to convey a certain amount of tension. Nonetheless I don’t think they’re entirely contradictory.

    “Moderate” isn’t an ideological or party label. It’s a general description that some people are comfortable with. So what I’m about to discuss applies only to me. It may apply to other people. Many people I have run into who self-identify as moderate would be comfortable with most of what I’m saying, at least what I’m saying about the process of thinking, though not necessarily about the specific positions I have come to. I use my own specific conclusions simply as an illustration. It’s quite possible, and indeed likely, for those who identify themselves as moderates to disagree.

    There are people who espouse a form of moderation from apathy. They don’t care to make a decision so they generally find a center point, effectively a point of least conflict among those they have to live with. Another group may well find it difficult to make decisions and end up in the center through lack of concern. I’m not talking about these groups, but rather those who are active and committed and yet take a moderate approach.

    Here are the keys to what I think of as moderate thinking.

    1. Never improperly excluding a middle position

    Improperly excluding middles is a standard practice in both politics and religion. You are either a laissez faire capitalist or you’re a communist. You’re left wing or right wing. You accept Biblical inerrancy, or you don’t believe in the Bible at all. You’re a fundamentalist or an atheist. Each of these pairs ignores many positions between, and some of them ignore additional positions that are more extreme.

    2. Finding the actual extremes

    Very often politicians and theologians want to place their opponents on the extremes. Moderate thinking avoids this by looking for the actual extremes and finding the range of opinions. As an example, Ned Lamont, Democratic senatorial candidate in Connecticut, is called an extremist, and his election is supposed to mean that the Democratic party is turning far to the left. But Lamont, who wants to withdraw troops from Iraq over a period of six months is hardly an extremist. His position is probably held by a majority of the voters of his state, though they may vote for another candidate for other reasons. The extreme position would be a pacifist position that stated that we should not employ force against terrorists, but should turn the other cheek (figuratively) to them.

    On the other hand, Democrats try to paint Bush as an extreme right winger. But a few miles from me we have a Baptist pastor who was a Vice-Presidential candidate for a minor party in the last election and who thinks Bush is a liberal. That doesn’t make Bush right, any more than agreeing with a majority of Connecticut voters makes Lamont right, but it does mean that he’s not the extreme.

    3. Setting relative values on issues and positions

    This third point simply means that in general moderates are not one issue people. Many people have numerous litmus test issues. For example, they will not vote for a candidate who differs with their position on abortion, or on the war in Iraq, or on taxes, or on any of a number of other issues. I don’t do litmus test issues. There are certain positions I find very hard to stomach, but in choosing a candidate to vote for, I have to deal with a range of issues, and generally no issue is absolute.

    Application

    Much of our political and religious discourse is conducted with excluded options. Let me just take a few examples.

    Gun in the House

    I have made a decision not to have a gun in my house. I have had all kinds of reactions to that decision. I have been congratulated on my high moral stance against gun control. I have been condemned for not believing people should be permitted to defend themselves. But gun control advocates should not take comfort from my stance, and homeowners who wish to protect their property with a weapon should not be concerned. I’ll be voting for candidates who will uphold your right to self-defense.

    So then why do I not have a gun? I have simply made a calculation that my own level of alertness, my normal reaction time, and my decisiveness under the appropriate circumstances are not quite good enough to make the gun a good idea for me. I’m not bad with one on the range, or at least I wasn’t a few years ago when I last tried. I have decent aim. But I don’t believe the odds are good that I’m more likely to get the weapon from a safe place, locate a target, and use it effectively, than I am to have it stolen and used to shoot me, for just one example. And to those who have told me I should darn well get that good, I say, “You get that good. I’ll do what I think best.”

    I have no moral qualms about shooting an intruder. If I can get the guy with a baseball bat, I will. But that is where I think that I am safest. The extremes here are a complete refusal to use violence on the one hand, and a “guns blazing” approach on the other. I ask what will make my family safer.

    War in Iraq

    I oppose the war in Iraq. Again, there are those who respond to my high moral stand against war, and there are those who think I’m a wimpy pacifist (no, I’m not calling all pacifists wimps). But neither are dealing with my own reasoning. The question is one of strategy. What is the best way to use force? Here I see the extremes as pacifism, in which we do not respond violently to terrorists, and the parking lot view, which suggests we make countries that support terrorists into parking lots. I look for the action that is going to result in a better state of affairs after it has been accomplished. I cannot see how the Iraq war can end in a better state than things were before the war, and thus I regard it (and did so before it was launched) as a bad strategy.

    Historical Jesus

    This is a topic on which it’s easy to get Christians confused, because most simply don’t know all the various options, and in fact, very few probably need to know all of them. To identify the extremes, however, we have on the one hand a historical Jesus who is precisely as a harmony of the gosples would make him, and on the other hand we have the belief that Jesus was made up, that he is not a historical figure, or even a historical figure around which some myths have grown, but that he never existed at all. There is quite a lot of ground between those two positions.

    I would like to see us recognize the many possibilities between “every detail of the gospels are historically true without even normal eyewitness variations” and “most of the gospel record is false. For example, one can assume that certain details such as how many times the cock crowed and how many times Peter denied Jesus may have been remembered differently by different people. Even more substantively, one can wonder whether there were, in fact, multiple feedings of 5,000 people and then 4,000 people, and can do so without doubting the entire story of Jesus.

    I recall an online written debate in which I undertood in a series of messages to defend Jesus as a real, historical figure. I came up with six points that I would defend and began the debate. A number of Christians observing these posts told me that I had already given up Christianity because I was not defending the virgin birth or the resurrection. But I had not denied either of those doctrines; I had merely taken on a more limited task–demonstrating that Jesus was, at least, a historical fiction, and not totally a construction of his followers.

    Passionate Moderation

    How can one be a passionate moderate? I see no reason why one cannot be passionate about one’s beliefs just because they are not extreme. In other words, I don’t see the problem here. Let me give a quick example. On the topic of evangelism and missionary effort I get pegged both as evangelical and as liberal. Why?

    First, I believe passionately that Christians are to be witnesses for Jesus. We are not to be ashamed of who we are, and we are to testify of what Jesus has done for and in us.

    Second, I believe passionately that it is the Holy Spirit who convicts and converts, and that our witness is never to be forceful, intrusive, emotionally manipulative, or offensive. (Note that I did not say that the gospel itself would not offend; our witness to the gospel should not offend.)

    The first of these points gets me called evangelical; the second gets me called liberal. And if you were to hear and see me carrying out those statements, independently of one another, you might agree. But together, they seem to me to be the “Jesus” way of evangelism. The combination seems moderate to many people, but I simply think it is right, and I’m passionate about it.

    Conclusion

    That, to me, is the essence of being a passionate moderate. Your mileage will probably vary–moderately, I hope!

  • Reacting to a Gay Candidate

    One of the many things that annoys me about sports broadcasters is their tendency to create a trend out of every slight turn of the game. My stepson is a professional pitcher, and if he throws a strike the announcer is sure to start talking about the strong performance and how if he just keeps pitching that way, the game is in hand. If he throws a ball, that too becomes a trend and we’re about to walk the opposing side.

    This entry isn’t about sports but it is about overreaction and the things that tend to help us overreact. It starts with a news item from Agape Press, titled Sweet Home Alabama. The story begins in a more or less straightforward manner, with a close election, in which Patricia Todd won by 59 votes over Gaynell Hendricks. The district is predominantly black, and Todd is white. But in addition, she is a Lesbian.

    The district committee voted to disqualify Todd, and also Henricks for that matter, because they had failed to file a financial statement to the party. The state part overturned that and restored Todd’s candidacy. It’s interesting to note that the Agape Press story fails to mention the fact that the financial statement requirement hadn’t been enforced in Alabama since 1988 because state financial disclosure requirements had taken its place. Compare their story to this one from the Montgomery Advertiser: Win OK’d for Gay Candidate.

    Now here’s the comment from Joe Murray of Agape Press:

    What happened next is what exposed the deep divisions in the Democratic Party and the power of the gay lobby.

    Huh? Just where did he get that. A gay candidate is nearly removed and survives by a very narrow margin at the state level and it shows the power of the gay lobby? I’d suggest instead that the gay lobby, such as it is in Alabama, barely managed to keep the candidate on the ballot. And the key thing here is that she won! I’m sure there’s something wrong somewhere with lobbyists trying to get the candidate who wins the primary election on the general election ballot, but I can’t quite think what that would be!

    The claim, of course, is that African-American voters are being displaced in favor of Gay and Lesbian candidates. But in a majority black district, one would have to assume that some African-American voters also voted for the winning candidate. Despite all efforts at gerrymandering, and I think our politicians in both parties should be ashamed of their district drawing efforts, the bottom line is people voting, and in this case they voted for Patricia Todd, who is white and a Lesbian.

    Joe Murray continues:

    Understand this — the homosexual lobby is on a quest to raise its rainbow flag over every state house in the Union. Blacks in the South are now learning this lesson, for their party is on the receiving end of a forcible makeover. Make no mistake, Todd was a trophy candidate; a candidate funded by the gay lobby, and her victory signals the Democratic wind is blowing in a new direction. Gays in, blacks out.

    This makes me curious as to just what Murray believes Gay and Lesbian lobbying groups should be trying to do. It seems to me that the natural activity for a lobbying group is to try to get its candidates elected and its issues noticed and supported. Murray makes it sound as though attempting to win an election is some kind of dirty deed. But of course we know that if a candidate were a “trophy candidate” of the Christian right that would be OK. The sole problem here is that Todd is a Lesbian. The rest is just rhetoric to make perfectly normal, perfectly legal activity sound like some kind of conspiracy to commit fraud.

    But then we have the reason I brought up my sports reporting analogy: How on earth does this mean “Gays in, blacks out?” Does Patricia Todd not have the right to run in a majority black district? Would a black candidate be wrong to run in a majority white district? That would result in no minority candidates at the national level, and is obviously silly. What all this comes down to is simple: The Lesbian candidate won the election. There’s nothing illegal about it.

    The rhetoric that Murray is using in his article is very simply aimed at creating a split between African-American Democrats and Gays and Lesbians. “You can’t both have a place at the Democratic table, so come to us,” say the Republicans.

    Somehow I just can’t see this kind of deceptive, divisive practice as appropriate Christian behavior. Let the winner win, whether we like her or not. And come to think of it, I haven’t heard anyone challenge her on any grounds other than that she’s white and Lesbian, and those are neither qualifications nor disqualifications. They don’t tell us what kind of legislator she will be.