Crucial Questions on Same-Sex Marriage

Many same-sex couples believe they represent the new civil rights movement.  I find it interesting that African Americans, the class of people involved in the first civil rights movement, by and large do not seem to share that view.  Blacks voted overwhelmingly in favor of Proposition 8 in California, which means they voted overwhelmingly against gay marriage, in spite of the fact that they voted overwhelmingly for Senator Obama, who spoke against Proposition 8.  The (largely white) gay lobby has attempted to portray itself as a sharer in the experiences of the black community, but the black community apparently has little sympathy for that argument.  The gay lobby is the thirteen-year-old boy attempting to hang out with his sixteen-year-old brother with sixteen-year-old friends.  Thinking he is part of the group, the younger sibling says, “I’m cool.”  And then collectively, the group says, “Um, no.  You’re not.”   

Same-sex couples complain that they are being denied a fundamental human right to marry whomever they want to marry.  The problem with this line of reasoning is that the right to marry whomever you please has never been considered a fundamental right in America, or anywhere else for that matter.  A person has the right to marry according to his or her own decision, but there are certain restrictions on this decision: a man cannot choose to marry his own mother, his sister, the current wife of another man, or a seven-year-old girl.  Of course, we could say that there are obvious reasons for these restrictions, but don’t think there is no one who has ever wanted to enter into these kinds of marital arrangements.  Society used to think the same way about same-sex “marriage”: we used to know instinctively that there were obvious reasons not to allow it, reasons related to biology, the nature of humanity, the collective wisdom of human society, the very nature of the family as an institution, etc.  The only reason gay marriage is now considered a fundamental right, whereas incestuous marriage is not, is because the gay lobby has much more cultural power than the incest lobby.  If we allow one interest group to force an alteration in the institutions of society, we open up the floodgates for every interest group that will follow it seeking any kind of marital arrangement imaginable: polygamy, polyamory, self-marriage, animal marriage, marriage between parents and children (one woman in Britain fought for the right to marry her daughter, not for sexual reasons but because they lived together and she wanted the same legal benefits), etc. 

There are two fundamental questions we must always come back to in this debate, or else we will be lost in a fog of confusion: (1) What is marriage? and (2) Who has the authority to define it?  On the first question, humanity has, until recently, universally affirmed that marriage is heterosexual in nature.  Most societies have also affirmed that it is monogamous, though some have allowed polygamy as one form of marriage.  The gay lobby now presses firmly for the monogamy requirement but drops the heterosexual aspect.  According to same-sex marriage proponents, marriage is simply a union of two people.  So that brings us to the second question: Who has the authority to define marriage?  How one answers that question will depend on one’s worldview, involving the basic presuppositions that a person brings to the table beforehand.

In my own biblical, Christian worldview, I believe God has the authority to define what marriage is.  Not only has he defined it by giving us obvious biological clues, he has also written onto our hearts an instinct toward his design in creation for marriage and family.  This instinct explains the universal commitment to heterosexual marriage across all human societies.  However, knowing how prone we are to sin and to the perversion of the plainest truths of nature, God also revealed his creation pattern in Scripture, the authoritative deposit of divine revelation (Gen 2:24-25).  We have no authority to redefine marriage according to our own whims. 

But what if one approaches this question as a non-Christian?  I still don’t see how same-sex marriage can be justified.  Most non-Christian westerners tend to be Darwinian in their outlook, at least on questions regarding the origin of species.  Darwinism is the primary biological metanarrative in competition with Christianity, the primary contender outside of the Bible as a totalizing explanation of humanity.  I take it that many, probably most, same-sex couples understand life as a continuum and the human species as one in a chain of development.  If this is the case, I can’t fathom how same-sex marriage can fit anywhere in this worldview.  On Darwinian grounds, why should a society allow for same-sex marriage?  Don’t same-sex couples put a barrier in the way of evolutionary progress by engaging in sexual behavior that cannot reproduce and advance the species?  Or, if they do use modern technology to reproduce, don’t same-sex couples compromise the purity of the race by passing on their homosexual genetic material (if there is such a thing) to future generations, thereby compromising the full reproductive potential of those generations?  On consistent Darwinian grounds, why should homosexuals even have a place in society at all?  (Please note here that I am not making this argument; I am trying to trace out the logical conclusion of the Darwinian position, a position that I believe most same-sex couples would hold to, in an attempt to expose the inconsistency in their worldview and in their practice.) 

Perhaps the gay lobby will argue that society has a right to define marriage.  But if that is the case, then why are they so upset about Proposition 8?  Society has spoken, and it has said “No” repeatedly on this question.  Yet the same-sex couples persist, painting themselves as victims of injustice, implicitly appealing to a transcendent standard beyond the will of society.  Dr. King did the same thing in his day, but his transcendent standard was rooted in a Christian worldview.  In making his case for civil rights, King appealed to a higher, divine justice beyond all human authorities.  Will the gay lobby do the same?  Will it argue that the right to engage in same-sex marriages is an unalienable right given to us by our Creator?  If so, I am curious to know how that argument will be justified; on what basis can the gay lobby claim to know the will of God on this matter?  It is certainly not on the basis of Scripture.  And if the will of God is not known by Scripture, how can it be known?  An argument based on what one group thinks God is like won’t cut it. 

Basically, it all boils down to this: same-sex couples rest their victimhood on the fact that their personal ethical standard has not been adopted by society as a whole.  Make no mistake about it: traditionalists are not the ones trying to impose their own notions of morality on society.  By pushing against the will of the people for never-before-granted “rights,” the homosexual lobby is the one doing that.  This is a far cry from the civil rights movement.

Unbelievable

By state law, schools in California are now prohibited from holding bake sales.  The state believes that sugar is too dangerous for kids to have. 

In California a pregnant girl can walk into an abortion clinic and have surgery without her parents ever knowing, but the government puts its foot down on kids eating cupcakes at school.  We are living in a brave new world.

Why I Am a Christian, Part 4a: Because of the Bible

Previous posts in this series:

Part 1: Because of Experience

Part 2: Because of Jesus

Part 3a: Because of the Resurrection

Part 3b: Because of the Resurrection

Part 3c: Because of the Resurrection

Underneath the experiences that have led to my sustained adherence to the Christian faith, and closely connected to my knowledge of the crucified and risen Christ, is the written revelation of God, the Bible.  Holy Scripture is a treasure beyond human estimation, and its witness to Christ has sustained the faith of the church for two-thousand years. 

No one, whether believer or unbeliever, can deny that the Bible is an important and remarkable book, and everyone must decide how he or she will respond to it.  Personally, I have found that it warrants my faith; I believe that Scripture is divine communicative action, and as such it commands that I assent to its testimonies and teachings, obey its precepts, and trust in the Savior that it reveals.  In this post and in the following I will sketch in a brief justification for this warrant. 

I must say first that neither I nor anyone else can assume a neutral position with reference to the Bible in order to weigh its claims objectively and settle the question of its trustworthiness by reason alone.  If I could do that, then I would be denying the Bible’s own teaching, for Scripture says we are radically corrupted by sin, and that includes our reasoning capacity.  The testimony of Scripture is that no one seeks God on his or her own (Romans 3:9-20), and therefore no one is capable of coming to faith on rational principles alone.  There is no neutrality with Scripture, just as there is no neutrality with Christ.  We approach either in faith or in unbelief. 

For this reason, my argument will have some elements of circularity to it.  But I don’t see that as a problem.  Every worldview must stop at some point of ultimate authority beyond which there is no appeal, and in so doing, every worldview has at least some element of circularity.  Those who trust in reason alone cannot justify reason on its own principles, for example.  So long as we are not caught in a vicious circle, I think the charge of circularity does not necessarily undermine our claims.  If there is anything that postmodernism has taught us, it is that presuppositions are inescapable.  God did not make us with a capacity to escape our own situatedness in an attempt to transcend our limitations and weigh all truth claims from a neutral vantage point.  Try as we might, we simply cannot do that, for we are human, and to be human is to be involved in a matrix of experiences and preunderstandings.  To be human is to see from a particular, limited perspective.  So it is best to give up all attempts at neutrality and recognize that we either respond to God in faith or we turn from him in sin.   

So then, why do I believe the Bible is the word of God?  There are several interrelated reasons, none of which stand on their own; rather, all mutually support one another within one coherent framework.  There are three primary reasons and several secondary ones.  I will deal with the primary reasons in this post.

First, the Bible claims that it is the word of God (references are too many to list, but preeminent verses are 2 Timothy 3:16 and 2 Peter 2:19-21).  At first, this may sound like an extremely weak argument.  But let’s think carefully about it.  At the very least we can say that, by believing that the Bible is the word of God, we are not attributing to it anything that it does not claim for itself.  That is an important point.  It may seem like this argument opens up the flood gates to all of the holy books of the world that make the same claim.  Surprisingly, however, very few books make this kind of claim.  In fact, the only books that claim to be the word of God are books that belong to religions that are spin-offs of Christianity.  Islam has its Koran, but, as a Christian heresy, Islam borrowed the idea of a written revelation from the Judeo-Christian tradition.  Mormonism did the same thing.  The other major religions of the world, which do not conceive of God as a transcendent, personal being, do not have books that claim to be his very words, and for good reason.  A pantheistic religion like Hinduism cannot conceive of divine communicative action in a verbal, personal form.  It is important to recognize that the very idea of a written divine revelation from a monotheistic, transcendent-personal God is an idea that would not exist if not for the Bible.  And though it may sound viciously circular to say that the Bible attests to its own authority, we must consider what the alternative would be.  If we appeal to some authority outside the Bible to ground its authority (reason, the church, tradition, etc.), then we have undermined our own claim by making the Bible’s own authority dependent on that of someone or something else.  If we claim that the Bible is the word of God but then elevate some other authority over it to give it credibility, then we have subordinated the word of God to something else and have contradicted ourselves.  Given the nature of the claim being made by Scripture for itself, we cannot expect that it will then derive its authority from somewhere else.  To be sure, other authorities can and do confirm the Bible’s credibility, but the ground of its authority is God.  Beyond his own words, there is no appeal.

The second reason I believe the Bible is the word of God is because Jesus affirmed it to be the word of God.  Why should I trust what Jesus says?  For that I would refer you to the arguments in part 2 and parts 3a, 3b, and 3c.  I won’t rehash that here.  Suffice it to say that we have warrant to believe that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, not only because of his radical claims but also because of his miracles, his fulfillment of the Old Testament expectation, and his resurrection from the dead.  The only alternatives are to call him a diabolical liar or a man who was completely out of his mind, and very few today are willing to make those claims, seeing how clearly a man like Jesus commands our respect.  This Jesus, whom I have every reason to take at his own word, repeatedly gave testimony to his understanding that Scripture is the very word of God.  In order to keep this post from getting two long, two passages will have to suffice for now to make this point.  In Matthew 5:17-18, Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets [a shorthand reference to the Old Testament Scripture]; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.  For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.”  Jesus affirms the enduring and meticulous truthfulness of Scripture by saying that not even the least stroke of a pen will fail to be accomplished.  In other words, Scripture is completely true, and every part of Scripture is completely true.  Obviously, Jesus never said this about the New Testament, for the New Testament had not been written during his ministry.  Nevertheless, there is an expectation that the prophetic ministry that was reinaugurated with the coming of John the Baptist and Jesus would continue until God had finished speaking, giving written testimony to his Son.  And that is one reason why Jesus commissioned the Apostles, who became his authoritative witnesses.  Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would guide them into all truth, speaking not his own words but the words of the exalted Christ to them (John 16:12-15).  And when I encounter the New Testament documents, I do not encounter the work of deceivers; I hear the testimony of those who have been with Jesus, and I have no reason to doubt the truthfulness of their testimony.  Jesus commands not only my respect but my worship, and if he says that Scripture is the word of God written, then I am obligated to believe it.

The third primary reason why I believe the Bible is the word of God is because I hear the voice of God in it.  Jesus said that his sheep know his voice (John 10:27).  This miracle of spiritual perception is the result of the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit to the word of God.  John Calvin made this argument as a way of honoring the supreme authority of Scripture.  Against Rome, he argued that the church cannot stand above Scripture and certify its authority, for the word of God has greater authority than that of man, not vice versa.  Against the enthusiasts on the opposite side of the spectrum, who basically left Scripture behind and relied on their own subjective “revelations,” Calvin affirmed again that the word of God has greater authority than that of man.  For this reason, we must rely on the Holy Spirit’s internal testimony to open our sin-darkened eyes to the true beauty of Scripture so that we may see that its self-attestation is true and trustworthy.  This is the only way to honor the claim that Scripture is, indeed, the word of God.  Any other claim would subordinate it to another authority.  Because of the ministry of the Holy Spirit, I hear God speaking in this amazing book.  And just as I know that honey is sweet because I have tasted it, so do I know that God has spoken because I have heard him. 

These are the primary reasons that I accept Scripture as the word of God.  There are other, secondary reasons as well, having to do with evidences that confirm (but do not ground) Scripture’s authority.  I will treat some of those in the next post.

Okay, sorry, one more…

I have to give one more post to politics and then, I promise, I will try hard to move on to something else.  There is one thing in particular that keeps gnawing at me and that I feel like I should address, and that is the argument by pro-life Obama supporters that, by reducing poverty, President Obama will actually create conditions in which fewer abortions happen.  The problems with this are legion:

- Obama will not and cannot reduce poverty.  Period.  Let’s stop this “Make Poverty History” utopian nonsense.  We have been fighting a big government “War on Poverty” for forty years now.  Why think that one more liberal President is going to do anything different?  Poverty is reduced by businesses, not by presidents.  The way presidents help businesses reduce poverty is by keeping their taxes low, enabling them to employ more people.  Obama proposes that we do the opposite.  And no matter what happens, there will always be a segment of society that will remain poor, simply because there are lazy people in this world.  Poverty is not just a social issue; it is a sin issue (No, I’m not saying that all poor people are lazy, but to deny that laziness exists among at least some of the poor is naive).  In fact, didn’t Jesus himself say, “You will always have the poor among you…” (John 12:8).  The slogan “Make Poverty History” is something only the Messiah can do, and he has said that it won’t be done in this age.  This is why I don’t get this relentless focus on poverty as a big government issue.   

- The implication of the argument that, by reducing poverty, Obama will reduce abortions, implies that poverty causes abortions.  But it seems to me that, in quite a few cases, poverty actually prevents abortions.  Women who can’t pay for abortions are less likely to have them.  Why else would President Obama favor federal funding for abortions?  So, this is the kind of thing we hear:

PRO-LIFE OBAMA SUPPORTER: Poor women out there feel like they have no choice.  They can’t afford to have a baby, so they are forced to have an abortion.  We need to give them money so they can afford to have the baby. 

OBAMA HIMSELF: Poor women out there feel like they have no choice.  They can’t afford to have an abortion, so they are forced to have a baby.  We need to give them money so they can afford an abortion.

The arguments are completely contradictory.  And it appears to me that the one in the White House is the one who will be setting the policies, not the naive souls who thought casting a vote for him would be good for the unborn. 

- Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that President Obama will reduce poverty (as though there is some button you can push in the White House that will change the kinds of behaviors that lead to it).  We should remember that Hitler made the trains run on time, but the Jews were no better off as a result. 

- Poverty does not cause abortions.  Sin does.  And the way for a President to deal with sin is to restrain it by the power of the sword (Romans 13:1-4).  When in history has such a widespread injustice been met by this kind of naive, fluffy talk about changing the conditions that lead to this practice?  Where is the moral outrage over the holocaust that is happening right in front of our eyes every single day?

- If The Freedom of Choice Act passes (God forbid), leading most assuredly to an increase in abortions to the tune of at least 125,000 a year (that comes to an additional 342 a day), while implicating us all in the practice by using federal funds to pay for them, will pro-life Obama supporters stand up and take ownership of it?  Will they look at themselves in the mirror and know that they helped further this slaughter?  After all, they can’t claim that they were duped.  He said it would be the first thing he would do.  How a vote for Obama can be justified as a pro-life vote is utterly stunning to me.  If FOCA passes, will pro-life Obama supporters admit that they were wrong about this, or will they continue to pretend that this is somehow good for the unborn?      

Must Read from Jonah Goldberg

I won’t be talking politics much for a while, but that doesn’t mean you should miss out on what others have to say, especially when they say everything right and say it so well.  Thank you, Jonah Goldberg.

Two Final Political Points…for a While

With the election over, it’s time to talk about other things.  The amount of attention I give to politics, I have realized, is disproportional to the subject’s importance.  The things that matter most in this world don’t happen in the oval office; they happen in the creaky pews of local churches.  So I look forward to taking the discussion elsewhere for a while.

But before I do, let me finish up with two more points:

(1) I do hope President Obama will stay clear of the Fairness Doctrine.  I’m not sure about all the details of this proposal, but it sounds like a measure that would regulate the content of the airwaves, bogging down radio stations by forcing them to give equal time to opposing viewpoints.  The reasons for rejecting this are legion:

1. It appears to be selective.  I have heard nothing about forcing The New York Times to include an equal number of conservative editorials as it does liberal editorials, or printing an equal number of stories that are favorable to Republicans as those that are negative, and vice versa for Democrats.  Furthermore, I have heard nothing about requiring ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN, Time, and Newsweek to do the same.  From where I sit, this looks like a ploy by those in power to silence their critics, or at least to muffle them.  It is targeted at talk radio, which is overwhelmingly conservative. 

2. It is naive.  How can some government agency claim that its viewpoint is sufficiently objective to stand above the competing voices and deem that a government-enforced arrangement for hearing them actually constitutes “fairness”?  Of all people, postmoderns should be all over this.  The idea that the government can legislate fairness presupposes that the government itself is a neutral party, unaffected by presuppositions.  And, of course, that is simply not true.

3. It is unfair to a great number of viewpoints.  By now we should know that there are more than two views on every question.  There is not just conservative and liberal, Democrat and Republican.  There is a whole spectrum of views.  Ron Paul represents a different kind of conservatism than does Michael Medved.  And Ralph Nader represents a different kind of liberalism than does Al Franken.  So, if we truly want to be fair, then we would have to give equal time not just to two different viewpoints, but to every single viewpoint on the spectrum.  That means the loonies from the KKK and the Black Panthers get their allotted time as well.  How could radio stations possibly accomodate all of this?  And why would we, as a society, want to legitimize extremist views by giving them equal time on the airwaves?  But then, if we don’t give them equal time, it’s not really a “fairness” doctrine at all, is it?  It sounds more like ignoring the minority voices in that case.  There is simply no way to do it well.

4. It will put a burden of regulation on radio stations that will lead to the end of talk radio as we know it.  Radio stations will be so sick of trying to jump through government hoops that they will get out of the game of substantive conversation and start airing recipe shows. 

5. It will constitute a violation of the First Amendment.  We are guaranteed freedom of speech in this country.  Nobody has said that liberals can’t have their own talk radio shows.  In fact, they have some.  The difference, however, is decided by the market.  The demand for conservative talk radio far exceeds the demand for liberal talk radio, and that’s why liberal talk shows are confined mostly to National Public Radio (which, by the way, should also come under the purview of the Fairness Doctrine if it passes, but will that be the case?).  I have my own theory about why conservative radio has trampled liberal radio in competition, but the bottom line is that Americans who listen to talk radio by far prefer to listen to conservative opinions, not liberal ones.  And now a liberal government wants to step in and tell us that if we want to do that, we better make sure we listen to liberal radio too.  Where is the Constitution in all of this?  What kind of a government, other than a totalitarian one, goes so far as to regulate the ideas that circulate in society?  It is really a frightening proposal, and all who value civil rights–whether they be conservative, liberal, or somewhere in between–should oppose a measure that would so blatantly deny us the right to freedom of speech. 

6. Finally, where does it end?  How long before the government starts telling churches that they must have speakers who represent all kinds of different viewpoints on controversial issues?  How long before they begin to regulate speech in all areas of life?  How long before we find ourselves under the power of a regime that tolerates no dissent whatsoever?  I’m not saying that would happen in the next four or eight years.  But I am saying that the Fairness Doctrine would kick open a door that could lead in that direction.  Once the government begins to regulate ideas in one sector of society, what inherent barrier is there to keep it from moving on to other sectors? 

All of that is my first point in this post.  Here is my second, much shorter, point:

(2) I think the sound thumping we Republicans have received in the last two elections will ultimately be good for us.  Having had control of Congress since 1994 and the presidency since 2000, we had become corrupted by Washington.  We needed to get kicked out so we could be reborn at the grassroots level.  I look for a return to the principles of true conservatism in years to come.  And who knows?  We may see another Gingrich-like takeover in 2010, and perhaps another Reagan will arise by 2012.  Let’s hope so.

How President Obama Can Win My Approval, Part 2

On domestic and social issues, we have the following:

(1) Energy: Yes, we must invest in renewable energies for the future.  I think a broad consensus of Americans can agree on that.  But we also must recognize that the market is not yet ripe for a major transition in that direction.  We must, therefore, build a bridge to renewable energy by using our own oil and coal resources in the meantime.  Nuclear energy is a clean option that we should be exploiting right now far more than we do. 

At some gas stations around here you can buy a gallon of unleaded gasoline for under $2.00 a gallon.  This would have been unimaginable just as recently as this past summer.  What has caused this price tumble, giving much-needed economic relief to Americans?  Well, the economy has slowed down for one.  We are using less oil as a result.  But let us not forget that Congress just recently allowed a ban on offshore drilling to expire.  Senator Obama said during his campaign that drilling for oil offshore would take years to develop (he is right about that) and that it would only save us pennies in the meantime (he is wrong about that, as the facts now show us).  President Obama can win my approval by warming up to our use of our own conventional energy supplies (and they are abundant!) while the market is still developing widespread renewable resources. 

(2) Fiscal Policy: I support President Obama’s declared intent to go line-by-line through the federal budget and cut relentlessly all programs that are wasteful, redundant, or counterproductive.  I hope he follows through on that promise.  We must cut government spending.  Now is not the time to expand government entitlements.  Entitlements account for an enormous portion of the federal budget, and once they get passed there really is no undoing them.  The more we continue to add, the bigger the financial hole we dig for ourselves as we obligate ourselves to present and future generations to do all sorts of things for them that government never did in the past.  Philosophically, I cannot agree with President Obama that healthcare is a basic human right.  It is not the government’s responsibility to ensure that every American has healthcare.  But since he is going down that road anyway, I would say that, to this point, he has not advocated a single-payer healthcare system.  I would prefer that we avoid going down that road and look for solutions that incorporate the free market. 

(3) Taxes: Obama repeatedly promised 95% of all Americans a tax cut.  To my ears, that sounds like our taxes will not go up but rather down.  That must mean that he intends to renew the Bush tax cuts for 95% of all Americans and then add more tax cuts on top of that.  If he allows the Bush tax cuts to expire in 2010 (at least for the middle class), then that action in itself would constitute a tax hike, which would in turn break his promise to the middle class that their taxes would not go up.  I would be very disappointed if he did that.  He must renew the Bush tax cuts for the middle class as part of his tax strategy to lower the tax burden on 95% of Americans.  Promising that our taxes will go down only after he allows them to go back up after the expiration of the Bush tax cuts is not really promising a tax cut at all.  I wish he wouldn’t raise taxes on anybody (as he plans to do for those who earn over a certain amount), especially during a recession.  I think that would be disastrous for the economy.  But there seems to be no way of deterring him from that action, and I really don’t see any common ground between raising taxes or not raising them.

(4) Supreme Court Appointments: Again, there is little possibility of common ground here.  I want to see more justices in the mold of Thomas and Scalia; he wants more in the mold of Ginsburg.  He may stand to do the greatest damage to our country here.  Nevertheless, if, by some fluke, he happens to appoint centrist judges more in the mold of O’Connor, that would be fine with me.  I don’t envision that happening, however. 

(5) Abortion: President Obama has dug himself into a hole on this one.  On the one hand, he promised his base that he would give priority to the Freedom of Choice Act, the most radical piece of abortion legislation in history.  Now his base expects him to move us farther to the left on abortion than we are now.  And yet, the majority of the country does not support that kind of abortion policy, so if he follows through with his promise, he risks alienating the majority of Americans and showing himself to be the true extremist that he is.  His hope may be that he can sign the bill without anyone noticing except the base, and the media will certainly give him cover on it.  But don’t think Republicans and pro-life organizations won’t be able to get the message out if he does sign it.  So, here’s what I want him to do: break his promise to the base.  He has broken promises for political purposes before (public funding for the campaign, for example); why not do it again?  Do not sign the Freedom of Choice Act.  If we can just avoid veering farther to the left during an Obama presidency, I would be happy with that result.

How President Obama Can Win My Approval

Resign immediately.  No, I’m just kidding.

Seriously, I will give him a chance, and I will hope for a presidential term that resolves some problems and moves us forward in some important ways.  As a conservative, I realize that President Obama will not pursue my agenda in the White House.  He wasn’t elected to do that.  But here are some areas where I see the potential for some common ground and where he can win the approval of people like me:

1. Iraq: Do not set an arbitrary timetable for withdrawal.  Work with the Iraqi government to determine the best time to pull out the bulk of our troops.  I doubt that it will be as short as sixteen months, but it probably won’t be much longer than that, given the extraordinary progress that has been made.  This job must be finished well, and I am actually quite optimistic about President Obama’s ability to do that.  He will feel the political pressure, and he will know that if Iraq goes to pieces on his watch when it was doing so well at the end of the Bush term, he will pay a steep political price.  I expect him to disappoint his base on this one, at least a little bit, because he will not withdraw immediately.  But we are really in the final stages of this operation, and I think we have reached a point where Americans can build a broad consensus that this job can and will be finished in a reasonably short amount of time.  I fully expect us to maintain a small troop presence in Iraq well beyond President Obama’s time in office. 

2. Afghanistan: I support President Obama’s intention to move troops from Iraq to Afghanistan in order to stabilize the situation, so long as he does so in a sensible way that does not prematurely close down the operation in Iraq.  How to strike a balance between these two is difficult, but I hope he will listen closely to the suggestions of General Petraeus.  Petraeus obviously knows what he is doing.

3. Iran: Do not meet face-to-face with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions.  Lower-level negotiations are fine, but do not legitimize a rogue leader and give him ammunition for propaganda by meeting with him face-to-face.  And do not cave in to the pacifist base and swear off all military options against Iran.  A war with Iran is the second last thing we want right now, but a nuclear attack against us or one of our allies is the absolute last thing we want.  Do not pursue a policy of appeasement.  Keep pressure high on Ahmadinejad.  Make it painful for him to go on with his ambitions to develop nuclear weapons.

4. Homeland security: Secure the borders, secure the borders, secure the borders.  Whatever we decide to do with the illegal immigrants already here, whether we kick them out or offer them a path to citizenship, we must secure our borders.  Do not jeopardize our security by giving constitutional rights to terrorists.  They are not criminals; they are enemy combatants.  President Obama knows that if, after seven years of protection under President Bush, we get hit again on his watch, he will pay the price for it.  For this reason, I suspect that he will warm up rather quickly to some of the Bush administration’s tactics for protecting our homeland (and I am not referring to torture here at all).   

These are all national security issues.  I’ll move on to the economy and domestic social issues in the next post.

The Irony of Election Night

I have mixed feelings about Barack Obama’s election as President.  On the one hand, I cannot help but find the historic nature of the occasion truly thrilling.  Very soon, the short list of men who have served in this distinguished office will grow to the number 44, and the last face in that distinguished line will be of a different color from all the faces that preceded it.  Four years ago I never would have expected this kind of cultural watershed to happen by the year 2008, but amazingly, it has happened.  The dream of Dr. King has reached a major milestone, and that is an achievement that all Americans share together. 

But on the other hand, I still did not want Senator Obama to win.  I did not vote for him.  Some on the fringe of the left may accuse me of being a racist, but I see my actions as the exact opposite.  I chose to look beyond race and evaluate Senator Obama the same way I would have evaluated a white candidate who had the same views, record, and experience.  And I think most of those who opposed him did the same thing.  They treated him as a true equal, with all that entails.  And once I had made that evaluation, I chose to oppose him, even vehemently at times, because I judged him not by the color of his skin but by the content of his character.

And so I am left with the mixed feelings that, while we as a nation have made history, we have done so with the wrong person.  And the deep irony of it is that, even as President-elect Obama represents the antithesis of a bygone era when one class of people judged another class to be less than human, he does so as one poised to reinforce and advance the same kind of moral judgment of one class of human beings over another.  Only in this case, the classes are not differentiated by their skin color but by their level of physical development.  A historic achievement for one civil rights battle becomes, simultaneously, a crushing defeat for another.

But I will not give up in the fight to protect the unborn.  I expect other voices, particularly among the so-called “younger evangelicals,” to say that our one-issue politics has run its course and that we must either (a) abandon the political process altogether or (b) stop fighting our losing battles and jump on board with a kind of social agenda that gets real results, namely, a liberal one.  William Wilberforce, a giant who, in his own way, laid the foundation for last night’s historic achievement, faced the same kinds of setbacks in his day, and he heard similar calls to give up in his fight against slavery in Britain.  But, like Wilberforce, we cannot abandon the innocent victims of injustice.  We cannot turn a deaf ear to the silent screams of the oppressed in this country, especially when half of all African-American children never see the light of day because of the injustice that we have sanctioned. 

On January 20th, we will witness an amazing event when, for the first time, a black hand will rest on the Bible, and a black man will take the oath of office as President of the United States.  But when we do, we should think about 15 million black children, many of whom might have grown up to be historic firsts themselves, who were never given that chance because our society values abstractions like “choice” and “privacy” over real, flesh-and-blood people.  And we should think about millions more who are likely to suffer the same fate because of the man taking that oath.

Some Encouraging Signs

It appears that Florida, Arizona, and California have all passed bans on same-sex marriage.  This is especially significant in California, where the state’s supreme court legalized same-sex marriage earlier this year.  Proposition 8 is an amendment to the state’s Constitution that appears to invalidate the court’s decision and nullify the thousands of marriages that have taken place since (including that of Ellen Degeneres).  Furthermore, Arkansas passed a measure that bars unmarried couples (including same-sex couples) from adopting children.  By far, Americans continue to affirm the divine, creational design of marriage.   

My Senator, Mitch McConnell (R-KY), won a fiercely contested campaign for reelection.  When President Bush leaves in January, Senator McConnell will become the most important Republican in Washington.  And he will retain enough votes in the Senate to filibuster, which will force the Democratic majority to compromise on many issues.  Our government is set up to prevent sweeping changes from occurring too quickly, and I think that’s a good thing for both parties and for the nation as a whole. 

We are not a leftist nation.  We remain a center-right nation that has happened to elect a leftist President when the conditions were overwhelmingly favorable to him.  And the most encouraging thing about that is that President-elect Obama knows it.