Posted on 11/07/2004 12:43:16 PM PST by freespirited
Exit polls indicate that for 22 percent of voters in Tuesday's election, moral values ranked as the top issue -- above Iraq, the economy, taxes or terrorism. And among those voters, nearly 80 percent said they voted to re-elect President Bush.
Less than a week after the election, we coast dwellers who think of ourselves as moderates may wonder just who are these "moral" voters and how they can oppose what we view as choice, civil rights and medical research.
Simple, they answer: They oppose what they view as killing of unborn children, codifying sexual deviancy and breeding humans for medical harvest.
Abortion, gay rights and embryonic stem cell research are among the "moral values" upon which the presidential election may have turned.
While much of the media watched for a Hollywood-heralded surge in youth voting, which, according to The Providence (Rhode Island) Journal, wasn't any better than the 2000 election turnout, we missed the real surge in the evangelical church member turnout. And it wasn't just the evangelicals. Sen. John Kerry, a Catholic, garnered only 44 percent among Catholics in Ohio, where the economy was thought to be a Bush-buster issue.
On Tuesday, 11 states passed ballot measures limiting marriage to a man and a woman, in some cases even banning civil unions and domestic partner benefits. A renewed attempt to amend the U.S. Constitution is sure to follow.
Washington state Sen. Val Stevens, R-Arlington, told The Seattle Times that she may well forge ahead with legislation to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage. "We want to see how we might be able to use Rob McKenna to help us activate some of what has been neglected in the state for years," she said. Surely the newly elected Republican attorney general is no moral Manchurian candidate, ready to be used by the far right?
And what sort of morality is represented by the denial -- or withdrawal -- of fundamental civil liberties? William Allen White wrote, "Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others."
A marriage license is a civil instrument, issued by the state, not the church. Community property, inheritance and child custody should be matters of law, not tenets of faith.
Decisions on pregnancy, abortion and other reproductive matters are intensely personal, indeed moral decisions, and thus not the province of the state.
The morality of science lies in truth, in a pursuit guided by compassion and ethics, not government edicts.
There is no morality in the government forcing the victim of rape or incest to bear the fruit of that horror or to dismiss the health of the mother in abortion decisions. There is no morality in the denial of legal rights based solely on whom one chooses to love. There is no morality in rejecting the promise of a cure to those who suffer from a terrible disease.
Yes, morality certainly is the issue.
Okay you liberal wingnuts. If that's the case, I expect your next editoral to call on Sen. Murray to introduce legislation that will remove all gynecological drugs from government jurisdiction. Under your logic, FDA has no business interfering with what pregnant women put in their bodies.
Their basic contradictions are their undoing.
Not the NY Times editorial board!
Not Barry Lynn's
Not Kate Michelman's
Not the Princeton Law Review's
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Amazing how morality can be so distorted....
"There is no morality in the government forcing the victim of rape or incest to bear the fruit of that horror or to dismiss the health of the mother in abortion decisions. There is no morality in the denial of legal rights based solely on whom one chooses to love. There is no morality in rejecting the promise of a cure to those who suffer from a terrible disease."
Is it the government forcing a victim of rape or incest to bear the fruit of that horror (if the fruit is indeed a 'horror'), or is the scientific law of the chances of reproduction?
Is it the government forcing a woman to choose between her health or the health of an unborn child, or is it the scientific law of survival of the fittest?
Is rejecting a inflated promise of a cure a lack of morality or simply astuteness? Scientific studies have not proved that embrionic stem cells are any more useful than adult stem cells. Why should people hold out on a false promise?
Choosing something that overrides the laws of life IS morality. The question is whether or not it is the government's responsibility to allow or prohibit morality...and even more so, should government FUND those choices that override science? When it gets to that point, isn't it morality? Especially if my tax dollars (which I HAVE to pay) are funding those options...
As I've said before, the idea of fetal stem cell research and cloning is an ethics issue that many futurists who aren't arguing from the religious realm deplore.
We simply do not and cannot have the right to manipulate and create life.
They STILL don't get it.
Keep it up Libs and 2006 will be even redder.
PATRIOTISM - the moral value the media won't talk about.
Only libs would say they were moderates as they try to explain away why Bush won.
To the victor belong the spoils.
Except for when you try to critique them. Then you're "questioning their partiotism".
the morality of carrying a gun to protect yourself.
the morality of expressing your religious beliefs (other than child sacrifice).
the morality of voting for laws rather than having them impose by appointed judges.
"There is no morality in the government forcing the victim of rape or incest to bear the fruit of that horror or to dismiss the health of the mother in abortion decisions. There is no morality in the denial of legal rights based solely on whom one chooses to love. There is no morality in rejecting the promise of a cure to those who suffer from a terrible disease."
...oh, but there IS morality in allowing partial-birth abortion for no other reason than a woman's convenience....or the forced acceptance of 'homosexuality as normal' onto an entire society....or the disgusting use of a 'promise of a cure' as a lame justification for abortion-on-demand?
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