I’ve held off making an informed comment on the church “debate” the other day between McCain and Obama. Personally, I think it wasn’t much more than an excuse for the religious conservatives to get into the subjects of abortion (or woman-dominance) and Christianity as a government influence.
All the brouhaha over whether or not McCain was in a “Dome of Silence” (he wasn’t) during Obama’s questioning, or whether they were asked the same questions (they weren’t), or if there was a real coin-flip between the two to see who went first (there wasn’t) is pretty meaningless to me. What was meaningful, however, is that Obama agreed to be questioned by a self-styled evangelist like Rick Warren who, among other things, recently compared pro-choicers to holocaust deniers:
“If they [evangelicals] think that life begins at conception, then that means that there are 40 million Americans who are not here [because they were aborted] that could have voted. They would call that a holocaust and for them it would like if I’m Jewish and a Holocaust denier is running for office. I don’t care how right he is on everything else, it’s a deal breaker for me. I’m not going to vote for a Holocaust denier.”
… said Warren in an interview on belief.net. It IS fascinating, however, to remember that the pro-lifers, that Warren and McCain are calling themselves, are also “pro-war”.
They will tell you that we only go to war to protect our people or to preserve freedom or something like that. But if you say you are pro-choice to protect a woman’s life, or to counter the devastating effects of rape or incest, or to avoid bringing a heavily handicapped being into the world, the Warren or McCain pro-lifer woud say “no sir… not allowed!”… and they would justify it by saying “God said so.”
It makes me think of George Carlin (our great loss last month) and his views on religion:
I have a question. Would McCain agree to go to a similar “debate” situation organized by the American Humanist Association? Would he agree to a debate sponsored by Human Rights Watch moderated by a woman? My guess is that it wouldn’t happen.
It is very hard in this country to keep religion out of politics, since so many people are raised to believe one religion or another, and religion is used to both keep people (especially the poor) in line and to preserve the non-scientific view of the world which has existed in one form or another for centuries. It is likely to keep down a good amout of forward movement for decades to come… at least I don’t plan on living long enough to see a real change.
Too bad.