I read pastorDan's recent diary in which he offers a refutation of the moral basis for the Ohio Restoration Project:
http://ohiorestorationproject.com/overview.php
I think that if we really want to make this about values we need more than a polemic, we need an alternative. The following is not meant as a parody of this Republican travesty. I did copy a few lines at the end just to make my point a little clearer. We can do what they are doing. I don't know if this works for us but this seems like a fuller, faith-based, values oriented answer. I call it the Ohio Faith Reclamation.
Ohio Faith Reclamation
Ordinary Americans are standing in the crosshairs of an intense spiritual assault by the armies of darkness. It is our fortune to live in dangerous and desperate times when the future of our faith and freedom hangs in the balance.
Since the very founding our country has nurtured a Christian society with a great and longstanding tradition of tolerance toward people of all faiths, all religions, and all civilizations. The ideal of our society is democracy, self-determination, the idea that people ought to decide for themselves how society will be structured, who will lead, and how disputes will be settled. We believe that God has blessed our society and thereby led peoples throughout the world to follow our example, deciding for themselves how their societies are to be organized.
During the last 30 years our country has come under intense spiritual warfare. Recently, the casualty list has become long and daunting, our grief and despair has grown, and our need to rise and do something about it has finally matured. Spiritual warfare is escalating:
1. The government of the United States has broken faith with us. As Christians we are called to feed the hungry, heal the sick, and visit the prisoners. Our government has cut the money for feeding the hungry, stolen any chance we have to heal the sick to make payoffs to rich drug manufacturers, and allows no visitors to 70,000 prisoners overseas.
2. Dishonest and corrupt government officials are trying to convince us that the courts are trying to change the Biblical definition of marriage because they think that our ignorance will help them win elections. They know full well that the courts have no authority to speak to the meaning or content of our sacraments and have never done so.
3. Vain and self-serving demi-Gods lie to the world and the people of America in order to provoke and sustain a brutal war of aggression against a people that had no ability to threaten America or anyone else.
4. The longstanding and settled view that creation ought to be taught in our schools, not as hard science, but as social science, has been attacked by cynical politicians creating confusion in order to gain votes.
5. The mouthpieces of moral simplicity scream of the horrors of abortion while the policies of the leaders they admire remove the supports for abortion alternatives and leave ordinary Americans unable to support the familes they already have.
6. Our teachers, our hardworking university professors, the people that train us and equip us for the future, are attacked as polluting our spiritual heritage by the very people that are supposed to help our teachers so that they can help us.
"With so much of world history weighing in the balances, it's not enough to simply make moral observations and diagnose the culture. "Better to light one candle than to curse the darkness" has become our course of action. In the months to come, the Ohio Faith Reclamation seeks to ignite hundreds of thousands of "candles" of influence and light in the public arena. The Hinges of History are moving on our watch. Ohio stands at the critical crossroads to America's future leaders.
By God's design, for such a time as this, Ohio is truly at the "heart of it all!"
Thank you for caring and making a difference."