Yesterday I was listening to Democracy Now with my 81 year old friend, a long-time progressive activist. She about blew a gasket when she heard Jim Wallis explain why Obama came out so strongly in favor of expanding Bush's faith-based initiatives and also discussed his support for efforts to reduce abortions.
I tried my best to reassure her that Obama is not moving to the right, that he is firmly pro-choice and only seeks to find ways to take the abortion issue off the table, not to curtail women's rights. She said to me, "How can you be so sure?"
Easy, I thought. I'll show her his position paper on women's issues. Oh dear. I could find nothing on his website about women. I thought this a bit odd but dared not tell my friend this so I dug deeper and found On The Issues, where there was ample evidence of his strong support for a woman's right to choose, along with a cogent explanation for his "present" vote when a late-birth abortion issue came up for a vote in the Illinois legislature (another position with which my friend took umbrage) and his belief that the way to reduce abortions is to reduce unwanted pregnancies through better access to contraception and sex education.
I pointed my friend to this evidence and she said, "Fine, now let me show you this" -- National Security Trumps Amnesty.
"How can you be so sure," she said that he won't change his mind about a woman's right to choose? Isn't his position on FISA as critical as on the abortion issue and if he could change his mind on one why wouldn't he change his mind on the other?
She was furious that any Democrat would so openly support any Bush initiative, much less one as politically motivated as this one. In support of her position on the faith-based issue she pointed out that there are dreadful unintended consequences to the poor when they get services from religous groups that get this money. For example, a local Catholic organization that runs a highly successful homeless shelter has, in the past, admitted people who have been hospitalized because of mental or physical illness. But they can't do this anymore because it violates HUD rules, which state that a person who has spent as little as ONE NIGHT in a hospital or hotel is NOT homeless. If they were to accept an individual who did not meet HUD's definition of homeless they would lose their grant money!
I tried to reassure my friend that Obama's support for a woman's right to choose is immutable, that his support for faith-based initiative is from his desire to bring "all hands on deck" but all she would say was, "How can you be so sure?"
I have to admit that I really don't know what to tell her. Maybe you do?