James Dobson does not speak for me.
He does not speak for many evangelicals, believe it or not. And many evangelicals like myself are eager to embrace a party of morality. A party that genuinely wants to reduce abortions, not use it as a political tool to "drive up the base".
Democrats once embraced evangelicals.
Jimmy Carter was the first "born again" Christian in the White House.
Billy Graham, the leader of the modern evangelical movement is a Democrat himself.
But something has been lost in the past 28 years.
We want to blame Karl Rove, Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson.
But instead of blaming, why not ask evangelicals themselves? The ones that don't fall in lock-step with these "agents of intolerance", to quote Sen. John McCain.
I have a confession to make...well, a few confessions actually.
You see, I’m a white male.
A Southern white male.
A Christian Southern white male.
And not just any Christian. An Evangelical.
I support the second amendment.
I’m a journalist, so I also strongly favor the first amendment as well.
And if you pinned me down, and made me pick, I’d tell ya I’m pro-life.
You follow?
An Evangelical, pro-life, white male from the South.
But here’s the twist – I support Barack Obama...and I’m a Democrat.
I first heard Barack Obama speak in November of 2006, two months before he declared his candidacy for the presidency.
Obama was speaking on Religion and Faith at a forum hosted by the evangelical group Sojourners.
I knew of Obama due to his historic election to the Illinois Senate and his keynote speech at the 2004 DNC.
But I didn’t know about Obama.
My only knowledge of him in my circle, the evangelical circle, was his controversial speaking engagement [as a supporter of abortion rights] at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Forum on the global AIDS epidemic.
Just minutes into Obama’s speech, which I was watching on YouTube, came a rhetoric that I had yet to see on the national stage from a Democrat on the subject of religion.
Transparency.
Being from Texas, and knowing well the history of Texas politics, I can tell you that its not just Karl Rove who turned our state from a strong blue to an even stronger red. It was the failure of the Democratic Party to reach out to conservative Democrats like myself. Those that see Matthew 25, when Christ speaks of "the least of these" as one of the greatest calls towards utilizing the government...through individuals...to help those less fortunate than people such as us...readers of The Daily Kos.
The least of these do not care about The Daily Kos, nor do they care about lipstick, pigs, pit bulls, Bill Ayers, or the size of Wasilla.
They don’t have time for that.
The Republicans have figured that out.
We haven’t.
Its why a little known Texas state congressman named Rick Noriega is about to get trounced in his Senate race against John Cornyn.
Its why our Governor, Rick Perry, our former Senator and current McCain supporter, Phil Gramm are now former Democrats. Its why Jim Hightower, Ann Richards and Gary Mauro never reached their potential in Texas politics.
And its why I now, for the first time, am fearing that McCain/Palin has a strong chance of taking the White House.
The Democrats are in such a prime position to bring in Southerners. Leaders like Harold Ford and Mark Warner give me hope. But when I have to read Richard Schiff and Jamie Lee Curtis telling me what I should and shouldn’t believe, it makes me cringe, and it reminds me that we, the Democrats, have a long way to go before we can re-claim Texas, and so many of the many Southern states ripe for real [real! not spin. REAL] change.
If you watched SNL last night, you probably laughed a lot, like I did.
But most of my fellow Texans did not. They see through this. They see this as Rush see’s it. Attacking Sarah Palin for being a mere journalism major from Idaho. For her folksy sayings, disregard the fact that she wrote almost none of them.
Texans...Southerners don’t care. They don’t care what The Daily Kos, or Schiff or Curtis or Matt Damon have to say. They don’t care that Sarah Palin believes the earth is 6006 years old.
They...We just want someone who we can trust to take on our values.
I saw it in Barack Obama in his speech to Sojourners.
I see it in the faith of Joe Biden.
But a lot of damage has been done. Bridges need to be repaired--and please, leave out any Palin one-liners that come to mind. Remember, we don’t care about bridges to nowhere. We care about our families, our friends, our neighbors and as evangelicals, we care about the least of these.
So please. Drop the spin. Become the party of inclusion...again. Learn from the words of Senator Obama:
Our failure as progressives to tap into the moral underpinnings of the nation is not just rhetorical, though. Our fear of getting "preachy" may also lead us to discount the role that values and culture play in some of our most urgent social problems.
After all, the problems of poverty and racism, the uninsured and the unemployed, are not simply technical problems in search of the perfect ten point plan. They are rooted in both societal indifference and individual callousness - in the imperfections of man.
Moreover, if we progressives shed some of these biases, we might recognize some overlapping values that both religious and secular people share when it comes to the moral and material direction of our country. We might recognize that the call to sacrifice on behalf of the next generation, the need to think in terms of "thou" and not just "I," resonates in religious congregations all across the country. And we might realize that we have the ability to reach out to the evangelical community and engage millions of religious Americans in the larger project of American renewal.
But I am hopeful that we can bridge the gaps that exist and overcome the prejudices each of us bring to this debate. And I have faith that millions of believing Americans want that to happen. No matter how religious they may or may not be, people are tired of seeing faith used as a tool of attack. They don't want faith used to belittle or to divide. They're tired of hearing folks deliver more screed than sermon. Because in the end, that's not how they think about faith in their own lives.