This is something I have been thinking through for some time now. More to come later but I wanted to share what I have written so far and get some feedback on it. Preferably
constructive feedback.
Mike
No two topics are more likely to start a heated debate than religion and politics. Families that find themselves in disagreement over these topics often even ban them from discussion at the dinner table, especially at times like Thanksgiving and Christmas when they want to avoid anything that would kill a good mood. But if Democrats are ever going to take the Bible Belt South away from Republicans they are going to have to start talking about religion.
Some of the Democratic presidential candidates seem to have realized the importance of religion and are making a pointed effort to include it in their rhetoric. Wesley Clark has listed it as one of four American cardinal values along with patriotism, family and inclusiveness. Howard Dean has also made it a high profile issue to the point of leaving Iowa the weekend before the caucus to attend Sunday school, among other things, with President Carter. Joe Lieberman is a devout moralizer and Sabbath observer.
Republicans are somewhat unified on the subject of religion but Democrats are deeply divided. Some liberal Democrats seem to have an innate antipathy to religion. Abortion advocates and gays, two core Democratic constituencies, often find themselves under attack based on supposedly religious grounds from groups that call them immoral and unchristian. A natural response to such attacks for these and similar Democratic constituencies is to further develop the abovementioned antipathy. Other Democrats, especially in the South, consider themselves Christians and have mixed feelings about sharing a political party with others that are antipathetic to religion. A key difficulty for Democratic presidential candidates and other Democrats is to simultaneously appeal to religious voters and Democratic constituencies that view religion negatively. If Democrats want to win in the South without alienating part of their liberal base, bridging this gulf may well be their version of the Gordian knot.
One possible solution to this enigma is to separate discussion of religion and morality from discussion of equal rights. Equal rights is a core value Democrats share and is an issue with broad appeal. As just one example, the most important part of the civil unions issue is getting equal rights so that partners can have survivor benefits and the other legal rights and privileges often afforded to even unmarried heterosexuals. Democrats, among others, can agree on equal rights without agreeing on morality and religion. Most of what is generally considered immoral behavior is not illegal in and of itself anyway. For example, drinking too much is not illegal but doing damage while intoxicated is. Adultery itself is not illegal in most places but is legal grounds for a divorce. So disagreeing over whether an act is moral or immoral is demonstrably tangential to agreeing over the legality of that act and is unrelated to agreeing over equal rights.
Beyond bridging a divide between Democratic constituencies, an emphasis on separating discussion of religion and morality from discussion of equal rights would have the added benefit of challenging basic assertions that seem to unite many Republicans, especially in the South. One of these assertions is that Republicans are moral, upright and God-fearing and that Democrats are not. Republicans carefully package themselves as having "family
values," which is a shorthand way of claiming to be morally superior. Part of this packaging is to assert that homosexuality and abortion have negative impact on families but marital faithfulness is also part of the overall package. This packaging has backfired on at least one Republican in the South, Tim Hutchinson, who lost his US Senate seat from Arkansas to Democratic challenger Mark Pryor after it became public knowledge that Hutchinson had an affair and was leaving his wife for the other woman.