Politicians, religion and promoting a true right to life

The religious right made a strange choice in picking Kim Davis to bear the standard of Faith Persecuted. Davis is the Kentucky Clerk of Court jailed for defying a Supreme Court order to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples. Davis has been married four times to three men – so much for the sanctity of marriage. Still, it should be remembered that a hypocrite is just someone trying to be what he wishes to God that he were. That would include a lot of us.

It is a risky proposition to allow politicians to define faith and claim religion. Some of them would have us believe that God made the United States an “exceptional” nation. That, somehow, we don’t greed and grasp and grab in the way other countries do. We would do well to remember that Imperial Japan was called “the Land of the Gods” and that Germans once believed in their own sort of Manifest Destiny. We could have the courage to look at our own national shame of human slavery and acknowledge that we are still dealing with the aftermath.

Our politicians like hitting us with what they call “wedge issues.” Abortion happens to be one. There are many reasons women seek abortions, but significantly these declined under Barack Obama, a pro-choice Democrat, and increased under George Bush, a right-to-life Republican. Women feel the need for reproductive freedom for many different reasons but are more comfortable with an unexpected pregnancy when they feel the financial ability to care for the child.

Many on the right profess to love other people’s unborn children. The problem is that they don’t love these same children after they are born. Somehow, these living kids are treated as national crumb snatchers. The right has an expression: “You breed ’em, you feed ’em.” It’s colder than Judas’ kiss. People on that side of the aisle are keen to cut government spending that goes to medical care, contraception, education, welfare, mental health and environmental conditions that are dangerous to children’s health.

Let’s promote a true right to life. Religion is not a smorgasbord from which one can grab just the parts one likes. If we truly believe in the sanctity of life, let us pursue policies that will increase the standard of living for the poor and middle class because that will reduce abortion. Let us close the “private sale” loophole at gun shows and demand thorough background checks. Let’s register and track guns. After all, we do that for cars.

Let us end the shameful legacy of the death penalty and acknowledge the futility and destructiveness of our “War on Drugs.” We can reduce the prison population and dispel the myth that if someone breaks the law, he is put away forever. That is a wasteful fantasy. Most of these folks are coming back home, and they are in worse shape than when they left. They need education and training in jobs they could actually get. The Los Angeles priest, Father Gregory Boyle, says, “It takes a job to stop a bullet.” He started a jobs program in the inner city. There are so many who will need housing. A sidewalk isn’t a home.

Let’s fund public education, not private segregated academies at public expense. If you are concerned about schools, why don’t you volunteer? You can tutor, be a role model and perform a ton of good. If you are truly concerned about children, you can consider being a foster parent or adopting one of the thousands of children languishing in our group home system. It will be the hardest work you have ever done, but perhaps the most rewarding.

The hardest part is to decouple from all the manufactured rage and false morality that spew out of our political system. A wedge issue is intended to divide people. They want to tell us that it’s Good vs. Evil. Why compromise with the devil? We have to hear that for what it is.

We are strongest when we can stick together. We are not going to agree on everything, but we do not need to be mortal enemies. Life is a miracle that we share with each other. We are here on earth with our companions – our brothers and sisters. We have to help each other get through it.

This story was originally published October 10, 2015 at 2:00 PM with the headline "Politicians, religion and promoting a true right to life."