August 2008 Archives

Like most pro-lifers, I'm ecstatic at the choice of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as Sen. McCain's vice presidential running mate. I've already received more than a dozen calls from pro-life leaders around the country, both Catholic and Protestant, who are giddy at Sen. McCain's choice.

At the Saddleback Civil Forum, Sen. McCain said that he was pro-life and would have a pro-life administration. The first selection of a prospective McCain administration has been made, and the senator could not have made a more pro-life appointment. I have already received two calls from pro-life Evangelical women who are delighted almost beyond words that they will now have a prominent pro-life woman who is the mother of five as one of the most prominent spokespersons for their cause. Gov. Palin is a person of faith and a devoted wife and mother whose oldest son volunteered to serve his country and will be deployed to Iraq shortly.

This election cycle seems to have no end to surprises. Who would have thought that the candidate of "change," Sen. Obama, would select one of the longest serving senators in the U.S. Senate (35 years) and a consummate Washington insider, and Sen. McCain (the old guy) would make the bold, out-of-the-box, unconventional choice of a vice presidential running mate?

This also means that Sen. McCain is going to make a major play for the most fluid demographic in this campaign cycle: women, 25 and above. Many of them voted for Sen. Clinton in the primaries and feel, rightly or wrongly, that Sen. Obama was less than respectful in his treatment of Sen. Clinton, including making it clear that she was never even considered as his vice presidential running mate. Many of those women will now give Sen. McCain a serious second look.

Obviously, the weakest point in Gov. Palin's resume is her lack of experience on the national political scale. However, the Obama campaign will have to be very careful about going after her on that score. First, her years of experience as a city councilwoman, mayor and governor are approximately the same as Obama's as a state senator and U.S. senator. Second, if the Obama campaign decides to make an issue of experience, I'm sure the McCain campaign will point out that the relative lack of experience on the Republican ticket is on the No. 2 spot, whereas the relative lack of experience on the Democratic ticket is on the No. 1 spot. Third, many women will feel that the Obama campaign is being disrespectful of Gov. Palin if they attack her experience too vigorously. After all, she has been a city councilwoman, a mayor, and a governor and is successfully rearing five children.

Senator Barack Obama is now the Democratic Party's candidate for the presidency of the United States. Whether you are going to vote for him or not, this is an incredible moment for the grand experiment that is the United States of America.

Here is a comparatively young man (47), a person of color (his father was a Kenyan), who has risen by virtue of his impressive intelligence and skills to being one step away from the pinnacle of success in American political life.

It is indeed fitting, and even poetic, that Senator Obama will give his acceptance speech on the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. (August 28, 1963).

Senator Obama's nomination is a tremendously encouraging sign that the country has made real, substantial progress toward realizing Dr. King's dream. We are not all the way there, but we have traveled a long way from the Birmingham jail and the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

On another front, Senator Obama's nomination is also encouraging. Since 1980 there has been a disturbing, bipartisan, dynastic trend in American presidential politics. Since 1980, there has been either a Bush or a Clinton on the presidential ticket on either the Republican or Democratic ticket in every presidential election (28 years and 7 elections). That has never happened in any other era of American history.

Obama's nomination and selection of Joe Biden as his running mate breaks that cycle. Regardless of your politics, that has to be a good thing for government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." Family dynasties, even elected ones, are not good for democracy.

However, if John F. Kennedy Jr. had not died tragically in a plane crash on July 16, 1999, I believe he would be the Democratic Party's nominee this year. If he had not died, John F. Kennedy, Jr., would, in all likelihood, have been elected Senator from New York in 2000, (instead of Hilary Clinton) and reelected in a landslide in 2006. I believe he would have been an unstoppable force for all kinds of national "unfinished business" (in light of his father's presidency having been cut so tragically short). The temptation to restore "Camelot" would have proven irresistible.

Furthermore, the Republicans would have had virtually no chance to defeat him and he would have swept to victory in November and would have taken the oath of office Jan. 20, 2009 at the age of 48.

Like many Americans I watched the "Saddleback Civil Forum" with great interest. What an ingenious format. The idea of having the two presidential candidates answer the same questions, without hearing their opponent's answers, produced a lot more light than heat. What a pleasant relief that was to the mind and to the ear.

I believe voters learned more about Senator Obama and Senator McCain and where they are in substantive disagreement on substantive issues during the Saddleback forum than they will learn from watching all the presidential debates. I pray this format will catch on and multitudes of candidates for thousands of offices across the land will agree to participate in future forums modeled after this one.

For example, the differences could not have been more stark when the two presumptive nominees answered the question on which current Supreme Court justices they would not have nominated. McCain predictably replied, Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Souter and Stevens. Obama replied with equal predictability, Justices Thomas, Roberts, and Scalia (with a gratuitous swipe at Justice Thomas where it appeared that Senator Obama was about to say that Justice Thomas didn't have enough "experience," and then decided that was probably not the direction a freshman Senator running for President should go.)

There were other important, even moving, moments. For me personally, Senator McCain's answer to the question, "What's the most gut-wrenching decision you've ever had to make?" moved me deeply. McCain explained that because his father was a high-ranking admiral the North Vietnamese were willing to let him go home from Hanoi immediately, and that he refused because the POWs' code of conduct was "you only leave in order of capture" and others had been captured before him.

Senator McCain's last statement was that his decision to stay in captivity and be tortured rather than come home early was "not only the toughest decision I ever made" but that he was satisfied with that decision more "than any decision I ever made in my life."

Two final observations. First, I totally agree with Rick Warren's statement at the beginning of the Forum, "We believe in the separation of church and state, but we do not believe in the separation of faith and politics."

Second, I am by nature genetically programmed to be an optimist. I must confess, however, in my wildest dreams I never would have imagined that the only joint appearance of the two major party presidential candidates prior to their presidential debates would be at a Southern Baptist church with a fourth-generation Southern Baptist preacher asking all the questions for two hours. So much for the decline of Evangelical influence in American society.

It seems that miracles still do occur. I have heard of courts reversing their decisions before, but it has always been new judges reversing their predecessors' decisions. In California, we have now witnessed the same judges reversing their own decision from just this past February.

On February 28, 2008, (I blogged on this, "Parental Rights and Governmental Requirements" on March 20th.) the California Second District Court of Appeals ruled that parents in that state who did not possess a "teaching certificate" could no longer teach their children at home.

On August 8th, the same three judges who ruled against homeschoolers (currently 166,000 children in the state of California) reversed themselves, rescinded their previous ruling and declared they were acquiescing to the California Legislature's right to rule that "home schools are permissible in California when conducted as private schools."

The original February decision had provoked a tremendous outcry of protest from across the country, as well as within California (including Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger). The California State Schools Superintendent Jack O'Connell also had objected to the decision and supported the homeschoolers' rights to educate their children at home.

This was never an educational issue. Studies have repeatedly shown that homeschooled children do at least as well on standardized tests and in college as do children educated in public schools.

As important as this decision was educationally, it was perhaps even more important in terms of judicial philosophy. Sometime between February 28 and August 8 the three California judges discovered judicial restraint. In reversing their previous decision, the judges concluded: "It is important to recognize that it is not for us to consider, as a matter of policy, whether homeschooling should be permitted in California. That job is for the Legislature. It is not the duty of the courts to make law; we endeavor to interpret it."

Wow! Whatever they have been putting in those judges' coffee, I recommend a regular dose for every judge in America.

The Parents Television Council (PTC) thinks so. They have just released a new study, Happily Never After: How Hollywood Favors Adultery and Promiscuity Over Marital Intimacy on Prime Time Broadcast Television.

I have read the entire 17-page report, and I find their arguments compelling. For example, the PTC found that verbal references to non-marital sex were three times as frequent as those to marital sex. In scenes depicting sex, the ratio was almost 4 to 1 in favor of non-marital sex vs. sex between married partners. The "Family Hour," the time when you might reasonably expect to get less such material, actually contained the highest frequency of references to non-married sex.

The PTC study concludes that "many in Hollywood are actively seeking to undermine marriage by consistently showing it in a negative manner." Furthermore, the study expressed grave concern about the rapid increase in network television's preoccupation with once-taboo sexual subjects. For example, references to bestiality, incest, necrophilia, pedophilia, transsexuals/transvestites, and threesomes outnumbered references to sex within marriage 27 to 1 on NBC.

The same network had as many depictions of adults having sex with minors as there were depictions of sex between married partners.

The good news about ABC was that they had the most references to marital sex. The bad news is that a significant number of the references were negative. By contrast, almost none of ABC's references to non-marital sex were negative.

As nationally syndicated radio talk show host and TV and film critic Michael Medved so succinctly put it: "For many years, parents have worried about television's glamorization of destructive sexual behavior. This important new report suggests another cause for concern: the de-glamorization of marriage. Statistics show that the overwhelming majority of Americans feel satisfied and fulfilled by their marriages. The notion that sex outside of marriage is inherently more exciting, more important, more worthy as the subject to story-telling, is a toxic message for parents and children alike."

And when people in the television industry say that what people watch on TV doesn't influence them, it lacks any credibility. Why? Commercial television is founded on the premise that a 30-second commercial can change your buying habits and cause you to use the advertised products. If it didn't work, commercial television would have gone bankrupt. In this case, what they are advertising is non-marital and kinky sex--and unabated, it will change attitudes and behaviors.

Parents, be warned: BEWARE what you allow your children to be exposed to on television--not just on cable channels, but on broadcast networks at well.

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