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Dr. Jim Dobson is a likeable man of wit and intelligence whom I have long admired for his support for the family.
Recently, however, he—and his national political director, Tom Minnery—undertook on Dobson's nationally syndicated radio program to engage in a hypercritical distortion of an influential and powerful presentation on faith (a "Call to Renewal") by Sen. Obama in 2006.
The radio criticism of Obama has a number of facets to it: Dr. Dobson apparently believes the United States is a Christian nation rather than a nation of many faiths. Historically and today, there are indeed more Christians in America than believers from other faith traditions, but what follows from this? Sen. Obama would suggest respect and appreciation for the influence of Christianity while also appreciating that there are people of other faiths, and of no faith, who are not to be treated as second-class citizens. Surely Dr. Dobson agrees, right? So what's the point?
Sen. Obama also quoted a number of Old and New Testament passages, including some dietary laws that governed the Israelites (like not eating shellfish) to make the obvious point that even if one strictly followed this dietary restriction as a matter of faith in one's own life, it could not simply be codified to bind people of other faith traditions—at least not without majority approval and a lot of angry shellfish eaters.
Dr. Dobson thinks this mocks the Bible, but it is merely underscoring that we have an obligation in the public square to speak in universal or accessible terms.
Obama also said Jesus' Sermon on the Mount is "a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application." OK, I guess we could ask whether or not Jesus would think the purveyors of preemptive war to be "peacemakers," but again Dr. Dobson's point is more than a little obscure. And to assert that Obama "is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter," more than a little absurd.
Dr. Dobson also attacks Obama for his support for abortion rights. Like Dobson, I disagree with Sen. Obama here as well. But Dobson has mischaracterized the senator's view. Obama believes the woman herself must decide the abortion question. The senator acknowledges the decision to be a "profoundly moral one" and one he would advise a mother to make in favor of life and only after talking with her clergyman. In a meeting with me and other faith leaders a week or so ago, the senator reiterated that he is not "pro-abortion," and that he wants to "discourage" the practice by encouraging personal responsibility as well as enhancing adoption and comprehensive education that would reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.
Could the senator do more? Sure, and he is open to reasoned argument. Dr. Dobson should make one. The senator's point: All of us as we speak across religious lines need arguments beyond what we accept as doctrinal teaching in our particular faith tradition. How Dr. Dobson misinterprets this to suggest that either Dobson or my religious view would be excluded from the public debate or that "we have no right to fight for what we believe" is a mystery.
There is nothing in Sen. Obama's speech to suggest any denigration of faith generally, Christianity specifically, or Dr. Dobson personally. Far from it. Indeed, the tone, content, and purpose of the speech were all quite the opposite and obviously so.
In Sen. Obama's speeches, it's not surprising to hear references to Lincoln and Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass. Sen. Obama regularly touches my Catholic soul as well by showing a genuine knowledge of the work of Dorothy Day. In this, Obama tells his audiences that it is an "absurdity" to insist that morality be kept separate from public policy.
Don't misunderstand. Sen. Obama is not the equivalent of a televangelist, nor should he be. Having urged his liberal colleagues to see how much of American life is grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition, Sen. Obama makes a request of conservatives like myself—namely, try to fully understand the liberal perspective on the separation of church and state. Not the infamous "wall of separation" that bizarrely mandates affirmative secularity disguised as neutrality, but the perspective, according to Obama, that separation more readily protects church from state than the opposite.
This sentiment, unlike the exclusionary view invented by the late Justice Hugo Black in the late 1940s, is as old and wise as Alexis de Tocqueville, who cautioned churches against aligning too closely with the state for fear of sacrificing "the future for the present." "By gaining a power to which it has no claim," Tocqueville observed, "[the church] risks its legitimate authority."
Sen. Obama's approach to faith is strong, but it is not exclusionary. He genuinely seeks to have his efforts bridge the religious and ideological divides on issues ranging from abortion to the importance of the American family to health care that respects the objections of conscientious religious believers to AIDS, climate change, and human rights.
Like all Americans, Dr. Dobson has every right to advocate public policy informed by his abiding Christian faith. I will be counting on him to continue to do so, but he will improve his chances of success by not pretending to lack the most basic understanding of democracy, which we all know he has, or by misreading and mischaracterizing the views of one of the country's most eloquent defenders of the importance of faith—maybe since George Washington opined that it was indispensable to the prosperity of the nation.
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Professor Weisberg's thoughtful post responding to Megyn Kelly of The O'Reilly Factor on the Fox News Channel nicely illustrates an overlooked means by which Sen. Obama—seeking as our next president to build bridges and unbuild walls (disclosure: I endorsed the senator and give him lots of advice which I hope is helpful to him)—might defuse some of the acrimony that exists surrounding topics such as abortion and same-sex marriage.
While it was Kelly's thesis that it is activist and not in keeping with principles of federalism for state judges to trump the people, it was professor Weisberg's nice counterpoint that as in many claims of activism, whether one favors the state court over the people (Gov. Schwarzenegger's position in opposition to an anticipated November initiative that would overturn the same-sex marriage case) or vice versa depends on whose ox is being gored. It is not really possible to say that one is more in keeping with federalism than another.
But that is not to say that the distinction between the state and the people is unimportant. The phrasing in the 10th Amendment speaks of the "reserved [unenumerated power] to the states respectively, or to the people" for a reason. The phraseology illustrates that while the concept of federalism is typically associated with what is federal (viz. national) vs. what is local, the separate reservation in the 10th Amendment allows the people of a state to deny a delegation of their unenumerated reserved power to their state legislature. Indeed, the people may decide that no government entity—including themselves by initiative or referendum—should take a position on a given subject that has been so reserved.
This avenue for complete neutrality presents a possible common ground to defuse some of the rancor over abortion and same-sex marriage. Theoretically, it would be possible to declare both subjects as presently beyond the competence of government.
The California Supreme Court catches a bit of a glimmer of the potential for using neutrality as a reconciling device when it suggests that the California assembly might decide not to ascribe the sacred word marriage to any state license whether given to a heterosexual or homosexual couple. Rather, California state licenses might be called "civil unions" or "enduring unions," with the sacred affirmation of marriage being entirely reserved to nongovernmental actors to allocate in accordance with particular their religious traditions. Were California to follow that course, religious bodies would presumably then have less basis to argue that the civil law was affirming or honoring a relationship that cuts deeply against the revealed beliefs of those religions.
The same could be true with regard to abortion. Here, the formulation would mean that if Roe were overturned, the matter would not be returned to the states or to the people in their initiative/referenda legislative capacity but would be reserved to the people solely within their own church and family structures. It would be within those nongovernmental communities that the people would decide whether abortion is a matter of individual liberty or the taking of human life. Obviously, as a practical matter, this would leave the abortion decision to a woman and her doctor as Roe itself does, but critically, the law would not then be giving any civil-law approval or constitutional edge favoring one side over the other.
Would such reallocation of authority to the people outside of government be more accommodating of those who presently raise religious objection to abortion? Obviously, it does not put the full force of law behind stopping or curtailing the practice, but then it does not endorse it, either. The law would be entirely silent, leaving the people in their individually and voluntarily chosen communities to decide matters for themselves in accordance with their respective beliefs. That this would not be mere window dressing may be illustrated in the Catholic Church's own teaching, which, of course, is strongly against abortion. While the most preferred Catholic position is a construction of the Constitution that affirms the unalienable right to life for all persons from conception onward in the Declaration of Independence, the specific instruction of the church merely calls for the practice not to be "recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority," and admonishes its own believers to not exercise their free will to procure (or aid the procurement) of abortion.
The possibility of reserving sensitive questions over which the culture is deeply divided, and indeed, with respect to which there is insufficient consensus to justify either a positive law or judicial determination has more salience and potential for bridging even profound disagreement than the obscure 1791 formulation of states rights in the 10th Amendment may at first reveal.
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... there is a Republican core to yesterday's California marriage decision. Not only were three of the four justices in the majority Republican appointees, but they were appointed by either George Deukmejian or Pete Wilson, GOP governors not known for liberal tendencies. (The sole appointee of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was among the three justices, all Republicans, in dissent.)
It should also be noted that all seven have stood election since their appointments. Voters reconfirmed all of them, by margins of 69 percent or higher. That this court voted as it did knowing it must seek ballot approval now and again is nothing to sniff at—this is the same electorate that in 1986 recalled the state chief justice and two associate justices, following a campaign waged by Deukmejian.
Though it is tempting to suggest that the Grand, Old Party is returning to a tradition of privacy vis-à-vis the state—let's not forget that Republican appointees represented five of the seven U.S. Supreme Court Justices in the majority in Roe v. Wade (1973)—it may be premature to make such a claim. Perhaps the ruling says more about "living constitutionalism." Might it be that changes in popular attitudes toward marriage equality helped to embolden four California justices to enforce a rule that seemed to them compelled by proper interpretation of the applicable law, California's Constitution?
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There is a paradox at the heart of Senator Obama's presidential campaign. Senator Obama is campaigning one way -- as a figure who transcends the old, tired politics of division -- and has voted almost entirely the other -- as reliable, down the line member of his party. This anomaly has been noted by the New York Times and one can expect that it will be regularly pointed out by Senator McCain. Asked to explain, Candidate Obama -- with some plausibility -- has pointed out that many of the votes he has been asked to cast in the U.S. Senate are deliberately ideological, aimed more at political statement than practical resolution.
Fair enough, but perhaps now that the Senator's campaign has run somewhat aground thanks to a "bitter" verbal misstep and the heckling of George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson, it might be wise, especially on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, for the prospective President Obama to supply a good-faith illustration of how he might achieve common ground and build bridges over the religious and cultural divides of the past.
There is no better topic for doing this than abortion. This is a topic of profound religious and philosophical divide, properly called by my friend Laurence Tribe as a "clash of absolutes."
For the last several days the leader of the Catholic Church has extolled his flock in America and all Americans "to set aside all division" to work for a conception of freedom built upon the truth of the human person. The Jewish community in America is once again keeping Passover commemorating the great Exodus of the Israelites from slavery to freedom. In the arc of these historic and traditional Judaic Christian moments both celebrating authentic freedom could there possibly be a better time for Senator Obama to demonstrate a tangible manifestation of the unity of purpose upon which he has been standing throughout the campaign?
How?
By embracing a proposal equivalent to what the leaders of his own counsel of advisors have already endorsed: the so-called 95-10 legislation. This idea satisfies neither side of an absolutist clash completely - how could it and still be common ground? - yet it strives for a 95% reduction in abortion over 10 years, not by legal mandate that would contradict the Senator's belief that this decision must remain that of the mother, but instead by ensuring that no woman faces such decision without having already had the benefit of responsible information about abstinence and contraception. In the event of a pregnancy, the proposal would supply objective information about fetal development, the proper guidance of a parent if the prospective mother is a minor, and the public's assurance of necessary economic support to carry the pregnancy to term, and if it be the mother's informed choice, the adoption of her child.
No doubt the Senator will want to put his own distinctive mark on such legislation, but for now, it is the general endorsement of the idea that is important -- since it conveys what many in the Keystone State and beyond truly wish to believe; namely, that behind the eloquence of leadership is a person prepared to lead - yes -- even before "day one."
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Today I endorse Barack Obama for president of the United States. I believe him to be a person of integrity, intelligence, and genuine good will. I take him at his word that he wants to move the nation beyond its religious and racial divides and that he wants to return the United States to that company of nations committed to human rights. I do not know if his earlier life experience is sufficient for the challenges of the presidency that lie ahead. I doubt we know this about any of the men or women we might select. It likely depends upon the serendipity of the events that cannot be foreseen. I do have confidence that the senator will cast his net widely in search of men and women of diverse, open-minded views and of superior intellectual qualities to assist him in the wide range of responsibilities that he must superintend.
This endorsement may be of little note or consequence, except perhaps that it comes from an unlikely source: namely, a former constitutional legal counsel to two Republican presidents. The endorsement will likely supply no strategic advantage equivalent to that represented by the very helpful accolades the senator has received from many of high stature and accomplishment, including most recently, from Gov. Bill Richardson. Nevertheless, it is important to be said publicly in a public forum in order that it be understood. It is not arrived at without careful thought and some difficulty.
As a Republican, I strongly wish to preserve traditional marriage not as a suspicion or denigration of my homosexual friends but as recognition of the significance of the procreative family as a building block of society. As a Republican and as a Catholic, I believe life begins at conception, and it is important for every life to be given sustenance and encouragement. As a Republican, I strongly believe that the Supreme Court of the United States must be fully dedicated to the rule of law and to the employ of a consistent method of interpretation that keeps the court within its limited judicial role. As a Republican, I believe problems are best resolved closest to their source and that we should never arrogate to a higher level of government that which can be more effectively and efficiently resolved below. As a Republican and a constitutional lawyer, I believe religious freedom does not mean religious separation or mindless exclusion from the public square.
In various ways, Sen. Barack Obama and I may disagree on aspects of these important fundamentals, but I am convinced, based upon his public pronouncements and his personal writing, that on each of these questions he is not closed to understanding opposing points of view and, as best as it is humanly possible, he will respect and accommodate them.
No doubt some of my friends will see this as a matter of party or intellectual treachery. I regret that, and I respect their disagreement. But they will readily agree that as Republicans, we are first Americans. As Americans, we must voice our concerns for the well-being of our nation without partisanship when decisions that have been made endanger the body politic. Our president has involved our nation in a military engagement without sufficient justification or a clear objective. In so doing, he has incurred both tragic loss of life and extraordinary debt jeopardizing the economy and the well-being of the average American citizen. In pursuit of these fatally flawed purposes, the office of the presidency, which it was once my privilege to defend in public office formally, has been distorted beyond its constitutional assignment. Today, I do no more than raise the defense of that important office anew, but as private citizen.
Sept. 11 and the radical Islamic ideology that it represents is a continuing threat to our safety, and the next president must have the honesty to recognize that it, as author Paul Berman has written, "draws on totalitarian inspirations from 20th-century Europe and with its double roots, religious and modern, perversely intertwined. ... wields a lot more power, intellectually speaking, then naïve observers might suppose." Sen. Obama needs to address this extremist movement with the same clarity and honesty with which he has addressed the topic of race in America. Effective criticism of the incumbent for diverting us from this task is a good start, but it is incomplete without a forthright outline of a commitment to undertake, with international partners, the formation of a worldwide entity that will track, detain, prosecute, convict, punish, and thereby stem radical Islam's threat to civil order. I await Sen. Obama's more extended thinking upon this vital subject as he accepts the nomination of his party and engages Sen. McCain in the general campaign discussion to come.
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Eric, you changed the topic on me and perhaps misunderstood. The conversation was about the politics of abortion and Republican coalition--no one is questioning the sincerity of belief of many who would like to see Roe overruled and abortion banned.
Do you doubt that the legislation I described would likely increase the total number of abortions? My point was that the kind of legislative initiatives that come out of the "Republican coalition" you were discussing does not actually accomplish a reduction in abortions. (And that the primary prochoice organizations do work hard toward that goal.) That may also well reveal that some (not all) such political forces are more interested in objectives other than reducing the number of abortions. Among them may be controlling the nature and understanding of motherhood and diminishing women's equality and sexual freedom (and even where those are not objectives, they may provide strong influences). For the many who sincerely would like to reduce the number of abortions, that desire provides the basis for education about the true effects of the legislation and the possibility for instead forging common ground policies that promote pregnancy prevention and healthy childbearing.
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[Dawn Johnsen] With apologies for the more-than-24-hour response time - an eternity for a blog, I know - I want to resurrect Eric's statement: "Members of the Republican coalition are not so much concerned about Roe as about reducing the number of abortions." Implausible, I think, on its face. But for any for whom it may be true, let me explain to them the error of their ways, with an example from here in Indiana.
Anti-choice legislators introduced two bills in the Indiana legislature a couple of sessions ago: one an outright criminal ban on abortion and another a "TRAP" law. "TRAP" or "targeted regulation of abortion providers" laws are designed to sound non-threatening and trick people into thinking they are about legitimate health concerns. But they actually seek to shut down facilities that perform abortions: by singling them out for medically unnecessary, extremely expensive regulations, such as building specifications that mandate hallway widths and room sizes that mirror hospitals.
The Indiana TRAP law would have closed every abortion clinic in the state, and kept them closed unless and until they could afford expensive renovations or relocations (leaving hospitals the only lawful possibility). The criminal ban went nowhere, but the legislature came extremely close to enacting the TRAP law and shutting down every one of Indiana's seven abortion clinics for plainly no legitimate purpose. Including our Planned Parenthood clinic here in Bloomington.
A few stubborn facts: Last year Planned Parenthood of Indiana dispensed nearly half a million units of contraceptives, doing more than any other organization to reduce the abortion rate in Indiana. I repeat, the TRAP law would have debilitated for no legitimate purpose the organization doing more than any other to reduce unwanted pregnancies in Indiana. Most of its patients have limited other options, for they live at or below the poverty level. Nationally, 81 percent of Planned Parenthood's patients receive services to prevent unintended pregnancy. Many others receive screening for cancer, HIV and sexually transmitted diseases. And three percent of its services go to women to make real Roe's increasingly hollow promise, that whether to have an abortion is a decision for the woman and not for politicians to impose on her.
The way to reduce the number of abortions is no secret. It's by making available contraception and comprehensive sexuality education. And more than that, by enacting policies that support healthy pregnancies and healthy families. How about universal health care, or at least an expansion of the CHIP program for kids? Where is that Republican coalition?