Single-Issue Voting and Pejorative Speech

Perhaps you have seen the topic during this election cycle. It is a title frequently used by those on the right to attack those on the left when all else fails. And, it is the case, that many here in America are "single issue voters" and that the one single issue that is at the top is abortion. Perhaps you have verbally critiqued someone for voting for a party that "stands for killing babies." Or, perhaps you have been verbally critiqued as such. 

Why does this question even matter? For some it does, and for some it doesn't. For me it matters because in church circles, we hear the rhetoric, "I could never vote for him/her because of his/her stand on abortion." And many times, it seems that the conversation and decision are not around getting that candidate's position but on that candidate's party affiliation. Here is an illustration of that: "I will support anyone who is AGAINST killing babies. If you choose to support those who are killing them, there will come a day when you will have to answer for that. Aren't you glad your mother didn't decide to kill you?" A vote for Biden is a vote for abortion. 

Back when I was a younger man, a staunch Republican, I wrote an article for a Christian magazine under a pseudonym. It was pretty outrageous. I'd studied what happened in abortions, so I pieced things together and wrote an article as if I were the young woman in a first person sort of way. One woman who worked with us in the youth ministry was offended that I'd do that. It was descriptive insofar as I could tell at that time. However, it was before I actually knew women who wrestled deeply with this issue. I am somewhat chagrined that I ever wrote that, but it was a reflection of then and not now. However, the article was well received by our conservative readership, as I recall. 

Now the shoe is on the other foot, so I hear things about people like me. "Oh, so you are a  Democrat, so that must mean that you favor abortion," "you are a member of that baby killing party," "or your party pushed the Roe v. Wade decision," or any number of things along those lines. 

In this bifurcated world in which we live, some of us have a hard time stepping out of our binary thinking. Say that again? Some of us see the world only in yes/no, black/white, either/or ways. 

This issue is fraught with many a pot hole. At the end of the day, I want to be true to my theological foundations, to the God who made us all, and to the worthiness of people all around us. People matter. I think our tables are too small, too short, too narrow. After all, it is Jesus who does the inviting and we are the ones who encourage folk to sit beside us. We are all image-bearers. We all mess up. We are all messed up people. We are all standing in the need of grace and mercy. 

So, for the record, I am pro-choice and generally anti-abortion. I also believe that the decision is between that woman and her God, not made by a bunch of men in suits and ties sitting in some chamber somewhere. I want there to be fewer and fewer abortions. I want support for pregnant mothers to be a high priority in our country. 

On the other hand, my opinion, strongly stated here is that my friends and family on the right are "pro-birth." Yes, I said it, "pro-birth." Generally speaking, my friends and family on the right are more concerned about getting the baby born than keeping the baby alive, fed, nurtured, educated. Look at our programs by party. I think we should be pro-life from conception to the grave, and that means lowering the incarceration rate and doing away with capital punishment. While that is another complicated topic, there are too many innocent people being executed. We can do better. 

I worked in the arena of providing therapy, teaching therapy, and supervising therapists both pre-graduation and post-graduation for licensure for years. Across all of those categories I have seen women, young and older, wrestle with whether or not to have an abortion. I have seen the father of the child included as well as excluded from the discussions. I have seen families of the pregnant woman included and excluded from the discussions. At most of those points of discussion, the consequences were deeply considered, and pored over thoughtfully and painstakingly. I agonized with them. My job was not to be king of the universe and make decisions for them, but to walk alongside them and ask the deliberate hard questions before and after, when they had abortions and when they carried the baby to term. In other words, it was my decision to make this challenging problem their issue and not mine to control. Nobody died and made me king of the universe to control people and their decisions. My decision was to be inclusive and to walk with them, to agonize with them. 

Here are a few things for your consideration. 

Abortion rates are going down. They have gone down fairly consistently since Roe v. Wade. In 2019, one source found the abortion rate to be its lowest since Roe v. Wade. Apparently fewer women are getting pregnant. This is a complex issue, and thank goodness for google. Another good source for stats in this area is the Guttmacher Institute. Check out this and other sources. 

There are some who insist that abortions are lower in administrations with Democratic presidents. Although this is, again, a complicated issue, here is one source that looks at all sides of things. Generally, in my opinion, abortions trend downward in Democratic administrations due to programs and services for the women. Here is one source that supports this notion. It uses CDC data and provides summaries. 

Across America, there is a wide mixture of opinions about these matters. Per a recent Gallup poll survey, 79% of Americans say that abortions should remain legal or legal under conditions. Only 20% said not at all. A 2019 Pew Research Center survey indicated that 70% of Americans do not want Roe v. Wade overturned while 28% wanted it overturned. 

Another Gallup Poll found that 48% of us identify as pro-choice, 40% of us as pro-life, and no opinion at 6%. 

A curiosity is that some people think that attitudes toward abortion are party-affiliated. This survey found that not to be true. There are some Republicans who are pro-choice and there are some Democrats who are pro-life. 

One of the commitments of the Republican party has been to get a president elected and to have that president appoint conservative judges so as to overturn Roe v. Wade. Now that the current president has stacked the courts with his appointees with the help of a Republican leader of the Senate who blocked nominations of all sorts under Obama, our Supreme Court does have a 6-3 majority leaning conservative. Does that mean that they will take up the Roe v. Wade issue the way Focus on the Family and others have wanted it to since the 1970s? Who knows? Maybe so. But if that does happen and if they do overturn Roe v. Wade, then the issue reverts to the states and state laws. Those state laws are pretty diverse and pretty complicated. This paragraph is obviously dated as I wrote this back before the SCOTUS actually overturned Roe v. Wade. I decided to leave it here for the sake of providing a context for my current thinking. 

So, bottom line, if you want there to be fewer abortions in America, support programs that prevent pregnancies, and in my opinion "abstinence only" is not an effective strategy. I think it should be abstinence plus. 

Opt out of generalizations that do no good. Your party, whichever party it is, has members who are on both sides of this issue. There are believers in your churches on both sides of this issue. Develop a theology that is well thought out and articulated that engages people rather than shames people. 

Bottom line for me? I can no longer be a single-issue voter. Life is too complicated. If you are going to vote single-issue, at least choose a candidate who has been in line with that point for years, and not just of late out of convenience and gaining votes. Make sure that their lives line up with what they are now saying. Too much is riding on that these days. 

And now that the Supreme Court has ruled that the Constitution says nothing about abortion, they have essentially toss the issue back to the states. States, many of them, have had "trigger laws" on the books such that when the SCOTUS makes a ruling, like in the case of abortion, the law becomes immediately effective. Some of my friends vote in line with that way of thinking. Some of my friends vote the opposite. Some of my friends are divided about the issue, but choose not to be a single issue voter. Some of my friends will support the woman in her decision-making much as I described above. 

People in leadership roles in our community will attempt to make this a simple issue. They are wrong. They are seriously wrong.  

If I Had Been Asked

I recently asked friends and acquaintances what their church did or said about Juneteenth. It was a great time to say something as Juneteenth actually occurred on a Sunday, which is the good news, and it also appeared on Father’s Day, the bad news. So, in most instances, in all probability, Father’s Day won out over Juneteenth, or at least so it appears.

While most of my friends did not respond to my query, either because they didn’t see it, didn’t care to respond, or had nothing to add. The range was curious, nothing said at all to an entire worship service devoted to it. That would be my church on the one end and the National Washington Cathedral on the other end. In between were casual mentions, or a few seconds here or there, sometimes tied in with Father’s Day, and sometimes there were actually more time devoted. One I really like was a white pastor talking to a Black youth pastor. The white pastor acknowledged with an apology that he’d only known about Juneteenth for a couple of years. The young Black youth pastor offered grace and answered a few questions about its origins and how his family and others celebrated it. The elder of one church in an opening comments and prayer said several things for several minutes, and then one preaching minister devoted four minutes to it.

I’m curious as to who knows about Juneteenth and who doesn’t. A recent Gallup poll shows that the knowledge about it among American citizens has gone up since 2021. That is a good thing.

I suspect that largely white churches, mirroring white American citizens, will not know about it, and maybe won’t even think about it. I also suspect that muti-racial churches will know about it and will do something about it, or say something about it, in a way to honor the day and its meaning. I could be terribly wrong.

Personally, I have known about Juneteenth since the days of my adolescence here in Texas. I don’t know exactly when, but I remember knowing about it for a long time. Juneteenth became a Texas holiday in 1979 and now a national holiday as of 2021 when President Biden signed it into law and it immediately became a national holiday.

If I had been asked to say a few words at my church, what would I have said. I’ve thought long and hard about it and it would read like this:

“Today I am honored to say a few words on behalf of our country’s latest national holiday. It is a day unlike any other as its symbolism and meaning run deep, first for our African American citizens and hopefully now for all citizens. I take these few moments solemnly as my words will not come close to providing the deeper meaning and texture of this beautiful day.

On January 1, 1863, Lincoln signed into law the Emancipation Proclamation. We think it was bigger than it was. Perhaps it was more symbolical, but yet it freed some 500,000 of 3.9 million enslaved Africans, most of whom were living in the Confederate states. Unless Union soldiers were there, they remained enslaved. General Lee surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. The war was over, the enslaved were free, and some did take their freedom.

On June 19, 1865, two and a half months later, General Granger and some 6,000 troops, many of whom were Black, landed at Galveston and made the declaration that the enslaved were free, but they were encouraged to stay and work for wages. Some did and many left immediately to seek their families. The 13^th amendment was signed into law on December 6, 1865 which outlawed slavery except for prescribed circumstances.

Who of us can imagine what it was like to be enslaved to an enslaver on a large plantation or on a small plantation, with brutal means of keeping the enslaved Africans in check or less brutal ways of controlling them? Either way, who can imagine being owned as property? Who of us can imagine knowing that the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed, but the enslavers kept it quiet?  Then, who can grasp enslavement in Texas, having been quickly moved from another southern state into Texas, and the enslavers wanting at least one more harvest season and money from their labors. Who can truly grasp? Perhaps many knew about the end of the war and the enslaved now going free. It would be hard to keep that quiet, even as far away as Texas.

Who can grasp the depth of the joys of freedom? Waking up a free person must have been beyond belief. Living the day as a free person versus living a day as an owned person must have gone beyond comprehension.

Then, who can grasp living under the Black Codes, share cropping, Jim Crow South, and even the separate but unequal school system and other things?

So, yes, Juneteenth set the captives free. The enslaved ones were now free from the shackles of bondage and the brutal hand of men and women enslavers.

That was a day of celebration. Juneteenth has been celebrated from June 19, 1865 to this very day with all of its rich symbolism and meaning.

You and me, as white Americans, perhaps even some of us falling into that category of “I don’t really know much about it,” can now celebrate it. We celebrate it because people we care about are celebrating it.

Now, we may be invited to attend community or family gatherings with food and music and games and conversation. Or, maybe we won’t be. We can celebrate and honor our friends by learning about all things from Africa, to the Middle Passage, to the slave block, to enslavement on some farm, to the second Middle Passage, to having our families split and torn asunder in a dozen different directions. We can read and listen to the stories of people finding their roots or buying a farm where their ancestors were once enslaved or learning more about the plight of the Black farmer here in America. We can learn more about the Black Tax, red lining and its effects, health disparities, and much more. We can explore Black contributions to our country, the contributions that Black music has made, Black artists, Black theology and James Cone and others, and more. 

We can learn and by learning, we can celebrate. We can celebrate and deeply respect the celebrations of liberty and freedom for those whose ancestors knew not freedom or came to know freedom on June 19, 1865.

America has come a long way, and in this grand experiment called democracy, we have a long way to go in order to make things truly equal for all of God’s children. May we continue what others have started and build a beautiful USA for all of us.”

Those are my words, friends. What would you say?