Subscribe Feed (RSS)One-Issue Voting
August 28th, 2008 by Bryan Allain | Filed under life.If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Jesse posted this link in the comments yesterday. It’s John Piper’s thoughts on one-issue voting. I thought it was very insightful. Here it is in its entirety:
Investigating dog life in Minnesota has solidified my decision to vote against those who endorse the right to abortion. So then what is my response to the charge of being a one-issue voter?
No endorsement of any single issue qualifies a person to hold public office. Being pro-life does not make a person a good governor, mayor, or president. But there are numerous single issues that disqualify a person from public office. For example, any candidate who endorsed bribery as a form of government efficiency would be disqualified, no matter what his party or platform was. Or a person who endorsed corporate fraud (say under $50 million) would be disqualified no matter what else he endorsed. Or a person who said that no black people could hold office—on that single issue alone he would be unfit for office. Or a person who said that rape is only a misdemeanor—that single issue would end his political career. These examples could go on and on. Everybody knows a single issue that for them would disqualify a candidate for office.
It’s the same with marriage. No one quality makes a good wife or husband, but some qualities would make a person unacceptable. For example, back when I was thinking about getting married, not liking cats would not have disqualified a woman as my wife, but not liking people would. Drinking coffee would not, but drinking whiskey would. Kissing dogs wouldn’t, but kissing the mailman would. And so on. Being a single-issue fiancé does not mean that only one issue matters. It means that some issues may matter enough to break off the relationship.
So it is with politics. You have to decide what those issues are for you. What do you think disqualifies a person from holding public office? I believe that the endorsement of the right to kill unborn children disqualifies a person from any position of public office. It’s simply the same as saying that the endorsement of racism, fraud, or bribery would disqualify him—except that child-killing is more serious than those.
When we bought our dog at the Humane Society, I picked up a brochure on the laws of Minnesota concerning animals. Statute 343.2, subdivision 1 says, “No person shall . . . unjustifiably injure, maim, mutilate or kill any animal.” Subdivision 7 says, “No person shall willfully instigate or in any way further any act of cruelty to any animal.” The penalty: “A person who fails to comply with any provision of this section is guilty of a misdemeanor.”
Now this set me to pondering the rights of the unborn. An eight-week-old human fetus has a beating heart, an EKG, brain waves, thumb-sucking, pain sensitivity, finger-grasping, and genetic humanity, but under our present laws is not a human person with rights under the 14th Amendment, which says that “no state shall deprive any person of life . . . without due process of law.” Well, I wondered, if the unborn do not qualify as persons, it seems that they could at least qualify as animals, say a dog, or at least a cat. Could we not at least charge abortion clinics with cruelty to animals under Statute 343.2, subdivision 7? Why is it legal to “maim, mutilate and kill” a pain-sensitive unborn human being but not an animal?
These reflections have confirmed my conviction never to vote for a person who endorses such an evil—even if he could balance the budget tomorrow and end all taxation.
* * * This article is from A Godward Life, Book I: Savoring the Supremacy of God in All of Life by John Piper (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 1997), pp. 279-280. Used with permission.
What do you think? Do you agree with Piper? If not, where does his argument break down for you?
Loading ...
I’d say Piper and I agree (that a person in favor of abortion shouldn’t be President) but for different reasons.
Buddy Watts said it well in a comment on your last post: “If a person is willing to support the issue of taking innocent life, what does that state about their character and integrity?”
It breaks down when he talks about disqualifying a wife for drinking whiskey!
Also, then trying to equate the unborn with an animal also fails, because then just as the question of “When does life begin?” is answered in various ways, so, too, would be the question of, “When does a fetus stop being an animal and start being human?”
Election years are so enlightening , I love hearing so many different points of view.
It’s great to talk about this issue, but we if are going to talk about protecting life of infants as pro-life, we better include protecting all life as pro-life. That includes death penalty and war.
I’ll summarize my position from my other comments: I am pro-life for all of life, and I now vote for candidates who are striving to minimize violence for everyone. Therefore, abortion is only 1/4 of that issue for me. Their desire to also protect the life of a mother, their stance of the death penalty, and stance of a candidate’s propensity for war are the other 3/4’s of that issue for me.
Let’s start changing the tone of this discussion away from just abortion. If you are for life, then let’s take about them all, not just abortions. If you want to stop abortions, then we better be willing to pay more in taxes to assist health care for mothers to go full-term to give their baby up for adoption. Or better instead of taxes, maybe our churches can start providing health care for mothers in this situation. That seems more like the gospel.
My hope is that we can talk about pro-life with all of these perspectives and stop with just saying it is about abortion. It’s quite simple: if you are pro-life, are you consistent with that in all these areas?
Tim brings up a great point, of course: neither side’s stance on life is wholly consistent. The GOP opposes abortion and now stem cell research in all forms [federally-funded or not], but says nothing about in vitro fertilization, which generates many embryos and only impregnates one, and pushes the death penalty. This is another reason that I can’t be a single-issue voter, because if you go from “abortion” to “preserving life at all costs”, there is no one group to go after.
And Bryan, man … if you’re going to push for these longer comments, you need to make this comment box bigger.
The idea that racism is the lesser of two evils along side abortion is disturbing.
I’d like to see how this hypothetical candidate, with these values, would react if his or her daughter was raped and impregnated by a black man.
We should try, as a nation, through education and safety greatly reduce the number of abortions. Putting this issue above racism is just one reason, in a long list, of why this nation has been going downhill at record speeds.
Thankfully, this year the Religious Right will not be deciding the election.
Anyone who voted for George Bush because he is Pro-Life has seen what can happen when you vote on one platform…
thanks for your thoughts Josh.
couldn’t agree more that there are things we can all do to help reduce abortions, regardless of whether we are pro-life or pro-choice. I think this ESPECIALLY hold true for those of us who call ourselves Pro-Life. We better be doing more than just voting for a presidential candidate with similar views every four years. George W was in there for 8 years as a Pro-Lifer and abortion is still around and still legal. So vote the way you want to vote, but what else can you do?
Find a local organization that helps single moms and single moms-to-be get educated our their pregnancy and provides them with housing and or other supplies once the baby has been born. We have one in our area called House of His Creation, and they are always in need of supplies, money, and volunteers.
The only place I’d challenge you Josh, is calling out people who rank abortion above racism. Personally, I’m not going to sit here and rank injustices from 1 to 10…that’s only asking for an argument. But to those who believe life begins at conception, you have to understand why they feel abortion is so abhorrent. You may not agree with their stance or science on where life begins, but you have to see why them putting abortion up there with racism is not trivializing racism in any way.
I like what Obama said during the Saddleback Q&A a couple weeks ago, that he realizes he’s not going to be able to change the minds of folks who feel that life begins at conception, but that we should all come together and try to reduce the number of abortions.
As for the religious right not deciding the election, i think its great. There shouldnt be a “Religious Right” voting block that is in the pockets of Republicans or Democrats. There should be individuals examining all the issues and coming to a decision on who to vote for that THEIR OWN conscience is ok with.
but yeah, thanks for chiming in Josh…i love having your input.
I fully understand you’re point on ranking injustices. That is why the quote from the above passage from John Piper got me upset. It sounds like someone covertly excusing racism by ranking it less important than abortion. Then again, i do rank abortion less important of an issue than racism.
This all stems back to the question of whether or not life begins at conception, and that is for each individual to decide.