Voting and sin Part 3

This is part 3, of my series on voting and sin. In part 1 I spoke about whether it is a sin to vote for Governor Romney (as some Obama supporters have told me). In part 2 I covered whether voting third party is a sin, as many many people on both sides have told me. In this part I wanted to cover whether voting for President Obama is a sin. I've been putting off writing this, because I don't want what I'm writing to be true. However, I can't change facts, so here goes. But first, a disclaimer.

I have been accused of being a "single issue" voter, because of my pro-life stance. People say "but what about the economy?" Yes, I care about the economy, and foreign policy, and jobs and health care. But as I've been talking about before, you don't get a just society by promoting injustice. And there is always one big injustice that needs to be addressed. I'm sure if this were 1960 I would be accused of being a "single issue" voter because of my stance on civil rights. In the mid 1800s I would be a accused of being a "single issue" voter on slavery.

I get documents on the Church's teaching on social justice and caring for the poor quoted at me. The truth is, I get it. As Christians we are called to serve everyone, especially the poorest, most vulnerable people. And so day after day I am told that the most important thing is to promote government funded entitlements for the poor. If I don't support those then I hate the poor.

But the fact is, the government doesn't have a monopoly on helping the poor. In fact, to paraphrase a popular meme, Jesus didn't say anything about forcing others to help the poor. He says it is our personal responsibility to help the poor. Yes, we form organizations to more effectively help the poor. But the grace is in choosing to help the poor, not being forced to give money to someone else knowing that some of that money may help the poor. Can anyone reading this honestly say that any program of the federal government is more effective, more efficient, more accountable than the equivalent NGO?

So when people say to me I need to support entitlement "X" because it helps the poor I ask "how much do you personally do to help the poor?"  So stop making me pay for something I think is an ineffective way to help the poor.

So here's a litmus test. Let's say party "X" will eliminate all government entitlements. Party "Y" on the other hand will support all the government entitlements we have today but supports slavery. Who would you vote for? Some issues are just orders of magnitude more important than others.

Now that I've said that I bet you can see where this one is going. We can argue all day about prudential matters like whether President Obama's economic policies are a success or failure, whether his foreign policy preserves America's position in the world, but at the end of the day we have a man who is so lacking moral perspective that he voted against legislation to ban partial birth abortion and even against legislation to provide medical care to infants born from botched abortions.

In fact the president does not favor a single restriction on abortion, before during, or in some cases after birth. In his first term he has enacted 231 pieces of legislation to expand abortions in this country and around the world. His dedication to expanding abortion and his ties to the largest abortion provider in the nation, Planned Parenthood are so important to him that he would rather shut down the entire US government than reduce funding to Planned Parenthood. Think about that. What other president has put a corporation above the entire country like that?

I could go on and on about other issues in which he blatantly does evil, but I think this one issue is sufficient. The president supports evil. Supports it as his highest priority. Supports it over caring for the poor supports it over women's health care, supports it over helping victims of human trafficking.

You can't vote for President Obama and claim that his support for abortion is incidental to other things he supports - abortion is the hallmark of his presidency. And so you can't claim that you are not voting in favor of abortion when you cast a vote for the President. In other words, voting for the president is your explicit support of abortion. And that is a sin. And not just a "I was unkind to my neighbor" kind of sin, a mortal sin.

Posted in: abortion,America,Obama,sin