The Perils of Single-Issue Voting

 In January of 2018, in an essay on The State of Our Nation, I wrote:

I understand that each person must make his or her own moral choice in civic matters when going to the polls. Unfortunately, voting on the single issue of abortion blinds many to the wider issues at stake…Through the years, I have seen my fellow Catholics vote for people who have no knowledge of, or interest in, Catholic social teaching and whose agendas are even counter to that teaching. The best way to support life is in our teaching, values, and actions. We can abide by the law of the land and still uphold our faith values without thinking we have to reverse legislation in order to live a moral life.

Recently I found this editorial cartoon* that succinctly illustrates what I was trying to say: 

Brian McLaren recently wrote about the origins of the Pro-Life Movement in "A Letter to my White Christian Pro-Life Friends, Part 2, My Misgivings." McLaren writes about how Randall Balmer’s Thy Kingdom Come (Basic Books, 2006) helped him understand the movement’s backstory:

In short, in the 1950’s and 60’s, reacting to school desegregation and civil rights legislation, large numbers of white Protestants and Catholics in both the South and the North transferred their children from integrated public schools to all-white private church-based schools. (These schools are often referred to as “segregation academies.”) During Jimmy Carter’s administration (1977-1981), a rumor spread that the government would soon remove tax exempt status from these segregated schools. Protestant and Catholic leaders came together in a series of conference calls to strategize how to defend their tax-exempt status while remaining racially segregated.

This created an opportunity that a fundraiser and conservative activist, Paul Weyrich, seized. A conservative Christian coalition couldn’t be based on overt segregation and the white supremacy that fueled it, he knew, so Weyrich convinced Protestants to rally with Catholics under the banner of opposing abortion to protect their tax-exempt status.

 Prior to reading McLaren’s article, I had seen the Pro-Life Movement, with their holding Roe v Wade above all other political considerations, as a group of people who are being misled. I saw many of the people, and even some of the leaders, being manipulated by politicians who primarily seek political power and give little more than lip service to morality. What I had not realized was the racial prejudice that helped fuel the beginning of the movement in the first place. Indeed, America’s original sin of slavery/white supremacy continues to influence our lifestyles, our values, and our choices.

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*The editorial cartoon originated on Facebook:

Tim Troxler

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"A pro-life friend made his own political cartoon which I think is a thought-provoking look at numerous election issues that are often glossed over for the sake of a pro-life platform."