gay rights

Obama prays behind closed doors

Steve Strang knew the ground rules for the recent meeting between Sen. Barack Obama and a flock of evangelical, Catholic and liberal Protestant leaders.

The invitation to the Chicago gathering stated: "This is an off-the-record (no media) time for questioning and listening, with no expectation of endorsement."

But it's one thing to keep Obama's answers off the record. As soon as the two-hour meeting was over, some participants began talking and writing about the questions they had asked.

"I was concerned after three or four general questions that we wouldn't ask the most important questions," wrote Strang, the founder of Charisma Magazine. "So I raised my hand. ... I said, 'Senator, I want to ask a question I'm sure you are expecting regarding your position on abortion. I represent a segment of the church where nearly everyone considers the issue of supporting life to be the most important issue and where nearly everyone would be opposed to abortion. I want to ask what your stand on abortion is and if you believe what I think you believe, how you justify that with your Christian faith."

Strang said Obama offered a surprisingly "centrist," 15-minute answer. Since the evangelical entrepreneur had read the Obama's "Audacity of Hope" memoir, he recognized that the response came from its "Faith" chapter.

Thus, it's likely that the presumptive Democratic nominee retold the story of the University of Chicago doctor who gently challenged a statement on a U.S. Senate campaign website pledging that Obama would fight "right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to choose." The doctor's email said he wasn't asking Obama to oppose abortion, but to begin addressing "this issue in fair-minded words."

Obama told his staff to drop the offensive language, in recognition of the fact that many abortion opponents want sincere, sober discussions instead of more shouting. About that time, a member of a polite, pro-life family protesting outside an Obama rally called out: "I will pray for you. I will pray that you have a change of heart."

Thus, Obama wrote: "Neither my mind nor my heart changed that day, not did they in the days to come. But I did have that family in mind as I wrote back to the doctor and thanked him for his email. ... I said a prayer of my own – that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me."

After the Chicago meeting, online reports by Strang and others said the leaders discussed a wide variety of issues, from the Iraq war to same-sex marriage, from genocide in Darfur to religious liberty issues here at home. A spokesman for the Rev. Franklin Graham said that the head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association asked if Obama "thought Jesus was the way to God, or merely a way" – but did not report the response. There were conflicting reports about whether Graham and Obama exchanged a hug or a handshake.

But abortion remains a high hurdle in an era when several U.S. Supreme Court justices are near retirement.

Is change possible? In "The Audacity of Hope," Obama noted that many opponents of abortion are willing to "bend principle" in cases of rape and incest. Meanwhile, the willingness of "even the most ardent" of pro-abortion-rights advocates to "accept some restrictions on late-term abortion marks a recognition that a fetus is more than a body part."

The key, stressed Strang, was that the Chicago meeting even took place, allowing frank discussion of such bitterly divisive issues.

Rather than merely talking to the religious left, Obama's staff offered him a chance to talk and pray with a variety of evangelical and Pentecostal leaders – such as author Max Lucado of San Antonio, Rich Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals, Bishop T.D. Jakes of Dallas and many others.

"Obama seemed to have the support of at least half of the 43 leaders who attended the Chicago meeting," noted Strang. "In my opinion, he 'made points' with the rest."

David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network was even more blunt about the meeting's political implications.

"Folks, this is an important development," he said. "It shows that the game has changed. Old rules don't apply. We're in uncharted territory. John McCain's religious outreach team has to now step to the plate and work hard for faith voters."

Obama's awesome testimony

Play the right guitar chords and worshipers in megachurch America will automatically start singing these words: "Our God is an awesome God. He reigns from heaven above. With wisdom, power and love, our God is an awesome God."

So Barack Obama caused raised eyebrows when he turned to that page in the evangelical songbook during the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

"We worship an awesome God in the Blue States," he said in the speech that made him a rising star. "We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. ... We are one people."

Obama has mixed gospel images and liberal politics ever since, and his ability to reach pews without frightening the skeptical elites is crucial to his White House hopes.

Thus, all kinds of people paid close attention last week when he spoke to the 50th anniversary convention of the United Church of Christ, a small flock that has proudly set the pace for liberal Christianity. At the heart of his speech was his own spiritual rebirth two decades ago, when he responded to an altar call by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

"He introduced me to someone named Jesus Christ," Obama said. "I learned that my sins could be redeemed. I learned that those things I was too weak to accomplish myself, He would accomplish with me if I placed my trust in Him. And in time, I came to see faith as more than just a comfort to the weary or a hedge against death, but rather as an active, palpable agent in the world and in my own life.

"It was because of these newfound understandings that I was finally able to walk down the aisle ... and affirm my Christian faith. It came about as a choice, and not an epiphany. I didn't fall out in church, like folks sometimes do. The questions I had didn't magically disappear. ... But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side, I felt I heard God's spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truths and carrying out His works."

Over at the Christian Broadcasting Network, commentator David Brody offered a candid evaluation of the speech, "That, ladies and gentlemen, is called a conversion experience."

While conservatives will certainly criticize that Obama and his church have taken on sexy moral issues — the UCC ordained its first gay pastor in 1972 and backs same-sex marriages — they also need to praise his candor.

"Besides Obama, how many times have you seen a presidential candidate get up in front of a large crowd and talk in depth about his salvation? I'll give you the answer: Zero," said Brody, on his CBN weblog. "For Obama to stand up and talk about how Jesus changed his life, my friends, that takes guts. ... Shouldn't we like it when someone talks about Christ being the missing ingredient in his life?"

It is also crucial for Obama to define his faith in his own terms. After all, his father, stepfather, brother and grandfather were Muslims and his name, "Barack," means "blessed" in Arabic. Meanwhile, his mother was a disillusioned Methodist who was deeply spiritual but most of all a skeptic about organized religion. As a child, Obama attended a Catholic school and then a Muslim school. Later, he was drawn to the writings of Malcolm X.

Eventually, he told the UCC convention, he knew that he had to make a decision about his own faith. Obama is convinced that he isn't alone in feeling a hunger that's deeper than a desire for political change.

"It seems to me that each day, thousands of Americans are going about their lives — they're dropping the kids off at school, driving to work, shopping at the mall, they're trying to stay on their diets, they're trying to kick a cigarette habit — and they're coming to the realization that something is missing," said Obama, drawing laughter from the crowd because of his own struggles with smoking.

"They're deciding that their work, their possessions, their diversions, their sheer busyness, is not enough. ... And so they need an assurance that somebody out there cares about them, is listening to them — that they are not just destined to travel down that long road toward nothingness."

Jerry Falwell, gay-rights activist?

It isn't shocking when leaders of the Human Rights Campaign praise people who have taken stands to back the civil rights of gays, lesbians and bisexuals.

But it certainly raised eyebrows when the gay-rights group publicly thanked the Rev. Jerry Falwell. The result was an odd little news story that, at first glance, made about as much sense as the Southern Baptist Convention throwing a party for its friends at the Walt Disney Co.

The story began with Falwell defending volunteer legal work that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts did during a key court battle over homosexual rights.

"I may not agree with the lifestyle. But that has nothing to do with the civil rights of that part of our constituency," said Falwell, on MSNBC's "The Situation with Tucker Carlson."

"Judge Roberts would probably have been not a good very good lawyer if he had not been willing, when asked by his partners in the law firm, to assist in guaranteeing the civil rights of employment and housing to any and all Americans."

Falwell plunged on, denying that he had changed his stance on extending "special rights" to homosexuals as a minority group. Equal access to housing and employment are basic rights, he said.

"Civil rights for all Americans, black, white, red, yellow, the rich, poor, young, old, gay, straight, etc., is not a liberal or conservative value," said Falwell. "It's an American value that I would think that we pretty much all agree on."

It was half a loaf, but gay-rights leaders grabbed it.

The Rev. Mel White of Soulforce – a group based near Falwell's evangelical empire in Lynchburg, Va. – immediately set out to verify if his former employer had meant to say what he had said. Before coming out as a gay activist in the early 1990s, White was a seminary professor and superstar ghostwriter who worked with the Rev. Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, Oliver North, Jim Bakker and, yes, Falwell.

How well does White know Falwell? Twenty years ago, he wrote his autobiography. The men have matched wits and sound bites ever since.

After reading Falwell's remarks, White immediately touched base with Ron Godwin, the former executive director of the Moral Majority.

"I asked him three questions," said White, during a trip last week to Washington, D.C. "I asked, 'Did Jerry say it?' He said, 'Yes.' I asked, 'Did Jerry mean it?' He said, 'Yes.' I asked, 'Will Jerry retract it?' He said, 'No.'

"I said, 'Thank Jerry for that.' "

Godwin confirmed that he talked to White on a recent Sunday morning, which isn't strange since White and his partner Gary Nixon frequently attend Thomas Road Baptist Church to monitor what Falwell says about sexuality and politics in the pulpit. They have been known to stand up in silent protest when the preacher says something that they believe is wrong.

Members of Falwell's team, said Godwin, cannot understand why White and others think the religious broadcaster has changed his tune on crucial issues linked to sexuality, marriage and civil rights. In this case, Falwell was merely restating his belief that homosexuals should not be denied civil rights they have as individual American citizens.

"We're not talking about the unique and special rights that are assigned to people in protected minority groups," said Godwin, who is now president of Jerry Falwell Ministries. "I understand that Mel has a strong desire to gain recognition for his cause. ... But Jerry Falwell is what he is and this 72-year-old Baptist was not trying to send some kind of subtle, oblique message that he has changed what he believes."

Obviously, White disagrees. He believes that, whether he wants to admit it or not, Falwell has changed some of the language that he uses to describe homosexuals and, in disputes that are theological as much as political, those words matter.

"I have known Jerry a long time and I think this was a serious change in his life," said White. "Never before has he said that he recognized us as a class – as a protected class – like other Americans. Now he has included us as gay and straight, right in there with black and white, man and woman, rich and poor, young and old and everybody else. That's important."

Democrats trying to see red

Political strategist James Carville said it, candidate Bill Clinton believed it and loyal Democrats have chanted this mantra ever since.

And all the people said: "It's the economy, stupid."

But what if an elite team of Democrats ventured outside the Beltway to talk to rural and red-zone voters in Arkansas, Wisconsin, Colorado and Kentucky and learned that the economic bottom line was no longer the political bottom line?

Focus-group researchers from the Democracy Corp in Washington, D.C., found that voters in Middle America are worried about Iraq and they are mad about rising health costs. That's good for Democrats. Many of them fiercely oppose abortion on demand and gay marriage. That's good news for Republicans. But the researchers also mapped a political fault line that cuts into the soul of Middle America.

"Regardless of voters' attitudes on the role of religion in public life or their position on touchstone issues such as abortion and gay marriage or even their personal religious faith, they all see Republicans as a party with a clear and consistent position on cultural issues and an abiding respect for the importance of faith and traditional social norms," said the researchers, in sobering document released earlier this month.

"Democrats' lack of a consistent stance on cultural issues leaves a vacuum that is clearly being filled by voices on the right. Most referred to Democrats as 'liberal' on issues of morality, but some even go so far as to label them 'immoral,' 'morally bankrupt,' or even 'anti-religious.' "

This kind of verbiage is old hat among GOP conservatives. But it's stunning to see this language in a report produced by a trinity of Democratic campaign strategists like Stanley Greenberg, Robert Shrum and, lo and behold, Carville.

The new bottom line: "It's the values, stupid."

Democrats are getting used to hearing about a "pew gap" between the political parties. This has caused tension between moderates and liberals as Democrats focus on defending abortion rights and working with gay-marriage strategists. Party leaders must have been thinking about the "pew gap" when they rejected Naral Pro-Choice America's blistering media campaign that said U.S. Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. – a traditional Roman Catholic – had winked at "violence against other Americans."

Politicos on both sides can quote the numbers and then bicker over what they mean. Everyone knows that 22 percent of the 2004 voters said they yearned for "moral values," with evangelical Protestants surging to George W. Bush. The president won 52 percent of the Catholic vote and nearly 60 percent of the total Protestant vote. Bush won a two-thirds majority among Orthodox Jews. Among Hispanics and African-Americans, the most active churchgoers began drifting to the GOP.

Looking back, Voter News Service found that 14 percent of the voters in 2000 said they attended worship services more than once a week and 14 percent said they never went at all. Among the devout, Bush won by 27 percent and, among those who avoid pews, Democrat Al Gore won by 29 percent.

According to the Democracy Corp report, Democrats are making progress with highly educated, upper-income Americans. But they have lost a key element of the old Democratic coalition – voters in rural areas and blue-collar neighborhoods, especially in Middle America. The researchers were mystified that these voters continue to act "contrary to their own economic self-interest."

Up is down. In is out. Many upper-crust Americans are also voting contrary to their own economic self-interest and backing Democrats, even though this may mean more taxes and business regulations. Why? They support the Democratic Party's stance on social issues such as abortion, gay rights and the role of religion in public life.

These moral issues are steering heartland voters, serving "as a proxy" for other concerns, according to the Democracy Corp report.

"With most voters expressing little understanding of the differences between Democrats and Republicans or the relative merits of their positions on economic policy, health care, retirement security, and other issues, they felt it safe to assume that if a candidate was 'right' on cultural issues – i.e. opposed to abortion, but most importantly opposed to gay marriage and vocal about defending the role of faith and traditional Judeo-Christian values in public life – that candidate would naturally also come closest to their views."