Saturday, August 28, 2004

Questions that need to be asked
Most of us are aware of the hypocrisy of the speakers’ roster at the Republican convention. They plan fill our TV screens with a happy image of reasonable moderation and inclusiveness while passing a platform (and nominating a candidate) filled with hateful intolerance and cultural extremism that most people would find frankly repulsive. That’s offensive enough, but Amy Sullivan points out that the hypocrisy of some of their religious allies manages to be an order of magnitude worse.
Between Arnold Schwarzenegger and George Pataki, their states are responsible for 35 percent of the abortions performed in the U.S. And yet you'll hear nary a peep of protest about this from the conservative Catholic League, a supposedly "non-partisan" organization that has been frothing in continuous outrage over John Kerry's pro-choice leanings.

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The silence coming out of the Catholic League regarding the prominence of a bunch of heretical babykillers at the GOP Convention is simply deafening...

It’s understandable that the GOP will make a tactical decision to soft pedal, or even misrepresent, some issues in the name of getting and keeping power. It is the nature of political parties that the health of the party is more important than the successful pursuit of any single issue. That’s what sets parties apart from other political organizations.

The Catholic League is supposed to be a non-partisan lobbying group working to support the doctrine and agenda of the Catholic Church. They have no business signing on to compromise their values for the good of the Republican Party. It’s one thing for a politician or voter to decide that political considerations are more important than religious doctrine. One of the rights of free thought is to decide how to rank our values. It is something else for a religious group to decide politics are more important than religion. That’s just corruption. Were these guys corrupt before hand or did the GOP corrupt them? Just wondering.

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