The blog of Ross Armer

But Ross, you’re a anglo-saxon (white) male heterosexual with a white-collar middle-class job, how can you be a “liberal”?   I get this question every time someone works out that I am a (gasp) Democrat.  The puzzled look on their face always draws a smirk from mine. Even my 9 year-old nephew recently and urgently informed me that I couldn’t be a Democrat because I am not black. Much to his dismay I had to explain I was “one of them”.

I’m going to use this post to try and explain how I’ve come to the belief system I have even though I live in a part of the country where only 14% of my fellow white men voted the way i did in 2008.   I hate to keep bringing up the race issue but I believe the cold hard stats require that it can not be ignored.  Now for a few of the questions I always get…

1:)  ”So you believe abortion is OK then?”

Let me answer this once and for all… No!  I personally believe that abortion is wrong and, as a Christian, immoral.  Having said that, I also understand that I am a man and will never be pregnant and faced with that choice.   I also understand that Roe vs. Wade was decided over a woman’s right to privacy in regards to her own body and not over whether the fetus is a human life or not.  This last question is one that has yet to be answered conclusively by any non-religious formula.  The second Science confirms that the fetus is in fact aware and has a conscience then the constitution of these great United States require that it be protected.  One could also argue that the fetus only becomes its own being when it can live outside of the womb, this would also be a valid legal argument.  If, however, we decide all laws based on our gut reaction or our religious convictions then we then live in a Theocracy and I thank God I do not live in a country where our laws are based on a particular religious dogma.

2:)  ”Well, you must be a communist.”

This one always leaves me scratching my head.   The argument boils down to this: either you believe in a 100% free market with no regulation whatsoever, or you are Marx, Stalin, and Mussolini all rolled into one.  Just the slightest effort to research history and you will find that whenever unregulated capitalism is allowed to flourish that is inevitably abuses the immense power it obtains.  This is logical as profit is the only motive in such a system.  If you were one of the few that lived on the right side of the tracks during the time of the robber barons at the turn of the 20th century then you loved this system.  If however you were with the majority of the country that was hurt by the ruthless and monopolistic practices of the time, you knew and were correct to think that there had to be a better way.  Moderate regulation is key to a healthy free market, just as pruning is required for a more healthy tree or bush.

3:) “How can you believe in God and also be a Democrat?”

How can I not?  I always get a shocked look when I tell them that’s one of the main reasons I am a Democrat.  The main reasons people vote Republican for moral reasons in the last 30 years seem to be abortion, gay marriage, and a belief that America is a Christian country.  I’ve already talked about the first reason so I’ll move on to gay marriage.  First of all there is nothing in our constitution or bill of rights that say that marriage is only between a man and a woman so therefore the argument must come from their religious beliefs.  Normally I would stop there and say that’s enough reason to dismiss the reasoning for a law, but in this case I’ll even tackle the biblical argument.

Both one-line references to homosexuality are mentioned in Leviticus in the Old Testament.  This is the same Old Testament that declares that it is a sin to wear a “garment mingled of linen and woolen”   Leviticus 19:19, and it’s a sin to shave “”Ye shall not round the corners of your heads.” — Leviticus 19:27″, and Women shall not be seen in public during their time of the month,  Leviticus 15:19-20, and my favorite… ” ‘When men fight with one another, and the wife of the one draws near to rescue her husband from the hand of him who is beating him, and puts out her hand and seizes him by the private parts, then you shall cut off her hand.’ — Deuteronomy 25:11-12″.  There are many more but I think you get the idea.  However while there are just 2 references to homosexuality on the entire Bible, and both of those in one single section of one book, there are 222 references to the words poor or poverty in the Bible and none of those verses say that they are poor because they deserve to be or because they are lazy.  I’ll let Everclear make the rest of this point for me… link.

Lastly I’ll look at the “America is a Christian nation” argument.  Let’s take a look at what exactly those founding fathers believed…

- Thomas Paine: was a pamphleteer whose manifestos encouraged the faltering spirits of the country and aided materially in winning the war of Independence:
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of…Each of those churches accuse the other of unbelief; and for my own part, I disbelieve them all.”
From: The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, pp. 8,9 (Republished 1984, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY)

- George Washington: the first president of the United States, never declared himself a Christian according to contemporary reports or in any of his voluminous correspondence. Washington Championed the cause of freedom from religious intolerance and compulsion. When John Murray (a universalist who denied the existence of hell) was invited to become an army chaplain, the other chaplains petitioned Washington for his dismissal. Instead, Washington gave him the appointment. On his deathbed, Washinton uttered no words of a religious nature and did not call for a clergyman to be in attendance.
From: George Washington and Religion by Paul F. Boller Jr., pp. 16, 87, 88, 108, 113, 121, 127 (1963, Southern Methodist University Press, Dallas, TX)

- John Adams: the country’s second president, was drawn to the study of law but faced pressure from his father to become a clergyman. He wrote that he found among the lawyers ‘noble and gallant achievments” but among the clergy, the “pretended sanctity of some absolute dunces”. Late in life he wrote: “Twenty times in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, “This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it!”

It was during Adam’s administration that the Senate ratified the Treaty of Peace and Friendship, which states in Article XI that “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”
From: The Character of John Adams by Peter Shaw, pp. 17 (1976, North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC) Quoting a letter by JA to Charles Cushing Oct 19, 1756, and John Adams, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by James Peabody, p. 403 (1973, Newsweek, New York NY) Quoting letter by JA to Jefferson April 19, 1817, and in reference to the treaty, Thomas Jefferson, Passionate Pilgrim by Alf Mapp Jr., pp. 311 (1991, Madison Books, Lanham, MD) quoting letter by TJ to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, June, 1814.

- Thomas Jefferson: third president and author of the Declaration of Independence, said:”I trust that there is not a young man now living in the United States who will not die a Unitarian.” He referred to the Revelation of St. John as “the ravings of a maniac” and wrote:
The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ levelled to every understanding and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticisms of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power, and pre-eminence. The doctrines which flowed from the lips of Jesus himself are within the comprehension of a child; but thousands of volumes have not yet explained the Platonisms engrafted on them: and for this obvious reason that nonsense can never be explained.”
From: Thomas Jefferson, an Intimate History by Fawn M. Brodie, p. 453 (1974, W.W) Norton and Co. Inc. New York, NY) Quoting a letter by TJ to Alexander Smyth Jan 17, 1825, and Thomas Jefferson, Passionate Pilgrim by Alf Mapp Jr., pp. 246 (1991, Madison Books, Lanham, MD) quoting letter by TJ to John Adams, July 5, 1814.

- James Madison: fourth president and father of the Constitution, was not religious in any conventional sense. “Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.”
“During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.”
From: The Madisons by Virginia Moore, P. 43 (1979, McGraw-Hill Co. New York, NY) quoting a letter by JM to William Bradford April 1, 1774, and James Madison, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by Joseph Gardner, p. 93, (1974, Newsweek, New York, NY) Quoting Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments by JM, June 1785.

- Ethan Allen: whose capture of Fort Ticonderoga while commanding the Green Mountain Boys helped inspire Congress and the country to pursue the War of Independence, said, “That Jesus Christ was not God is evidence from his own words.” In the same book, Allen noted that he was generally “denominated a Deist, the reality of which I never disputed, being conscious that I am no Christian.” When Allen married Fanny Buchanan, he stopped his own wedding ceremony when the judge asked him if he promised “to live with Fanny Buchanan agreeable to the laws of God.” Allen refused to answer until the judge agreed that the God referred to was the God of Nature, and the laws those “written in the great book of nature.”
From: Religion of the American Enlightenment by G. Adolph Koch, p. 40 (1968, Thomas Crowell Co., New York, NY.) quoting preface and p. 352 of Reason, the Only Oracle of Man and A Sense of History compiled by American Heritage Press Inc., p. 103 (1985, American Heritage Press, Inc., New York, NY.)

- Benjamin Franklin: delegate to the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention, said:
As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion…has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present dissenters in England, some doubts as to his Divinity; tho’ it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the Truth with less trouble.” He died a month later, and historians consider him, like so many great Americans of his time, to be a Deist, not a Christian.
From: Benjamin Franklin, A Biography in his Own Words, edited by Thomas Fleming, p. 404, (1972, Newsweek, New York, NY) quoting letter by BF to Exra Stiles March 9, 1970.

That’s enough for tonight, let me know if you have anymore questions.

*Founding Fathers information from “Thinkers On Religion”