My heart breaks for Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, really:
“I’m deeply disappointed the Republican Party seems poised to select a nominee who did not support a Constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage, who voted for embryonic stem cell research to kill nascent human beings, who opposed tax cuts that ended the marriage penalty, and who has little regard for freedom of speech, who organized the Gang of 14 to preserve filibusters, and has a legendary temper and often uses foul and obscene language. … [W]hat a sad and melancholy decision this is for me and many other conservatives. Should John McCain capture the nomination as many assume, I believe this general election will offer the worst choices for president in my lifetime. I certainly can’t vote for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama based on their virulently anti-family policy positions. If these are the nominees in November, I simply will not cast a ballot for president for the first time in my life.
A marginalized fundamentalist Christian vote seems on the surface to be a good thing, as much as marginalization of any minority group can. Perhaps a better way of expressing the sentiment is this: I’d rather Bush’s onetime base of evangelicals vote not as a bloq, but as individuals. The undue influence of Focus of the Family and groups of their ilk has had a corrosive effect on the constitutional separation of church and state. It’s hoped that once the theocrats are removed from the site of the wound, it will be allowed to scab over and eventually mend.
