A Look at the Future?
Tuesday is Election Day, and I’ll
admit, I’m nervous. We’ve been told
election after election, each time, that it was the most important election of
our lifetimes. I believe it was true
four years ago, and it is even more so now.
Certainly a lot hangs in the
balance. With an anemic economy and over
$16 trillion in debt, the stakes are high.
Even higher than that is a resurgent Al Qaeda and Iran’s rapidly
progressing toward nuclear weaponry.
For those of us in the pro-life
movement, we recognize that an Obama reelection would be devastating to the
Culture of Life. We would lose countless
more unborn, and almost certainly many elderly, and probably disabled.
But the stakes have gotten even higher
than many people would have predicted.
The HHS mandate, targeted at Christians and especially Catholics, is an
erosion of religious liberty, the right on which our country was built. It is fair to say that the fabric of our
society, and our nation’s founding principles, are in jeopardy.
If Obama wins, things will only get
worse. How? I think a look at our neighbors to the north
gives us the most likely scenario.
Canada, especially Ontario, has been
pummeled with violations of religious freedom rights, and we had better be on
guard here as well. It is well-known
that Canada’s anti-hate speech laws have landed Christian preachers in jail for
offering a Biblical perspective on sexuality.
Two bills in Ontario, Bill 13 and Bill 33, passed in just the last few
months, have made things even worse, especially for Catholic schools.
Bill 13 is supposedly an anti-bullying
measure, but most opponents saw it for what it really was – a way for the law
to enforce the promotion of homosexuality on the Church. Since the passage of Bill 13, Catholic
schools have been forced to create “Gay-Straight Alliance” clubs. One school has opened a Muslim prayer room on
campus in response to the bill’s requirements.
And in early October, Ontario’s education minister said that Catholic
schools can not teach that abortion is wrong because it violates the
“anti-bullying” law.
With the passage of Bill 33, “gender
identity” and “gender expression” have been added to the Human Rights Code,
which has led, among other things, to confusion as to how bathrooms are to be
used.
I have written extensively on the
teaching of the Church regarding homosexuality, and that it is the Church that
refuses to define people by their sexuality or make a person’s dignity
contingent on it. If there is one
institution that does not bully homosexual persons, it is the Catholic
Church. But neither are her moral
teachings subject to public opinion polls.
In Canada, the Church is under
attack. In the United States as
well. I fear that if Barack Obama is
reelected, the road ahead for us is the same as that being followed in
Canada. We have to bring home a victory
on Tuesday, and win or lose, we have to be engaged. We are fighting a war, not with guns, but
with Truth. We are fighting for our
freedoms, and we are fighting for souls, and we are fighting with the Mercy of
God.
Let us bring that Mercy to a broken
world; may we stand firm in our convictions, and may we win back this
culture. And may we start by electing
Mitt Romney on Tuesday.
Be Sure to
Get Every Christian, Every Pro-Lifer, Every Soldier of Christ to the Polls!
