McDonnell's Thesis Shows Tricky Religious Politics in Virginia's Gubernatorial Race
By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
Virginia gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell, campaigning as a moderate Republican in the increasingly purple Old Dominion State, spent the week on the defensive after the very conservative master's thesis he wrote while at Pat Robertson's Regent University (then called Christian Broadcasting Network University) came to light.
The Washington Post broke the story:
At age 34, two years before his first election and two decades before he would run for governor of Virginia, Robert F. McDonnell submitted a master's thesis to the evangelical school he was attending in Virginia Beach in which he described working women and feminists as "detrimental" to the family. He said government policy should favor married couples over "cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators." He described as "illogical" a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples.
The 93-page document, which is publicly available at the Regent University library, culminates with a 15-point action plan that McDonnell said the Republican Party should follow to protect American families—a vision that he started to put into action soon after he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates.
McDonnell's opponent, Creigh Deeds, spent the week making hay over the thesis, arguing that it showed McDonnell's true colors as a right-winger. "He'll continue to use this thesis as a blueprint for pushing his extreme social agenda that will take Virginia backwards," Deeds's campaign said this week.
In a follow-up story yesterday, however, I noticed that Deeds, while attacking the thesis, declined to take issue with McDonnell's dim view of homosexuality. And in its attack on the McDonnell's thesis, the Deeds campaign Web site also is silent on the paper's condemnations of homosexuality, even while taking it to task for arguing that "working women, contraception, and child day-care programs harmed society."
Yes, Deeds is trying to paint McDonnell as a card-carrying member of the Christian right. But the Democrat also is being careful to avoid presenting himself as a social liberal.
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Tags: Virginia | Republicans | religion | Pat Robertson
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Reader Comments
Lost in the politics
Good post.
I'm amazed that so many people are themselves amazed at some of McDonnell's youthful points.
The New Testament says the ideal for married women with children is to keep the home--something not demeaning at all for women, but rather one of society's most important jobs. Feminisim disputes this, but since the rise of feminism, have things gotten better, or worse, for moms and their kids? The statistics are grim.
To the extent that day care centers help women who truly need to work, they are a blessing. But to the extent that they lure women into the workplace who shouldn't be there, and make them part of the above-referenced statistics, they can be a problem.
BTW, surveys show more and more women want OUT of the workplace and are starting home-based businesses.
On contraception, I'll take a pass. The Bible says to be fruitful and multiply, but doesn't say you can't limit the size of your family. But if missing this distinction is Bob McDonnell's greatest sin as a college student, what's the big deal?
Seems like the Left is engaging in a little Bible-bashing to try to score political points and distract from the Obamian demonstration that their philosophy produces bad government.
Bob McDonnell as a condeming Christian
I often wonder if some self professed "Christians" have ever read the New Testament. The only people that Christ seemed to condemn were the money changers. Boy, if he came back today a lot of Republican morgage bankers would have some "splaining" to do.
rolls eyes
KMDay,
Before you get a copy of Obama's "thesis," you have to explain how it could exist, given that Columbia had no thesis requirement in those years for undergraduates. Maybe he wrote it for his PhD from the University of Pluto, where you nutcases seem to have matriculated.
As for Obama's Harvard Review article, Politico says "Obama's article, which begins on page 823 of Volume 103 of the Harvard Law Review, is available in libraries and subscription-only legal databases."
So, horrors, you'll have to set foot in a library.
Michelle's thesis is also available online at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8642.html
I love how facts never seem to have any impact on rightwing frothing.
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