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How Obama Woos Catholics
Tweet Share on Facebook July 31, 2009 Comment (46)By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
How many highly placed aides does the White House have regularly doing Catholic outreach or who have extensive backgrounds in such work? Five, by my count:
- Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships Executive Director Joshua Dubois, who regularly meets with Catholic groups, from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on down.
- Denis McDonough, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, who says he "talk[s] with the president about church teaching and the Catholic view on policy matters as they come up."
- Mark Linton, who directed Catholic outreach for Obama's presidential campaign and who now serves as the administration's top liaison to Catholics. Officially, Linton directs the faith-based office at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
- Alexia Kelly, the recently hired director of the faith-based office at the Health and Human Services Department and cofounder of the progressive Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good.
- John Kelly, who works in the faith-based office at the Corporation for National and Community Service and who was formerly the Democratic National Committee's Catholic outreach director.
My most recent God & Country column for U.S. News Weekly fleshes out Obama's robust Catholic outreach effort:
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White House to Launch National Fatherhood Tour Next Week
Tweet Share on Facebook July 31, 2009 Comment (25)The Obama administration is taking its effort to promote responsible fatherhood, which it launched with a White House town hall event just before Father's Day, on the road, hosting a half-dozen town halls in the next few months in different parts of the country. The first event will happen in Chicago next Wednesday. It will feature a videotaped message from President Obama, a roundtable and networking session for local nonprofit groups, presentations by administration officials, and a panel of local dads, according to an adviser for the effort.
"Given who's in the White House, we have a chance to do some very powerful messaging and role modeling on fatherhood," says Judy Vredenburgh, president and CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, who is helping advise the effort. "This is a subject that the president feels strongly about, so we're moving in the momentum of Father's Day."
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Does Healthcare Bill Really Ban Federal Funding For Abortion?
Tweet Share on Facebook July 31, 2009 Comment (29)The Capitol Hill debate over abortion in the healthcare bill has kicked up a lot of confusion yesterday and today. Conservative antiabortion forces say the bill mandates federally subsidized abortion coverage. Democrats, including some abortion foes, say that's a mischaracterization.
Democrats claim an amendment to the healthcare bill adopted last night ensures that the tradition of denying federal funds for abortions—except in cases of rape or incest or if the pregnant woman's life is in danger—will continue. Republicans and traditional antiabortion advocates say that's bogus.
What's the reality?
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Can Pawlenty Win Evangelicals and Moderates (Unlike Palin and Huckabee)?
Tweet Share on Facebook July 30, 2009 Comment (10)By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
It's striking that today's Associated Press profile of Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a possible 2012 Republican presidential candidate, excludes mention of his evangelical faith and strong ties to the evangelical world. I was struck by the same absence in a recent New York Times Pawlenty profile.
How solid are Pawlently's evangelical bona fides? The pastor of his home church is president of the National Association of Evangelicals, the nation's largest evangelical interest. Last year, as John McCain struggled to win over evangelical leaders, Pawlently quietly tried to arrange a meeting between the Republican presidential nominee and National Association of Evangelical bigs, but to no avail.
Around that time, the Minnesota Independent covered some of Pawlenty's faith-based policies:
It's hard not to see the fingerprints of Pawlenty's pastor in his public policy initiatives. Much to the chagrin of other members of Minnesota's Republican Party, Pawlenty has recently had a come-to-Jesus moment on global warming—perhaps literally. Pawlenty has been championing strategies to reduce carbon emissions as chairman of the National Governors Association over the last year and half. Perhaps not coincidentally, [Leith] Anderson, Pawlenty's pastor, five years ago began encouraging evangelicals to get involved in global warming mitigation in order to preserve "God's gift of our earth." Pawlenty even appointed Anderson to his Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group.
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Popular YouTube Video: Obama as Antichrist
Tweet Share on Facebook July 30, 2009 Comment (40)By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
This YouTube video explaining the etymological origins of the word Antichrist—hint: it has something to do with "Baraq O Bam-Maw"—has racked up more than 50,000 hits, with Hot Air reporting that it had risen to No. 6 on YouTube's "News & Politics" chart last night.
It was at this time last year that John McCain's presidential campaign released an ad that, according to some analyses, implied that Obama was the Antichrist. As Democrats like Obama have stepped up religious outreach, some opponents have stepped up faith-based demonizing.
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Human Rights Campaign President and Prop. 8 Architect Become Friends
Tweet Share on Facebook July 29, 2009 Comment (27)Talk about bringing civility to the culture wars. Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign—the nation's biggest gay rights group—recently sat down with the pastor who spearheaded the religious community's push for California's Proposition 8 for a 90-minute get-to-know-you meeting.
Carrie Prejean's pastor, former NFL-er Miles McPherson, also attended.
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New Ad Says Obamacare Will Finance Abortion, Deny Surgery for Seniors
Tweet Share on Facebook July 29, 2009 Comment (29)"They won't pay for my surgery, but we're forced to pay for abortions," gripes a senior in this provocative new ad from Family Research Council Action. It will air in five states: Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Alaska, Louisiana, and Nebraska. "The ad urges opposition to a healthcare plan that will deny care to 'our greatest generation' and deny life to 'our future generation,' " FRC Action says in a news release.
It strikes me that the Family Research Council's anti-Obamacare blitz is aimed not only at derailing the Democrats but also at showing the GOP how helpful the group could be as the party wonders how much it should be relying on religious conservatives.
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A New Lobbying Force for Gay Rights: Clergy
Tweet Share on Facebook July 28, 2009 Comment (15)By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
During an interview with Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese today, I asked whether the group's stepped-up faith outreach was a reaction to having ceded religious terrain to gay rights opponents for a long time. "It is," he said, and went on to explain how clergy have become a "powerful front-line lobbying force" for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community:
"LGBT people, many of us are people of faith, and there are religious leaders in this country who support LGBT equality, and it has taken us too long to empower those voices and ensure those people are out there fighting on the front lines on our behalf. Our Clergy Call for Justice brought 300 clergy, more than five from each of the 50 states, and we worked with them to walk the halls of Congress and lobby on behalf of LGBT issues in full religious vestments.
"One of the most profound things I see whenever we do this is the staff members in those congressional offices oftentimes are confused about whether they're there to lobby for LGBT causes or against them. That itself says to me that were woefully overdue on that. So clergy will continue to be a powerful front line lobbying force for us."
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Is Voinovich's 'Southerner' Code for 'Religious Conservative'?
Tweet Share on Facebook July 28, 2009 Comment (12)In an interview with the Columbus Dispatch, Republican Ohio Sen. George Voinovich blames the GOP's woes on Southerners:
We got too many Jim DeMints (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburns (R-Ok.). It's the southerners. They get on TV and go "errrr, errrrr." People hear them and say, "These people, they're southerners. The party's being taken over by southerners. What the hell they got to do with Ohio?"
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Consensus Between Gays and Religious Conservatives?
Tweet Share on Facebook July 28, 2009 Comment (49)Focus on the Family's CitizenLink has posted a fascinating interview with Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International—the largest ministry aimed at getting gays and lesbians to "leave homosexuality"—and the author of the new book Leaving Homosexuality. What striking is that Chambers is not promoting so-called conversion therapy, which some religious conservatives claim can convert gays and lesbians to a straight sexual orientation. Rather, he acknowledges that, for gays and lesbians, homosexual attraction never goes away. But he suggests that homosexuals can resist those urges through Christianity:
