Onward Christian voters?

No one forms a political position based on religion that they wouldn't take otherwise. Can anyone explain the Christian basis for segregated schools or nuclear overkill, like the people in Alabama support?

There's an interesting column on SecularRight.com on the general theme that holy scriptures rarely bind a religious society that doesn't prefer to follow any specific text.

The example described in the article is that African Muslim on Hajj to Mecca would be kidnapped by the Saudis and enslaved, despite the general principle that one Muslim cannot enslave another. This continued well into the twentieth century, since Saudi Arabia didn't officially outlaw slavery until 1962.

http://secularright.org/SR/wordpress/?p=4779&cpage=1#comment-18767

It also suggests that voters who are most concerned with such issues as abortion and same-sex marriage - generally conservatives on the right - are the only "values voters."

While Waters does a good job in picking apart the phrase, he doesn't explicitly mention that the term is most often used by those voters as code for issues such as the two above.

Most people would probably agree that votes generally reflect the voter's values to some degree. And obviously religious beliefs inform some of those values. The problem arises when some voters and politicians don't respect the principle of nonsectarian government, offering only sectarian arguments for or against legislation. Imagine if the religious right argued against abortion and same-sex marriage in secular terms only, terms that Hindus or Buddhists who also opposed those things could appreciate. By failing to do so, the religious right falsely implies that Christian doctrines are the only valid views on such issues.

Republicans - pimping Jesus for votes since 1980.

The anti establishment clause of the Constitution was never meant to separate a voter from his axiomatic beliefs in the voting booth. Neither was it meant to deligitimize religious arguments when it comes to public debate.

This entire religious right political movement arose out of black robed kings deciding for the body politic such scientifically unanswerable questions as when a fetus becomes a human being and also stretching the anti establishment clause to mean that any connection of public dollars to religious expression must be severed.

The Supreme Court is a panel of judges; they are not black robed kings.

They only answer questions that other people put to them.

The liberals only finds religious voters "dangerous" when they hold positions contrary to their own. They have no problem with "Reverend" Martin Luther King, jr., who never was apologetic of his faith. It is when someone holds an opinion counter to liberalism then they are suspect.

The difference with MLK was that he didn't try to use government to force his faith on others. Sure, he invoked principles from his faith in support of civil rights, but he also translated those into secular terms. There's no problem if someone uses those terms for making same-sex marriage illegal, because then people of all religions or no religion can debate the merits of the law. But if the person claims that same-sex marriage should be illegal because his gods want it that way, that implies that people of other religions can't contest the law and shouldn't even be in the debate.

Neither was it meant to deligitimize religious arguments when it comes to public debate

The issue is not religious arguments but sectarian ones. If one's argument for a law presupposes that Jesus was divine or that Muhammed was a prophet, one effectively disenfranchises people from other religions that disagree with those presuppositions. One could use a "religious" argument that draws upon certain principles of one's religion about how humans should treat one another. But again, one should translate these into terms that people of any religion can appreciate. This means taking sectarian claims about gods or prophets or miracles off the table, not rejecting them but simply deeming them as outside the purview of government.

There is a difference between judges and kings. The throne is hereditary while the bench is not. Control of who ascends to a vacancy on the bench is subject to the will of the people. Thus we get the Republican party capturing the religious movement out of frustration that they are undermined by a branch of the government that is so insular. That capture probably makes such a seminal figure as William Jennings Bryan spin in his grave.

Using the judiciary to read the Constitution like a Rorschach blot to find in it that which they wish to find provokes a reaction from voices denied. The judiciary is not legitimate substitute for convincing people in political debate that novel rights exist. That goes for abortion or, today, gay marriage.

"If one's argument for a law presupposes that Jesus was divine or that Muhammed was a prophet, one effectively disenfranchises people from other religions that disagree with those presuppositions."

Arguments do not "disenfranchise" anyone. Using the judiciary to end run that inconvenient will-of-the-people obstacle does.

Arguments do not "disenfranchise" anyone.

You're right in the literal sense. A sectarian argument for making law metaphorically disenfranchises people from other sects. That's what I meant by "effectively." It amounts to an attempt to legislate the teachings of the sect. It wrongly makes the debate about those teachings instead of about the law's merits.

Using the judiciary to end run that inconvenient will-of-the-people obstacle does.

Rights shouldn't be a matter of majority rule. That would mean that, for example, minorities have rights only at the pleasure of the minority. African-Americans in many states might still not have as many rights as whites if it weren't for many of the court rulings in the past century.

Rights can only arise out of two sources, they might be "endowed by the Creator" or arise from a consensus of the people. Gay rights advocates are the only group I have ever seen that tries to advance a novel right and discount both possible sources at the same time.

The "novel right" idea is questionable since that term could have easily been used by opponents of rights for free blacks before the Civil War. (I'm thinking particularly of the Dred Scott decision's stance. )

Inherent in the principle of rights is balancing the needs of the individual with the needs of society. The latter can regulate certain individual rights to prevent interference with the rights of other individuals. However, the burden is on society to show that such regulation is necessary, not for individuals to show that it isn't. That's part of what is involved in the 10th Amendment.

There are two principles at stake in the same-sex marriage issue. The first is the general one that gays have the same legal rights as straights. The second is that as long as government offers legal marriages, then offering these only to straight couples amounts to discrimination against gay ones. Legalization of same-sex marriage doesn't take away the rights of straight couples or of others in society.

The Civil War arose out of the basic conflict between the law and the sentiment expressed in the Constitution. A large majority of the abolitionists were firmly rooted in the churches of the day.

The Tenth clearly devolves authority over unmentioned matters to state legislatures, not the courts.

All individuals have the same right to the marriage contract as it stands, restrictions and all. What the gay marriage contest is about is legitimizing particular affections, not legal matters.

I am not a foe of gay marriage. I am just a foe of using the courts to get the goal. It has the same potential for distorting politics for generations just like Roe did. Bringing to bear the forces of the people upon an insular institution like the judiciary is a long term reaction to shutting off political debate.

pardon me.

law and Declaration.

A large majority of the abolitionists were firmly rooted in the churches of the day.

True, but that would seem to be irrelevant to the current issue. People on both sides of the slavery issue claimed a religious basis for their stance.

The Tenth clearly devolves authority over unmentioned matters to state legislatures, not the courts.

To the state legislatures or to the people. One principle involved with courts is to protect the rights of minorities from majorities that may not want them to have equal rights.

All individuals have the same right to the marriage contract as it stands, restrictions and all.

This is about the rights of a couple as a unit and discrimination based on the membership of the couple.

I am not a foe of gay marriage. I am just a foe of using the courts to get the goal. It has the same potential for distorting politics for generations just like Roe did.

That confuses cause and effect. The Roe decision very shortly became a proxy for larger battles over gender roles in society, because it was an issue when those roles were being challenged. Paul Weyrich is alleged to have said that abortion had nothing to do with the formation of the religious right, that the issue was used as a convenient selling tactic.

Also, "using" the courts implies that cases about rights shouldn't be taken to that venue, as if it constitutes asking Daddy for a cookie instead of Mommy. One can't blame a court if its judgment has a solid basis. There was no basis for Taney to claim that blacks "had no rights which the white man was bound to respect." And Bazile's reasoning in Virginia for ruling against interracial marriage was not only unsound but theocratic, where he claimed that his god didn't intend for the races to mix.

Sorry, I mean that "because it was a time when those roles were being challenged."