Romney or Obama?
Facts for Latter-day Saints to
Consider
Michael T. Griffith
June 2, 2012
Fourth Edition
As Latter-day Saints, we are
free to vote for the candidate of our choice.
The Church is neutral on political candidates and parties. It is left to us, as individual members, to
apply the principles of the restored gospel as we cast our votes. Although the Church does not endorse
candidates or parties, the Church has given us some guidelines about the kinds
of candidates we should support. The
Church has also taken official positions on certain important issues of our
day. When faced with a choice between a
candidate who agrees with the Church’s stated positions on vital issues and a
candidate who rejects those positions, it stands to reason that we should
support the candidate who reflects our values and principles.
In this presidential
election, the choice is between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. Let’s consider their views on issues on which
the Church has taken a position.
* Romney opposes same-sex
marriage (also known as gay marriage).
Obama, on the other hand, has done everything in his power to advance
same-sex marriage and has recently come out openly in support of it. Romney supports the proposed federal marriage
amendment. The Church has officially
endorsed the federal marriage amendment and has called for its passage. Obama, on the other hand, not only opposes
the federal marriage amendment, but wants to force states that have banned
same-sex marriage to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other
states. Obama even wants to repeal the
Defense of Marriage Act, which is the federal law that allows states to choose
whether or not to accept gay marriage.
When Obama’s lawyers went to
court over the Defense of Marriage Act in 2010, they argued that having
children is not one of the main
reasons for marriage. This, of course,
contradicts not only what the gospel tells us about marriage, but it also
contradicts what Western civilization has traditionally taught about marriage
for over 2,000 years.
Obama has even taken the
position that public schools should teach children, as young as the second
grade, positive portrayals of homosexuality.
In a Democratic presidential debate held at Dartmouth College in 2007,
Obama said he agreed that children should be exposed to positive portrayals of
homosexuality as early as the second grade.
* Romney believes states
should be able to ban gay marriage. So
does the Church. The Church went to
great lengths to help pass Proposition 8 in California in 2008, which defined
marriage as being between a man and a woman.
Romney supported Proposition 8.
Obama, on the other hand, opposed Proposition 8, has called for its
repeal, and has even stated that all efforts to ban same-sex marriage at the
state level are “divisive and discriminatory.”
* Romney supports abstinence
education, which means he supports having public schools teach teens that they
should not have sexual relations until they are adults (and often this teaching
includes the idea that sexual relations should be reserved for marriage). It is no exaggeration to say that Obama has
waged war on abstinence education. Not
only has Obama reduced federal funding for abstinence education programs, but
he has also issued regulations that prohibit federally funded marriage
education programs from even mentioning abstinence in their instruction and
materials.
* Romney supports protecting
unborn children from elective abortion.
In other words, he supports making abortion illegal except in cases of
rape, incest, and endangerment (i.e., when the baby’s birth would pose a
serious risk to the mother’s life).
Obama, on the other hand, is the most radically pro-abortion president
in American history. Obama opposes any
restrictions on abortion and has appointed federal judges who favor overturning
all restrictions on abortion. If Obama’s
judges become the majority on any federal appeals courts or on the Supreme
Court, they will most certainly overturn the ban on partial-birth abortion and
will also overturn waiting periods, parental consent laws, and informed consent
laws. When Obama was in the Illinois
state senate, he even opposed a bill to protect babies who survived abortions
(indeed, he was the only member of the Illinois Senate to speak in opposition
to the bill).
* Romney does not believe
the federal government has the right to force churches to pay for
contraception, sterilization, and the morning-after pill in healthcare plans
for their employees. Nor does he believe
that insurance companies should be forced to include birth control,
sterilization, and the morning-after pill in their healthcare policies. Obama believes the opposite. Obama recently issued regulations, through
his Secretary of Health and Human Services, to force churches to pay for birth
control, sterilization, and the morning-after pill in health insurance policies
for their employees. Then, in response
to public uproar over this unprecedented contraception mandate, he issued a meaningless
modification to the regulation that said the insurance companies would have to
pay the cost of those provisions, but of course the end result is that churches
will be paying for these provisions through higher premiums for their policies.
The Church, in its official
policy handbook for local leaders, strongly discourages sterilization (such as
tubal ligations and vasectomies).
Furthermore, the Church’s health insurance plan for Church employees
does not cover “contraception, birth control devices, and/or sterilization
procedures.” Because of Obama’s
contraception mandate, the Deseret Mutual Benefit Association, which is the
insurance company that the Church uses to cover its employees, will now be
forced to offer and pay for sterilization, and even the morning-after pill.
* Romney believes in the
long-standing right of churches to select their own leaders and employees,
including the right to decide who can teach in schools that they run. The Church itself has gone to court to defend
this right. Obama, on the other hand,
has tried to abolish this sacred right.
In a recent case between the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and
the Lutheran Church, Obama’s lawyers argued that the First Amendment provides
no greater protection for a church to choose its own leaders than the right
enjoyed by trade-unions, corporations, and restaurants to choose their managers
and employees. In other words, Obama’s
lawyers argued that a church has no right to refuse to hire or appoint someone
“just because” that person is engaged in conduct that the church believes is
immoral. So, by this reasoning, a church
has no right to refuse to appoint a gay as a pastor or to refuse to hire a
flagrant adulterer to teach in a school that the church operates. Thankfully, the Supreme Court rejected
Obama’s arguments, calling them, and I quote, “extreme, remarkable, and
untenable.”
* Romney believes that our
anti-pornography laws (also known as obscenity laws) should be enforced and
that pornography is a serious and growing problem. The Church has repeatedly spoken out against
pornography and has called for vigorous enforcement of anti-pornography
laws. Obama, on the other hand, has been
noticeably lax about enforcing obscenity laws.
Indeed, LifeSiteNews notes that “enforcement
of obscenity laws has plummeted under the Obama administration.”
Some other facts to
consider:
* Obama has appointed open
gays, lesbians, and transsexuals to positions in his administration. In addition, a few months after taking
office, Obama issued an official presidential proclamation that has made the
month of June “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Month.”
* In a speech that he
delivered in Turkey on April 6, 2009, Obama said that “we” Americans don’t
consider America to be a Christian nation, and that Islam “has done so much
over so many centuries to shape the world for the better, including my own
country.”
* When Obama spoke at
Georgetown University on April 14, 2009, his staff, clearly with his approval,
insisted that the religious symbols on the background of the stage, including a
symbol of the name of Christ, be covered up.
When the covering of the religious symbols became an issue after the
speech, Obama gave no indication that he disagreed with what had been done.
* Obama has approved a new
regulation that virtually abolishes the right of doctors and nurses to refuse
to perform abortions. This action has
been condemned by the Christian Medical Association, the Catholic Medical
Association, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and
Gynecologists, Medical Students for Life, and several other groups.
* In the three Thanksgiving
Day messages that Obama has delivered, he has failed to even mention God in the
body of the messages and has said nothing about thanking God for America’s
blessings nor about the reason that Thanksgiving Day was established. Indeed, Obama’s Thanksgiving messages have
been entirely devoid of religious references.
Only in his first Thanksgiving message did he even mention the word
“God,” and that came at the very end, in the very last line of the speech, when
he said, “Thank you, God bless you.” In
his 2011 message, he expressed thanks for America’s “luck” but said nothing
about God blessing America, much less about thanking God for blessing
America. His 2010 and 2011 messages did
not mention God at all, not even in a “God bless you” line—they were completely
godless.
In my opinion, the choice is
clear. We can either vote for a
candidate who agrees with the Church’s position on opposing same-sex marriage,
protecting traditional marriage, opposing abortion, supporting abstinence
education, and enforcing our anti-pornography laws, or we can vote for a
candidate who takes the opposite view on all those issues. We can either vote for the candidate who opposes
the contraception mandate or we can vote for the candidate who imposed it. We can either vote for the candidate who
opposes forcing doctors and nurses to perform abortions against their will or
we can vote for the candidate who is actively trying to force them to do
so. And, we can either vote for the
candidate who acknowledges and honors America’s Judeo-Christian heritage or we
can vote for the candidate who does not.
Sources:
Obama Sabotages Defense of
Marriage Act
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=38030
President's 2013 Budget
Shows Hostility toward the Sexual Risk Avoidance Abstinence Education Message
http://www.abstinenceassociation.org/newsroom/pr_021312_president_hostile.html
Obama Says ‘Yes’ to Gay
Adoption
http://current.com/community/89180814_obama-says-yes-to-gay-adoption.htm
New Report Reveals
Unprecedented Funding Disparity between Abstinence Education and Other Sex
Education Approaches
http://www.abstinenceassociation.org/newsroom/new_report_reveals_disparity.html
President’s Budget Proposes
Illegal Use of Funds
http://www.abstinenceassociation.org/newsroom/pr_021412_president_illegal.html
Rick Santorum’s ‘War On
Porn’ Would End Obama’s Flouting The Law, Former Prosecutor Says
Specific Threats to
Religious Freedom
http://www.ldsmag.com/society/article/10929?ac=1
National Abstinence
Education Association
http://www.abstinenceassociation.org/
President Obama And Same-Sex
‘Marriage’ — The Dance Continues
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/president-obama-and-same-sex-marriage-the-dance-continues/
Obama Endorses Bill to
Recognize Gay Marriage on Federal Level
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/obama-endorses-bill-to-recognize-gay-marriage-on-federal-level/
Staver: Judge Helping Obama 'Sabotage Marriage'
http://onenewsnow.com/Legal/Default.aspx?id=1543232
Obama’s Gay Marriage
Doublespeak
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=653242
Attorney: Census,
Administration Legitimizing 'Gay Marriage'
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=1447356
Barack Obama and Homosexuality
http://downloads.frc.org/EF/EF09F44.pdf
Statements by
Prophets and Apostles on Legalized Abortion
http://www.mtgriffith.com/web_documents/abortionstatements.htm
Official LDS Church
Statement: The Divine Institution of Marriage
http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/commentary/the-divine-institution-of-marriage
Bennett
Clarifies Santorum’s Remarks on Marriage
Political Statements of
President David O. McKay
http://www.latterdayconservative.com/quotes/david-o-mckay/
Political Statements of
President Ezra Taft Benson
http://www.latterdayconservative.com/quotes/ezra-taft-benson/
Should Latter-day Saints
Vote for Barack Obama?
http://michaelgriffith1.tripod.com/obamaandlds.htm
Obama Promoting
Homosexuality
http://www.wnd.com/2008/08/73120/
Obama Declares June Gay
Pride Month
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/obama-declares-june-gay-pride-month
Obama: America Not Christian
– But Islam Shaped It for the Better
Obama at Georgetown
Georgetown Says It Covered
Over Name of Jesus to Comply with White House Request
Obama Admin Trying to
Eliminate Doctor and Nurse Conscience Protections on Abortion
http://www.cc.org/blog/obama_admin_trying_eliminate_doctor_and_nurse_conscience_protections_abortion
Obama Admin Defends Dropping
Doctors’ Conscience Protections
http://www.lifenews.com/2011/05/10/obama-admin-defends-dropping-doctors-conscience-protections/
Obama Omits God from
Thanksgiving Message
http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/obama-omits-god-thanksgiving/2011/11/25/id/419076
Obama Leaves God Out of
Thanksgiving Address
http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/obama-leaves-god-out-of-thanksgiving-address.html
Obama’s Godless Thanksgiving
http://spectator.org/archives/2010/11/23/obamas-godless-thanksgiving
Obama’s 2009 Thanksgiving
Address
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2009/11/in_thanksgiving.html
LDS Church and the Birth
Control Controversy
Let’s Be Reasonable About
Mitt Romney
http://www.mtgriffith.com/web_documents/realromney.htm
The Real Mitt Romney:
Debunking Common Myths About Romney’s Record
http://www.mtgriffith.com/web_documents/romneymyths.htm
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR: Michael T. Griffith holds a
Master’s degree in Theology from The Catholic Distance University, a Graduate
Certificate in Ancient and Classical History from American Military University,
a Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts from Excelsior College, and two Associate
in Applied Science degrees from the Community College of the Air Force. He also holds an Advanced Certificate of
Civil War Studies and a Certificate of Civil War Studies from Carroll
College. He is a graduate in Arabic and
Hebrew of the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California, and of the U.S.
Air Force Technical Training School in San Angelo, Texas. In addition, he has completed an Advanced
Hebrew program at Haifa University in Israel.
He is the author of five books on Mormonism and ancient texts, including
How Firm A Foundation, A Ready Reply, and One Lord, One Faith.
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