Religion
Related: About this forumEx-Evangelical explains why Evangelicals support Trump:
Abortion.
Abortion is your "Get-out-of-jail"-card.
You can be a horrible person, but being against abortion magically absolves you of all your wrongdoings.
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/white-evangelical-christians-really-care-one-thing-everything-else-sham/
Despite my reasoning that the war in Afghanistan was leading to the deaths of innocent people and that more support for the poor, for single parents, and for education all seemed to align with Jesus message, my spiritual elders always repeated the refrain back to me: abortion is murder.
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It didnt matter, I told myself, if hundreds or even thousands died in Afghanistan, or if tax cuts would hurt the most vulnerable, or if stem cell research could save lives. There was always the trump card: How could I vote for someone who would allow millions of unborn babies to die?
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The abortion trump card is the evangelical Trump card. The affairs with porn stars, the stunning lack of empathy and leadership (golfing instead of spending time with families of Parkland victims), the dog-whistle racism, childish tweets, the petty character of revenge. None of this matters because the politics can be reduced to simple refrain: abortion is murder. A vote for the anti-abortion candidate is thus always morally good. Even if its Donald Trump.
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When evangelicals fail to wail, cry, mourn, scream, and protest when children are murdered at school like they do when it comes to abortion, the logic of the zero-sum game unravels.
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Defending rights to a handheld killing machine and claiming compassion for the unborn, all while flittering past the blood of the born and the bodied, brings to words something I intuited but couldnt say in 2003: the abstract compassion for the unborn is easier than the fleshy, bodily, messy love for those annihilated at the hands of an AR-15 (or a drone). Evangelical love for the innocent is ad hoc; it doesnt apply to everyone. Its selective outrage masked as holy indignation.
But it serves a key function. First, you get to deny the messy stakes of loving the born and bodiedthose with melanin in their skin, different kinds of hair, genderqueer expressions, immigrant parents, and non-Christian faiths. Second, you get to deny the messiness of the social contractof the political realm and all its irreducible details and multiple voices. You are absolved of responsibility for the brown skin of Dreamers, the unwashed hair of refugees, the cry of bullied trans teenagers, the mourning songs from families of black men and women killed by police. Myopic and unwavering focus on abortion is the way to avoid the carnality of living, breathing beings. The way to get away from bodies. Away from the bodies of murdered children. Away from the body politic. Its a way to render love for angels, while pretending you are one.
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I came to the same conclusion a few months ago: Conservatives would do anything to protect abstract, theoretical children. But when faced with the actual fate of actual children, they suddenly lose all interest. And that's okay! It's okay not to care about living and breathing children, because caring about abstract, non-existent children absolves you of any responsibility for those living and breathing children!
Sticky
(1,406 posts)Stormy Daniels reveals on CBS 60 Minutes that she and Trump had unprotected sex and there was a pregnancy. What if she had an abortion through coercion?
What say the Evangelicals then, I wonder.
njhoneybadger
(3,910 posts)DetlefK
(16,423 posts)Once Evangelicals find out that Trump pressured Stormy into an abortion, they will proclaim that Trump is really sorry for that and that absolves him. (Trump won't say that he's sorry. The Evangelicals will say that Trump is sorry.)
Heddi
(18,312 posts)She had the abortion, not him. He will say he wanted the child, she wanted the abortion and got it against his wishes. There could be a video of him performing the abortion himself and eating the fetus and the evangelicals will still forgive him or overlook it because he's a republican and everything he does is perfect
cilla4progress
(24,589 posts)WHY?? Just as obfuscation? Or some other ploy at play? A useful tool for control? Why THIS issue? How does this work?
And,.if anyone thinks trump never paid for an abortion, I've got oceanfront in AZ to sell them....
Mariana
(14,849 posts)If that many Evangelicals were really that rabidly opposed to abortion, I think we'd have much more Christian terrorism against abortion providers than we actually do have. The way he describes it, it sounds more like the issue is being used as a handy way to shut up any discussion or opposition within the ranks.
Evangelical #1: "I'm not sure about Trump, he's such a sleazy person, and he doesn't seem to be repentant at all."
Evangelical #2: "How could you support butchering millions of babies! What kind of person are you? Are you even a Christian? I'm going to make sure the whole church knows you want to kill babies, so they can pray for you."
Evangelical #1: "Er, I meant to say, of course I'll vote for Trump! I will do anything to save the babies!
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)Because it is a "safe" issue to provide cover for all the other things they cannot say in public. It hides their racism, and other prejudices. When you vote for a candidate who publicly and vehemently stands against abortion, you know he also stands
with the "rest" of the anti-stuff. And sure enough, so far, that has proven to be true.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)but caring for real children is work. They have enough trouble caring for their own-- caring for someone else's is unthinkable.
Talk about doing the right thing is easy-- doing the right thing not so much.
atreides1
(16,046 posts)And since many evangelicals are big into the whole prosperity gospel crap, they want to keep their money for themselves!!!
marylandblue
(12,344 posts)Babies didn't get a chance to be saved yet, so their death is a true tragedy, they might all be burning in hell through no fault of their own. Once you are old to choose between stealing cookies or not, so age of 3 and up, you can choose Jesus, because he tells you not to steal the cookies. Then it doesn't matter if you die or not, you go where you belong, and it's your own fault.
The ways of God are wise and wonderful beyond understanding!
Mariana
(14,849 posts)the number of Evangelicals who believe God sends the souls of aborted fetuses, dead infants, and other true innocents to be tortured for eternity. That would be so clearly evil that they would have a very hard time making such a belief fit with the idea that God entirely good and never commits evil. There's plenty of cognitive dissonance to go around among the Evangelicals, but even they can only take it so far.
marylandblue
(12,344 posts)and then admit they don't know because the Bible is silent on the issue. But when discussing abortion they sometimes cite the possibility as a reason to be pro-life.
Mariana
(14,849 posts)Every Evangelical I've ever met/listened to/read has insisted that everyone in hell chose to be there and deserves it, too. That doesn't jibe very well with the possibility that God sends the souls of fetuses to hell.
Other than the emotional and ignorant "BUT THEY'RE MURDERING BABIES!!!" argument, I've heard about how abortion makes God really really really mad and he's going to do something about it, someday. Some of them think he's doing something about it right now, and we hear about it after every natural and man-made disaster. For example, right after 9/11, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell told us that God let that happen because of abortion (and the homosexuals and the ACLU and it's a long long list) as a judgement.
marylandblue
(12,344 posts)And still the official position of the Dutch Reformed Church. The whole idea is that God chooses who goes to heaven because of his infinite foreknowledge.
But if you didn't choose Christ, we know you aren't going. Babies never get that chance. The Puritans didn't believe in infant baptism, but they did baptize small children as soon as they could profess their faith in Jesus.
Not a real popular position anymore because it is so uncomfortable, but perfect 16th Century logic.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)Catholic logicians had been torturing themselves with head-of-the-pin dilemmas for centuries, but then Calvin had to come in and answer "If God is omniscient, doesn't he already know who will be saved?" Once that got out on the street, it wasn't long before the 144,000 showed up and we knew the saved by their actions.
Not having the choice whether or not to be one of the good guys really screwed things up for a long time. We're still feeling the effects of it.
TreasonousBastard
(43,049 posts)and while abortion wasn't discussed much back then, the fate of unbaptized, stillborn, and other innocent souls did come up a lot.
Specifics were tough to pin down, of course, but the general attitude was that a loving god would never, ever condemn an innocent soul to hell. If you chose to deny God, you were lost, but if you were never given the choice, something else happens.
What that something else would be was never made clear.
marylandblue
(12,344 posts)DetlefK
(16,423 posts)marylandblue
(12,344 posts)trotsky
(49,533 posts)What's fucked up too is that so many people still have hang-ups over having sex for fun - particularly for women. It's a mindset that wants to "punish" a "promiscuous" woman for having sex by making her have a baby.