Dean says something good

[Beet]

CEDAR RAPIDS — Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean kept up his frontal assault on Republicans Saturday and urged Iowa Democrats to go toe-to-toe with the GOP on "values" issues.

"We are not going to be afraid to talk about moral values," the former Vermont governor told 500 Democrats gathered for the party's Hall of Fame banquet.

"If you match our moral values against their moral values, we win. The Bible talks about helping the poor 3,000 times. I have yet to find gay marriage mentioned anywhere in the Bible,"Dean said.

No party has a monopoly on morality.

[Beet]

I notice that by talking about helping the poor vs gay marriage, he completely skipped the abortion issue.

Is abortion the only issue that matters? Does poverty not matter?

Why does the Republican party get a free pass when it comes to Biblical issues like poverty and helping thy neighbor? Why are they able to pick and choose certain issues from the church and ignore many other issues and no one calls them out for it?

Note, Dean could just as easily have said

"If you match our moral values against their moral values, we win. The Bible talks about helping the poor 3,000 times. I have yet to find abortion mentioned anywhere in the Bible,"

[Beet]

I notice that by talking about helping the poor vs gay marriage, he completely skipped the abortion issue.

Is abortion the only issue that matters? Does poverty not matter?

Why does the Republican party get a free pass when it comes to Biblical issues like poverty and helping thy neighbor? Why are they able to pick and choose certain issues from the church and ignore many other issues and no one calls them out for it?

Note, Dean could just as easily have said

"If you match our moral values against their moral values, we win. The Bible talks about helping the poor 3,000 times. I have yet to find abortion mentioned anywhere in the Bible,"

Yeah, he could have said that, but it wouldn't have been a good idea.

Damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't, huh?

[Beet]

I notice that by talking about helping the poor vs gay marriage, he completely skipped the abortion issue.

Is abortion the only issue that matters? Does poverty not matter?

Why does the Republican party get a free pass when it comes to Biblical issues like poverty and helping thy neighbor? Why are they able to pick and choose certain issues from the church and ignore many other issues and no one calls them out for it?

Note, Dean could just as easily have said

"If you match our moral values against their moral values, we win. The Bible talks about helping the poor 3,000 times. I have yet to find abortion mentioned anywhere in the Bible,"

Yeah, he could have said that, but it wouldn't have been a good idea.

Damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't, huh?

Not quite.  When I said it wouldn't have been a good idea to mention abortion, I meant in that exact context-- saying that the definition of life isn't mentioned anywhere in the Bible would have effectively killed any chance of credibility with swing Christian  voters.

However, he could have mentioned abortion in the following context: "No party has a monopoly on moral values, we support helping the poor and letting women make decisions about their bodies, blah blah blah."  I would have disagreed with that obviously, but it wouldn't have been an outright false statement.  Anyway, I was just lamenting on the fact that whenever people mention 'moral values,' it seems to be about this bullsh**t gay marriage issue that I, for one, couldn't care less about, instead of important stuff like abortion, the death penalty, or war.

I feel similarly, but disagree with your analysis. The pro-choice argument you suggested is the same one that has been used for the past 30 years: it is not a winning argument. For one thing, for a person of genuine faith, like yourself or I, one cannot accept a purely secular argument. For another, it is philosophically baseless.

The extremely difficult but necessary step is to directly challenge the interpretation of the Bible for political purposes. The fact is, the Bible does not specifically define when life begins, and gives conflicting statements on abortion. The same may be said of interpretations by early Christians from the first century through the middle ages, as well as of the Catholic Church. An extended scriptural discussion may be found here under the "References from the Hebrew Scriptures" and "References from the Christian Scriptures" links.