Catching Up...

It’s been some time since I blogged on anything, and yet much has happened, so I will attempt to give at least some of my (Christian) perspective on the events of the last several months… without being too wordy.

Proposition 8
We are still awaiting this to be adjudicated. It’s my understanding that the California State Supreme Court will be hearing the case next month (March). The argument being made against it is that it makes such a drastic change in the California Constitution that it goes beyond an Amendment, is therefore a “Revision,” and so must originate from the Legislature rather than by petition (yeah, right)…

I just don’t see how the Court can overturn an Initiative Constitutional Amendment without also trashing the entire initiative process. The reason Prop. 8 was circulated was so that it would be stronger than the Initiative Statute that was declared unconstitutional (Prop. 22) – basically, a constitutional amendment, by its nature, is constitutional… Now the Court may tell us that we can change our Constitution through the petition/initiative process as long as we don’t change it too much? Or, really, as long as we don’t change it in a way that the liberal minority disagrees with…

Voiding Prop. 8 does nothing less than erase all value in the Initiative process all together.
Keep praying.

President Obama
Rush Limbaugh received a lot of commentary by saying, out loud, that he does not support the new President… or in context, that he does not support the new President’s policies (different from not supporting the President himself).

I get where he is coming from. I have heard Obama speak in person at Saddleback Church with Rick Warren. Frankly, I heard in him a man of Christian faith, though from subsequent speeches, one coming from a liberal, “liberation theology” background. I disagree with him, and have my concerns.

I was amused at all the fuss over Rick Warren offering the invocation at the Inauguration. I thought Pastor Warren offered a heart-felt prayer for our nation and leader, and addressed it to our Creator and Lord, unlike many political event invocations I have heard… Was the choice of Warren to lead that prayer equally heart-felt on the part of our new President, or was it some kind of sop to conservative Christians across the country? I honestly don’t know. And as for the liberal uproar over a Pastor who disagrees with homosexual marriage… are you kidding? At that standard, I guess no Christian Pastor would be acceptable, really – it was an argument against him from extreme religious bigotry.

But what’s really getting to me are President Obama’s first acts since assuming the office. No, not the “Stimulus” package… One of Obama’s first acts was to repeal something called the “gag rule.”

It had been U.S. policy under President Bush (and my understanding is this has gone back and forth at least back to Reagan depending on who was in office), that “prohibited the U.S. Agency for International Development from granting family-planning funds to any overseas health center unless it agreed to use its own, private, non-U.S. funds for abortion services or counseling,” according to a ProChoiceAmerica press release.

In other words, no taxpayer money for abortions overseas.

It does not say money won’t go to such organizations that offer abortion services, but that they can’t use our money to provide abortions; they have to fund that from a different source.
I agree with the policy, frankly, though the press release typifies opposition as being “hostile to birth control.” A bit of an overstatement, wouldn’t you say? (This is actually my main problem with politics today – it is dominated by unthinking extremes, which demonize any reasonable disagreement as being far more/worse than what is actually said…)

Here is my main point, and it is not to argue about the gag rule, or whether these “family planning” groups should be able to support themselves with/out U.S. taxpayer funding and abortion services…

President Obama has tried to portray himself as a pragmatic, a moderate, someone who will listen to all sides. Heck, he’s even friends with Pastor Rick Warren! But all I have seen from his actions are that of someone coming from the far liberal left in everything he does, regardless of what he says.

Still, I am committed to pray for him, as my nation’s President. I pray for wisdom from above, for divine encounters with Holy Spirit, and always for grace.