Another Angle | Morality should be kept from politics

After the 2000 election, if Americans were dissatisfied with Bush’s presidential policies, they could just look at each other, shrug, and affirm, “Well, we didn’t vote him in.” He may have managed to slip by with the blessings of the Supreme Court despite losing the popular vote, but this was America’s time to set the record straight about who rightfully won the election in 2000 in voting.
Now America has spoken, and we voted him back in—in fact, with a three and a half million lead in the national popular vote.

In electing Bush, not only did America validate and support his presidency for the last four years by granting him another term, but the identity of this country has been reaffirmed: historically, we are not a land of equality and freedom, but a nation overshadowed by moral values that we are incapable of separating from politics.

As Vassar students avidly watched the projected results on news networks on election night, no one could ignore the huge block of red states in the middle of the country, squeezing the tiny blue strips in the Northeast and West Coast into the outliers. The truth is, it is not New York or California that defines America, but what is called the religious heartland, where moral values play a larger role than the policies that they stand for in electing a candidate. 22 percent of voters in exit polls said that moral values were the most important issue when it came time to vote, more than the twenty percent that said the economy and jobs were more important. Essentially, what Americans voted against seeing gay men kissing in the streets or women aborting fetuses, or any other ethical issue that has caused a deep divide. Is this equality in determining that homosexuals should not be given the right to marry, or freedom in denying women the right to choose?

It is clear that moral issues were a decisive factor in this election, as Bush had support not only from his conservative base, but also an increase in support from Latino, Catholic, Jewish, urban, and female voters. He gained 48 percent of the female vote, up five percent from 2000; he increased nine points in the Latino vote to get 44 percent to Kerry’s 53 percent; he was also up five points among Catholic voters, winning the Catholic vote marginally against Kerry, a Catholic himself. Among regular churchgoers, he was a full 22 points ahead of Kerry. Bush has exploited his faith to stay in office according to some religious leaders; he has used God as justification in going to war and endangering our soldiers and civilians. While this country supposedly prides its democracy for a separation of church and state, we are witnessing religion seeping back into politics. Now we must ask ourselves: Is this acceptable?

Historically speaking, this should come as no surprise. Our so-called moral values have dictated the last 400 years of America’s development. A quick and cursory rundown: settlers came over to escape religious persecution and practice their faith as they wished; we then enforced our “civilized society” by wiping out Native Americans or Christianizing the ones that were left; the Civil War was fought when the South tried to gallantly protect their ideals, involving the enslavement of Africans for the purpose of cash-crop profit; women were denied the vote because they were viewed as constitutionally inferior to men; Prohibition in the 1920s was enforced by Christian moralists who were disgusted by the evils of drinking; the list goes on and on. Our “morals” have just been a means to the continuation of inequality that keep us in our comfort zone so that we will not have to look at issues from a different perspective and be faced with the possibility that we are wrong.

This also exposes hypocrisy in America’s line of thinking; while it is acceptable to elect a president based on his faith (or namely, the Christian faith), we regard governments that are overtly intertwined with religion as archaic, backwards and totalitarian (i.e. Islamic governments in the Middle East). However, we have proven ourselves to be no more educated and free-thinking in our “democratic” politics if the religious values of a certain sect, such as the right-wing Christians, dictates the lifestyles of all American people, regardless of social or economic background or spiritual beliefs. Should the right wing be able to dictate to nonbelievers that stem cell research and abortion are unethical because we are tampering with God’s design? Should President Bush be able to say to the Muslims, Jews and atheists of this country that it is a Christian God’s will that he should go to war in Iraq?

Clearly, this is a time for contention between the religious right and the rest of the country. As Matthew Crenson, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins, puts it, “It means there’s a deep divide in this country. But it goes deeper than politics, it’s what some people would call a culture war.” Bush will never be able to unite this country if he continues to alienate half of the population with morals that they do not share.