A prominent religious right radio host thinks that Christians shouldn’t vote for Democrats–period, full stop. Dave Daubenmire, a former high school football coach who now heads Pass the Salt Ministries and blogs with Chuck Baldwin’s NewsWithViews, is pretty familiar to anyone who frequently reads People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch, like I do. So I was particularly intrigued when PFAW mentioned that Daubenmire took to YouTube yesterday and claimed that since Democrats strongly support abortion and gay rights, “a Christian who votes for a Democrat probably isn’t a Christian.”
Daubenmire isn’t a big fan of the Republicans either, though he has made two bids for Congress as a Republican; he lost both times in the primary. He describes himself as a “Christocrat” who votes for “those fall into line most with Biblical principles.” But to Daubenmire’s mind, no Democrat meets that standard. Why? As he sees it, there are two things that are “at the forefront of the Democratic Party”–support for abortion and gay rights.
According to Daubenmire, there is nothing God hates more than “the slaughter of unborn children.” He claims that when Democrats speak of the “war on women,” it’s just a dodge to get people to support abortion. He also takes offense to the Democrats’ support for gay rights, since in his view homosexuality is a “deathstyle.” When you support Obamacare, Daubenmire says,”you support the medical care of those who engage in self-destructive behaviors, including male-on-male sodomy.” All told, Daubenmire thinks this makes the Democratic Party “the party of death.” For that reason, he wonders–loudly–“can a Christian vote for a Democrat?” He thinks not, since even with the Republicans’ faults, he can’t in good conscience vote for a Democrat because they are on the wrong side of “the laws of nature and nature’s God.”
Okay, Dave. I’ll play. I became a pentecostal/charismatic Christian in 1998, and I’m as staunchly Democratic as I was two years earlier, when I voted in my first election–Bill Clinton’s second run for the presidency. So you’re telling me that two years ago, I should have voted for a candidate who, among other things, openly stated he doesn’t care about the poor, has millions stashed away in Swiss bank accounts, may very well have lied to the SEC and gave succor to a discredited and borderline racist conspiracy theory about where Obama was born? And are you telling me I should ignore that the last Republican in the White House signed off on interrogation techniques that any fair-minded person would consider to be torture and outright lied to the American people about the evidence to justify a war? Oh, but none of those things matter, because the Democrats are baby-killers.
For those of you who aren’t familiar, that’s exactly the way the religious right wants us to think. I ran up against this mentality for the first time in my days at Carolina, when I was deceived into joining a borderline cultish charismatic campus ministry during my freshman year. I only realized how they were trying to bend my mind when they tried to turn me from a liberal Democrat into a Christian Coalition Republican. I didn’t listen to that siren song, but a good number of the other blacks in there did. One of them, a girl from Charleston, South Carolina, told me she voted for Strom Thurmond in what proved to be his last Senate campaign. That’s like me, a black man from North Carolina, voting for Jesse Helms.
It’s probably not all that surprising that Daubenmire either doesn’t see or refuses to see the disconnect here, because his entire story is a lie. He spent almost a quarter-century coaching high school football in central Ohio. In 1999, while he was head coach at London High School near Columbus, his history of forcing players to take part in religious activities led the ACLU to sue the school district. Just before the case was to go to trial, the ACLU and school district reached a settlement that called for London High’s principal to report complaints about religious indoctrination to both the school board and the ACLU until 2001. Additionally, Talk2Action’s Bruce Wilson mentioned that Daubenmire tried to sue several parents for libel after they spoke out against him–and the jury sided with the parents.
But you wouldn’t know that if you just heard Daubenmire’s side–he claims that he actually won the 1999 case after forcing the ACLU to back down, and makes no mention of the libel suit. However, people in the area know Daubenmire’s real history. As evidence, last year he tried to return to coaching as the head coach of his alma mater, Lakewood High School in Hebron, also near Columbus. When it became known that the superintendent had recommended Daubenmire for the job, several local parents protested the move at a school board meeting. The board voted 3-2 against hiring Daubenmire.
The biggest reason the religious right has gained so much power is because people who should naturally vote Democratic have been swayed by this simplistic garbage spewed by Daubenmire and others of his ilk. But that tactic isn’t working as well anymore, mainly because a significant bloc of born-agains realize that abortion and gay rights aren’t the be-all and end-all of everything. Oh, that’s right–in Daubenmire’s world, that means we really aren’t Christians anyway.
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Darrell Lucus is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
