October 29, 2012
Column #1,627
Biblical Principles & the Presidency
By Mike McManus

Two weeks ago Billy Graham met Mitt Romney with two results. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association removed the Mormon religion from its list of cults. Second, it published full-page ads in The New York Times, USAToday and a dozen other newspapers in key states.

In the ad, Graham states, “As I approach my 94th birthday, I realize this election could be my last. I believe it is vitally important that we cast our ballots for candidates who base their decisions on biblical principles and support the nation of Israel. I urge you to vote for those who protect the sanctity of life and support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and a woman. Vote for biblical values this November 6, and pray with me that America will remain one nation under God.”

Lacking is an explicit endorsement of Romney. However Graham told Romney that he would do “all I can to help you.”

America’s most influential Christian has not come this close to endorsing a candidate for President since supporting Nixon in 1968, and lived to regret it. When he heard the conspiratorial, foul-mouthed Nixon on Watergate tapes, Graham said he wept and became physically sick.

However, this is not a normal election, with reasonably competent people challenging one another.

Consider the abortion issue. Obama is the most radical supporter of abortion to be president. He even voted for partial birth abortion in which a live baby is delivered, but before the head is removed, its brains are sucked out. When 10 Republican-controlled state legislatures voted to defund Planned Parenthood, America’s largest abortion provider, saving taxpayers $61,701,000 – the Obama Administration gave five states grants to make up the difference!

By contrast, Romney proclaimed recently, “I’ll be a pro-life President. The actions I will take immediately are to remove funding from Planned Parenthood. It will not be part of my budget.”

He also declared, “I’ll reverse the president’s decision on using U.S. funds to pay for abortion outside this country. And I hope to appoint justices for the Supreme Court that will follow the law and the constitution. And it would be my preference that they reverse Roe v. Wade and therefore return to the people and their elected representatives the decisions with regard to this important issue.”

By contrast, Obama appointed two pro-abortion justices to the Supreme Court. Whoever is elected will appoint new Justices. Four of the court’s current Justices are very old: Ruth Bader Ginsberg is 79; Antonin Scalia is 76; Anthony Kennedy, 76; and Stephen Breyer, 74.

The contrast between the candidates on gay marriage is also stark. Obama became the first president to endorse same-sex marriage in May. A day later, Romney said, “I do not favor marriage between people of the same gender.” The Republican Party Platform “supports a Constitutional Amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”

Obama refused to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which blocks giving federal benefits, such as Social Security to partners of same-sex couples. Result: two federal appeals courts have declared DOMA unconstitutional. Romney would uphold DOMA.

Dr. Richard Land, President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, has never endorsed a Presidential candidate. Last week, however, he backed Romney because he believes this “is perhaps the most important election since one that occurred on Nov. 6, 1860, when in the providence of God, Abraham Lincoln was elected President, preserved the Union and expunged the evil of slavery from our land.

“America is at a fork in the road and must choose between a President Barack Obama who wants to remake America in the model of a European welfare state and a Governor Mitt Romney who wants to restore a more economically vibrant and traditionally moral America. The stakes could not be higher morally, socially or economically...”

He outlined the differences between the two candidates on the sanctity of life and same-sex marriage. “In addition, we have a financial crisis that has increased our national debt by nearly 60 percent in the last four years. As a nation our federal government is borrowing over 40 cents of every dollar it spends, an unsustainable ratio of debt to spending, that if not curtailed almost immediately, will permanently circumscribe and attenuate our children and grandchildren’s economic futures.

“We are currently engaging in generational theft by incurring astronomical debt that future generations will spend their entire economic lives redeeming.”

In writing nationally syndicated columns for 35 years, I have never endorsed a candidate for President. Today, however, I join many others to endorse Mitt Romney.