Leaving aside “international and religious freedom” where Republicans in general and President Bush in particular have been strong advocates, Cizik argues that  “compassion” and “justice issues”—code words for more government entitlement programs—have the same moral weight as the sanctity of life and protection of the family.

This is an old ploy at the National Council of Churches and the liberal Protestant mainline lobbies.  It is both sad and distressing to hear the Vice President of the National Association of Evangelicals working out of their playbook when the moral equivalence argument is so patently false.

Sen. Obama is a tireless proponent of an unlimited right to abortion.  He opposed a ban on partial birth abortions and led the opposition in the Illinois Senate to legislation designed to save the lives of infants who are born alive in spite of abortions.  He has said “the first thing I’d do as president is, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act,” legislation would prohibit any limitations on abortion.  The law would strike down federal and state laws requiring parental notification, protecting live infants who survive abortion, and banning partial-birth abortions.  In short, three decades of hard-won pro-life gains would vanish with one vile pen stroke.

This is not an even trade with “compassion” and “justice issues.”  As Hadley Arkes writes elsewhere, “To put things on the same plane, in that way, is to betray a scheme of judgment with no sense of moral weighting or discrimination.”  Again, the National Council of Churches does this all the time.  The National Association of Evangelicals should know better.

Regarding family and Obama’s support of same-sex marriage, as studies by the Becket Fund demonstrate, “The legalization of same-sex marriage poses a direct threat to the civil liberties of religious Americans who oppose homosexuality….”  I cannot imagine that the National Association of Evangelical’s “45,000 churches and tens of millions of members” are as cavalier as Cizik when marriage, family, biblical doctrines, and their own religious liberty and freedom of speech are all at stake. There is no moral equivalence here either.

Evangelicals should vote their consciences, but those consciences need to be formed by biblical truth, serious moral reasoning, and valid arguments.  The left-over, re-heated sophistry of the religious Left simply will not do.

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