This letter appeared May 3, 2005 as a PAID ADVERTISEMENT in the Colorado Springs Gazette:
Focus on the Strategy
Republican Judges are Pro-Choice
Dobson Criticizes His “Own” Judges
An Open Letter, with Love and Respect, to Dr. James Dobson:
In desperation, some members of Denver Bible Church had our own Justice Sundae in a peaceful protest at Senator Salazar’s Dairy Queen. The goal was to oppose his support for the killing of unborn children, but mostly to expose the result of your quarter-century strategy of getting judges who respect life by electing pro-life Republican presidents.
On Justice Sunday, you were outraged by your own judges! Dr. Dobson, you listed the 11th Circuit decision against Terri Schiavo as an example that the judiciary is “out of control.” But all six of the justices nominated by our pro-life Republican presidents (Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II), voted against your position! All six (including William Pryor, whom President Bush recess-appointed last year to avoid a Democratic filibuster), voted not to save Terri’s life and against our side. All six!
It is time to admit that your strategy has failed. Republicans nominated 58 percent of the federal judiciary [Ft. Collins’ Coloradoan.com April 28], which you rightly expose as firmly against family values. The Moral Majority/Christian Coalition/Focus on the Family 25-year strategy of getting anti-abortion judges through Republican victories has utterly failed; and now George W. Bush is keeping his word by living up to his very first campaign promise to ignore abortion when nominating judges. It was a Republican Supreme Court which legalized abortion, and a Republican-nominated judge even wrote Roe v. Wade. The current Supreme Court keeps abortion legal with seven of the nine sitting Justices nominated by Republican presidents.
The judge who wrote the 9th Circuit ruling against the words “under God” in the Pledge was nominated by a Republican president. In 2002 a New York federal judge that a convicted child sex offender could not be stopped from attracting children with balloons in a public park. That judge was nominated by George Bush Sr., and this compares to the current Republican U.S. Supreme Court which decided in favor of the child-porn industry against families and law enforcement, making it harder to prosecute those who sodomize children for profit. Will you please publicly expose that the vast majority of the justices nominated by our pro-life Republican presidents are pro-choice and refuse to uphold traditional biblical morality?
Our biggest successes are mostly hollow. We have spent most of a decade fighting to ban partial-birth abortion, which is tantamount to Germans banning Zyklon A only to have Zyklon B used in the extermination camps instead, while today’s abortionists simply use a different method on late-term babies and have not canceled a single abortion as a result. And the “pro-life” justices on the Supreme Court have never declared an unborn child’s fundamental right to life, but rather criticize Roe only because abortion should not be a judicial but a legislative issue; this very position undermines the safety of children as though any subdivision of government could have the right to decriminalize murder. The judges that we pretend are conservative actually are only committed to process, not to Christian values, so that when Clarence Thomas dissented from overturning the Texas sodomy law that mercifully opposed harmful behavior, we touted him as supporting Christian values, yet he wrote that if he were a state legislator he would vote to overturn the “silly” law [see SupremeCourtUS.gov then search for "silly," or see the excerpt at KGOV.com].
Dr. Dobson, respectfully, you are outraged by your own judges. Those in the womb when Reagan campaigned for president have now graduated from college, and the de facto Focus political strategy has packed the Federal judiciary with pro-choice Republican judges. You must come to terms with this failed strategy. You carry a heavy weight as America’s evangelical leader in the war against injustice, especially heavy if you lead by compromise; whereas Christ’s burden is light. We recommend the strategy you declared a decade ago but have since abandoned. Back then you repeatedly pledged, as stated on your program in March of 1995, “I am committed never again to cast a vote for a politician who would kill one innocent baby.”
Our leaders have been reduced to plotting battles in which every victory is a retreat. Yet your previous strategy permits no defeat. Do right and risk the consequences. The battle is not only in America, but worldwide 45 million babies [guttmacher.org] die annually. Elevating campaign savvy above righteousness guarantees only failure. Truth is not politically naive. For decades we have done evil that good may come, only to affirm Romans 3:8. Faithfulness to God is our best hope of outlawing abortion and protecting family values. Our failed political strategy makes America increasingly unsafe for children. Sadly, George W. Bush is proud of the pro-choice judges he packed the Texas Supreme Court with, and has put on the federal judiciary.
Without Christian leaders upholding your old pledge, Republican presidents simply use us conservative Christians; and the compromise tremendously weakens our side. You noticed that during the battle for Terri Schindler most religious conservatives in the media stated, “this all could have been avoided if Terri had left a written directive.” With those words, the pro-life community crossed the line to support assisted suicide, starving to death people who are not dying, as long as there is a Living Will. Our pro-life leaders have become weak after a quarter-century of compromise, never compromising on Republican-party politics, but on Thou Shalt Not Murder, all in vain hope of thereby making progress toward victory.
Federally, Republican-nominated judges issue most of the anti-Christian rulings in America. We have to stop focusing on code words that are a recipe for surrender, such as demanding strict constructionists, judicial philosophy, original intent, and constitutionalists (by which Justices upheld Article I in the Dred Scott ruling that black people were property, and the Nuremberg trials brought convictions). Such terminology is another part of the failed strategy which obscures our true demand, for judges who fear God and oppose the killing of the innocent.
Thus, the issue is not the Democratic filibuster, but the failed Christian political strategy that has packed the federal judiciary with pro-choice Republican judges. Please, Dr. Dobson, take up your pledge again, and provide the leadership we desperately need.
In Christ, -Pastor Bob Enyart
Focus on the Strategy
Republican Judges are Pro-Choice
Dobson Criticizes His “Own” Judges
An Open Letter, with Love and Respect, to Dr. James Dobson:
In desperation, some members of Denver Bible Church had our own Justice Sundae in a peaceful protest at Senator Salazar’s Dairy Queen. The goal was to oppose his support for the killing of unborn children, but mostly to expose the result of your quarter-century strategy of getting judges who respect life by electing pro-life Republican presidents.
On Justice Sunday, you were outraged by your own judges! Dr. Dobson, you listed the 11th Circuit decision against Terri Schiavo as an example that the judiciary is “out of control.” But all six of the justices nominated by our pro-life Republican presidents (Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II), voted against your position! All six (including William Pryor, whom President Bush recess-appointed last year to avoid a Democratic filibuster), voted not to save Terri’s life and against our side. All six!
It is time to admit that your strategy has failed. Republicans nominated 58 percent of the federal judiciary [Ft. Collins’ Coloradoan.com April 28], which you rightly expose as firmly against family values. The Moral Majority/Christian Coalition/Focus on the Family 25-year strategy of getting anti-abortion judges through Republican victories has utterly failed; and now George W. Bush is keeping his word by living up to his very first campaign promise to ignore abortion when nominating judges. It was a Republican Supreme Court which legalized abortion, and a Republican-nominated judge even wrote Roe v. Wade. The current Supreme Court keeps abortion legal with seven of the nine sitting Justices nominated by Republican presidents.
The judge who wrote the 9th Circuit ruling against the words “under God” in the Pledge was nominated by a Republican president. In 2002 a New York federal judge that a convicted child sex offender could not be stopped from attracting children with balloons in a public park. That judge was nominated by George Bush Sr., and this compares to the current Republican U.S. Supreme Court which decided in favor of the child-porn industry against families and law enforcement, making it harder to prosecute those who sodomize children for profit. Will you please publicly expose that the vast majority of the justices nominated by our pro-life Republican presidents are pro-choice and refuse to uphold traditional biblical morality?
Our biggest successes are mostly hollow. We have spent most of a decade fighting to ban partial-birth abortion, which is tantamount to Germans banning Zyklon A only to have Zyklon B used in the extermination camps instead, while today’s abortionists simply use a different method on late-term babies and have not canceled a single abortion as a result. And the “pro-life” justices on the Supreme Court have never declared an unborn child’s fundamental right to life, but rather criticize Roe only because abortion should not be a judicial but a legislative issue; this very position undermines the safety of children as though any subdivision of government could have the right to decriminalize murder. The judges that we pretend are conservative actually are only committed to process, not to Christian values, so that when Clarence Thomas dissented from overturning the Texas sodomy law that mercifully opposed harmful behavior, we touted him as supporting Christian values, yet he wrote that if he were a state legislator he would vote to overturn the “silly” law [see SupremeCourtUS.gov then search for "silly," or see the excerpt at KGOV.com].
Dr. Dobson, respectfully, you are outraged by your own judges. Those in the womb when Reagan campaigned for president have now graduated from college, and the de facto Focus political strategy has packed the Federal judiciary with pro-choice Republican judges. You must come to terms with this failed strategy. You carry a heavy weight as America’s evangelical leader in the war against injustice, especially heavy if you lead by compromise; whereas Christ’s burden is light. We recommend the strategy you declared a decade ago but have since abandoned. Back then you repeatedly pledged, as stated on your program in March of 1995, “I am committed never again to cast a vote for a politician who would kill one innocent baby.”
Our leaders have been reduced to plotting battles in which every victory is a retreat. Yet your previous strategy permits no defeat. Do right and risk the consequences. The battle is not only in America, but worldwide 45 million babies [guttmacher.org] die annually. Elevating campaign savvy above righteousness guarantees only failure. Truth is not politically naive. For decades we have done evil that good may come, only to affirm Romans 3:8. Faithfulness to God is our best hope of outlawing abortion and protecting family values. Our failed political strategy makes America increasingly unsafe for children. Sadly, George W. Bush is proud of the pro-choice judges he packed the Texas Supreme Court with, and has put on the federal judiciary.
Without Christian leaders upholding your old pledge, Republican presidents simply use us conservative Christians; and the compromise tremendously weakens our side. You noticed that during the battle for Terri Schindler most religious conservatives in the media stated, “this all could have been avoided if Terri had left a written directive.” With those words, the pro-life community crossed the line to support assisted suicide, starving to death people who are not dying, as long as there is a Living Will. Our pro-life leaders have become weak after a quarter-century of compromise, never compromising on Republican-party politics, but on Thou Shalt Not Murder, all in vain hope of thereby making progress toward victory.
Federally, Republican-nominated judges issue most of the anti-Christian rulings in America. We have to stop focusing on code words that are a recipe for surrender, such as demanding strict constructionists, judicial philosophy, original intent, and constitutionalists (by which Justices upheld Article I in the Dred Scott ruling that black people were property, and the Nuremberg trials brought convictions). Such terminology is another part of the failed strategy which obscures our true demand, for judges who fear God and oppose the killing of the innocent.
Thus, the issue is not the Democratic filibuster, but the failed Christian political strategy that has packed the federal judiciary with pro-choice Republican judges. Please, Dr. Dobson, take up your pledge again, and provide the leadership we desperately need.
In Christ, -Pastor Bob Enyart
