Elections 2006

Just a few remarks on how I voted yesterday and why:

No on 85. I place a pretty high premium on embryonic life and strong family communication, so you'd think I'd throw my support behind a law that would have required parental consent in order to terminate a teen pregnancy. But in the absence of solid evidence of any correlation between anti-abortion laws and an actual decrease in the number of abortions, this proposition had little to commend it. (For the record, in 2004, Glen Stassen published an article in www.sojo.net showing that the number of abortions performed annually had gone down during the years of the pro-choice Clinton administration and risen since pro-life Bush came into office. Further data forced him to modify his argument: abortions had not actually risen since 2001, but the decline seen through the 1990s had nevertheless leveled off.) On the other hand, I do believe that if we address some of the economic and social factors that motivate many women to seek abortions in the first place--for instance, lack of adequate health care, childcare, community services, or employment opportunities for single mothers--we may find fewer women making that painful decision. I have to conclude that a large number of ostensibly pro-life activists who continue to push for punitive abortion laws while ignoring root causes are more interested in suppressing opposition to their ideology than in defending the unborn.

But this goes further. It's been my privilege to know a lot of healthy, loving families where parents and children really do seem to like and trust each other, where there's enough communication to make it hard to keep secrets for too long, and where, bluntly, adolescent girls do not appear to be getting molested by their fathers. I may be naive, but I'm willing to bet that it would be the exception rather than the rule for the parents of one of these families to have no clue that their daughter was pregnant or on her way out the door to get an abortion. Proposition 85 would not affect these families one way or another. On the other hand, it would greatly affect the girl who dares not reveal an unwanted pregnancy to her parents for fear of her own safety. If now we require counselors and medical professionals to refer her back to her parents, we make it that much harder for her to approach caring adults who might actually be able to point her toward a healthier future. Nor can we congratulate ourselves for at least saving the life of the unborn child, for if she's desperate enough she will end her pregnancy, whether legally and healthily or not.

Camejo for Governor. Imagine my surprise when my candidate didn't win. Seriously, I almost voted for Schwarzenegger, just to show my appreciation for a politician who could apologize for his executorial mistakes and reach across party lines. But there are few issues I care about more than justice for immigrants, and Schwarzenegger's tough talk on border control made it impossible for me to support him. Angelides fared no better, and his relentless personal attacks, first against Steve Wesley, and then against Schwarzenegger, coupled with his seeming indifference toward committing himself to a clear course of action, left me with serious doubts about his character.

So I voted for Camejo of the Green Party. You might say that I threw my vote away, but frankly this election wasn't up for grabs in the first place. Nothing short of a photograph of the governor getting intimate with a shi-tzu would have prevented his reelection. On the other hand, if a sizeable number of supporters show up for marginal parties, they raise the possibility that alternatives to our current Republican-Democratic choices might receive greater attention and funding in the future.

Democrats for Congress. My number one reason for heading to the ballot box this year was to cast my vote for Diane Feinstein and Adam Schiff. Heck, I'd have voted for Anna Nicole Smith if she were running for Congress as a Democrat. Not that I'm a particularly loyal Democrat myself. But I believe that one of the primary social responsibilities of the Christian Church is to resist political domination, and that meant breaking the Republican hegemony over the three branches of government.