That is a question being asked by Sarah Posner, formerly of the FundamentaList, in this article at Religion Dispatches. It's a good question to ask as rumors spread that he will challenge Kristin Gillibrand. It is not just about religion or Christianity, it is about the future of the party. The way it played out the last few years it has become a major issue in our party.
It should not be a major issue.
From Religion Dispatches:
Are New York Democrats Ready for Harold Ford's Faithiness?Amid a cacophony of news stories about the Democrats supposedly losing a grip on power because of the retirements of Byron Dorgan and Chris Dodd, the Senate leadership is now fretting that Harold Ford, Jr., who faced the Tennessee Republican Party's shamefully racist ads in his unsuccessful 2006 run for the Senate from that state, is now considering running for Senate in his new home state of New York.
Ford is thought to be considering a challenge to Kristen Gillebrand, who was appointed to the seat last year when Hillary Clinton became Secretary of State. But is New York ready for his brand of conserva-faithiness?
Take a look at
this ad Ford ran in his 2006 Senate race. Filmed in a church, with a cross just over his shoulder (the same sort of imagery people howled about when Mike Huckabee used it in 2007), Ford testifies to church being where he learned "the difference between right and wrong." Funny, then, that he went on in that same ad to brag about how he voted "against amnesty for illegals." In another "faithy" vote, Ford, then serving in the House, was
one of 47 Democrats who voted with the Tom DeLay-led Republicans in favor of federal government intervention to try to stop the removal of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube.
Pro Choice groups have
already blasted Ford"Ford’s anti-LGBT positions run in marked contrast with Senator Gillibrand’s unyielding support for our community. In the year that she has been in the US Senate, Senator Gillibrand has been an outspoken and passionate supporter of every single piece of pro-LGBT legislation that currently exists at the federal level. She has often led the charge in the Senate for calling for the repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” She became the first US Senator from New York to support marriage equality, and she actively lobbied members of the New York State Senate to support the marriage equality bill before it received a vote on Dec. 2, 2009.
For our community — and any New Yorker who cares about equality for LGBT people — there is no contest here. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand deserves our full support if she is going to be challenged by someone who has a dismal voting record on our rights — someone like Harold Ford, Jr. of Tennessee.
Also NARAL weighs in:
NARAL Pro-Choice New York opposes the potential Senate candidacy of Harold Ford, Jr. and would like to make it perfectly clear to all voters that Harold Ford, Jr. is — unlike the overwhelming majority of New Yorkers — anti-choice.
The ongoing debate on healthcare reform has put in clear perspective how one legislator’s vote can have a dramatic impact on the lives of American women. New York State has not – and will not — provide that anti-choice vote. NARAL Pro-Choice New York — and more importantly, the voters of our state — will not stand for it.
Will Marshall of the misnamed Progressive Policy Institute once called those who believe in church and state separation as
stridently secular groupsAbove all, Senate Democrats should avoid knee-jerk opposition to the faith-based proposal as well as the rhetoric of their House counterparts, which too often was tinged with hostility to religion. This only plays into the hands of GOP strategists determined to drive the wedge deeper between Democrats and religious people, who leaned strongly toward the Republicans in 2000.
Democrats cannot afford to let stridently secular groups define their views on the interplay between religion and public life. Instead, they should follow the lead of Lieberman and his running mate, Al Gore, who challenged Democrats during the campaign to reject the "hollow secularism" of the left, and added: "We must dare to embrace faith-based approaches that advance our shared goals as Americans."
Seems as though the religious right has been firmly embraced as was the goal of the conservative Democrats.
Even Barack Obama once chided a Democratic leader who said the Republicans were mostly a white Christian party.
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) criticized Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean Wednesday night for using "religion to divide."
Obama told reporters gathered at the Rock the Vote awards dinner at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., that Dean needs to tone down his rhetoric. Dean said on Monday that the Republican Party was "pretty much a white, Christian party."
"As somebody who is a Christian myself, I don't like it when people use religion to divide, whether that is Republican or Democrat," Obama said. See Video"I think in terms of his role as party spokesman, Dean probably needs to be a little more careful and I suspect that is a message he is going to be getting from a number of us," Obama explained.
"We are at a time in our country's history that inclusive language is better than exclusive language," he added.
Obama says Dean using religion to divideWell, gee, it is not as though the religious right ever embraced those of us who prefer a secular government. Now they have as much if not more power in government than they did under Bush's administration.
It's been a pattern for a while that one must accept that the Democrats will embrace the religious right strongly.
This is not about religion per se. It is about the direction of the party in terms of women's rights, gay rights, and acceptance of those who are not happy with the religious groups who advocate against those rights.
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