The “moral voters” of Election 2004 have spoken: there can be such a thing as a “just war” but never a “just abortion,” and even though some European countries and parts of Canada are legalizing same-sex marriage, gays in this country must never be granted such normal human rights.  Those who cited such “moral values” were, for the most part, Christian Evangelicals and Roman Catholics, classifying themselves as Conservatives.

Many other religious leaders, however, think the conservative definition of values is too limiting. The Rev. James White, of  the Colorado Springs First Congregational Church-United Church of Christ, very correctly says “They mean genital values. That’s what family values have become.” He points out that the Bible barely touches on human sexuality, especially in comparison to issues such as caring for the poor.

True. Neither Jesus nor Paul uttered one word condemning abortion. Out of the more than 600 laws of Moses, none comments on abortion. In fact, Ex. 21:22-25 says that if a woman has a miscarriage as a result of a fight, the man who caused it should be fined, not executed, meaning that the fetus is not considered a human being until birth.  And rather than marriage being a union between one man and one woman as conservatives would decree, the Mosaic Law in Deuteronomy includes rules for plural marriage.  Christians choose which values they extract from their Bible. Conservative Christians support their homophobia with these ancient stories. Liberal Christians use the example of Jesus to inspire them

to pursue social justice causes and avoid unjust wars.

This difference illustrates the two moralities underlying American politics, which George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive sciences at the University of California at Berkeley, describes in his essay, “Metaphor, Morality, and Politics, or, Why Conservatives Have Left Liberals In the Dust.” (Available on the web at http://www.wwcd.org/issues/Lakoff.html.)

Lakoff posits a Strict Father model versus a Nurturant Parent model of the family, with the former stressing Moral Strength over Moral Empathy. His model explains how anti-abortion “right-to-life” activists can favor the death penalty and how they can oppose abortion and also oppose reducing infant mortality through prenatal care programs: “moral mothers should be able to provide their own prenatal care, and if they can’t they should abstain from sex and not have babies” (never mind that it is the baby that suffers!) It explains why budget-cutting conservatives will spare no public expense to build prison

after prison to house even non-violent offenders, or why they are willing to spend extra money to take children away from their mothers and put them in orphanages or foster care in the name of family values.  Or why conservatives attack violence in the media while promoting the right to own machine guns. These all follow the Strict Father model.

Liberals are currently fragmented into isolated interest groups – labor, the rights of ethnic groups, feminism, gay rights, environmentalism, abortion and contraception rights, homelessness, health care, education, the arts – that are actually all based on the Nurturant Parent model. Once Liberals acknowledge this common morality, Lakoff believes they can present

a unified front that will overcome the “divide and conquer” tactic of the recent campaign.