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Christian right intensifies attacks on Obama – Yahoo! News

Terrorist strikes on four American cities. Russia rolling into Eastern Europe. Israel hit by a nuclear bomb. Gay marriage in every state. The end of the Boy Scouts.

All are plausible scenarios if Democrat Barack Obama is elected president, according to a new addition to the campaign conversation called “Letter from 2012 in Obama’s America,” produced by the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family Action.

The imagined look into the future is part of an escalation in rhetoric from Christian right activists who are trying to paint Obama in the worst possible terms as the campaign heads into the final stretch and polls show the Democrat ahead.

Although hard-edge attacks are common late in campaigns, the tenor of the strikes against Obama illustrate just how worried conservative Christian activists are about what should happen to their causes and influence if Democrats seize control of both Congress and the White House.

“It looks like, walks like, talks like and smells like desperation to me,” said the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell of Houston, an Obama supporter who backed President Bush in the past two elections. The Methodist pastor called the 2012 letter “false and ridiculous.” He said it showed that some Christian conservative leaders fear that Obama’s faith-based appeals to voters are working.

The tone of this article is dismissive, and mainly quotes Obama supporters. That tone is only deserved by the Christian Right if all of the claims of likely futures in an Obama-ruled world are demonstrably false. The problem is, NONE of those claims is demonstrably false, and they flow directly from Obama’s past and current positions. A few simple facts:

The majority of Obama supporters DO want gay marriage in every state, and will work for it, including working for the election of candidates who are for it, and the appointment of judges who will simply declare it to be legal. If they can get it done with a Supreme Court majority, they’re perfectly happy to do that, and they know Obama will appoint judges who are more than willing.

Iran HAS stated repeatedly it wants to destroy Israel. This isn’t quite the same thing as predicting that Iran will directly do it, though that’s certainly possible. But it is FAR from unlikely that Iran would “leak” a “deniable” nuclear weapon to Hamas or Hizbullah, and Islamic terrorists have shown no compunction whatsoever about murdering huge numbers of their own in order to kill a few of the enemy.  I don’t think they’d nuke Jerusalem, since it is a “holy city” to them, too.  But Tel Aviv, Haifa, et. al., would be fair game to them, regardless of the number of fellow believers they killed.

The average enthusiastic Obama supporter does want the Boy Scouts to be forced, by legal action if necessary, to accept gay scoutmasters. From the perspective of any traditional understanding of the Boy Scouts, that will destroy them, even if an organization by that name still exists.  And such a lawsuit will be much more difficult for the Boy Scouts to fight when gay marriage is legal.

The only vaguely questionable aspect of the assertions in the imaginary letter from the year 2012 is the one about 4 American cities getting hit by terrorist strikes. That number could be zero, or “merely” one… or it could be a baker’s dozen.

In a world with a nuclear armed Iran leaking deniable nuclear weapons to terrorist subsidiaries, how safe can any of us feel?

Rural life is looking pretty good just now… I think maybe I’ll take up subsistence farming, except that in an Obama administration, I may have to do an environmental impact study before planting tomatoes. But maybe I can get carbon credits because my squash is taking CO2 out of the air.

Tags: Focus on the Family, Obama