One Issue Voters and Making a Choice: God or My Job

It’s official.  I have finally been accused of being a one issue voter.  In a Facebook discussion with a fellow postal worker after I explained that I couldn’t vote for President Obama because of his radical pro-abortion record. She came back and told me that “ONE issue voters had helped Republicans destroy the middle class.  Then she tried to lay the guilt trip on me suggesting that a vote for a Republican would mean that my employer the US Postal Service would be privatized.  “Where do you think YOU will work after that?” she asked.  Finally she used the scare tactic that a vote for Romney would mean the elimination of the Federal Employees retirement benefits and my ability to retire before I die.  

Here’s my response: 

I guess I’m a one issue voter if that’s what you want to call me. I look at as not being a one issue voter; however one issue can disqualify a candidate. Let me ask you this and please give me an honest answer. Abortion is morally evil. Other things are also morally wrong such as terrorism, racism, slavery, rape, etc. Take any one of those issues substitute it for abortion. What if you were alive in 1860 with these same two candidates? All the other issues are the same but President Obama supports slavery, while Mitt Romney is against slavery. Would you still vote for President Obama?

Here’s what I do know. I will always follow my church and God. God is the reason that I am here on earth. He will get me to heaven. The Postal Service while it pays the bills is just that. It’s a career that I like. But it won’t get me to heaven. When it comes to God or the Postal Service, that’s an easy choice, I will always choose God. I can always find another job.

My church teaches me that there are “5 Nonnegotiable” issues. These are Abortion, Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Euthanasia, Assisted Suicide, and The Redefinition of Marriage. Those issues are nonnegotiable because the Bible teaches us that these issues are intrinsically evil because they are always wrong. There are other issues such as health care, immigration, poverty, environment, and yes even the survival of the US Postal Service. But these other issues do not carry as much weight because the Bible does not tell us what levels various government programs should be funded at or whether the federal government, state, or local government, the private sector, or some combination of the above is best equipped to deal with certain problems.”

In the elections this year there is a clear difference between the two candidates. President Obama is the most pro-abortion president in modern time. He also promotes the other nonnegotiable issues. Mitt Romney on the other hand was also pro-choice at one time, but about halfway through his term as Massachusetts Governor, he had a conversion declaring that he was pro-life. What caused him to change? The pressure to change the law protecting embryos from lethal stem cell research. Romney sat down and had discussions with pro life doctors and came away convinced that all human life begins at conception. Romney still isn’t 100% pro-life as he leaves an exception for cases as rape or incest or to save the life of the mother. He also believes that federal funds should not be used to pay for it. The difference is clear.

Romney is also against same sex marriage while President Obama has gone on record as supporting it.

As a Catholic and as Christian, I have a moral obligation to use all of the means at my disposal as a voter to resist intrinsically evil public policies, even if it means subordinating their political preferences on other important concerns.” To vote for a candidate who supports these intrinsic evils because he or she supports these evils is to participate in a grave moral evil. It can never be justified because a vote for a candidate who promotes actions or behaviors that are intrinsically evil and gravely sinful makes you morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your own soul in serious jeopardy. Catholics who depart from Church teaching on these issues separate themselves from full communion with the Church. If I want to get to heaven I can’t do that.