My Spiritual Journey
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1546579,00.html
By Barack Obama
Two days after I won the democratic nomination in my U.S. Senate race,
I received an email from a doctor at the University of Chicago Medical
School.
"Congratulations on your overwhelming and inspiring primary win," the
doctor wrote. "I was happy to vote for you, and I will tell you that I
am seriously considering voting for you in the general election. I
write to express my concerns that may, in the end, prevent me from
supporting you."
The doctor described himself as a Christian who understood his
commitments to be comprehensive and "totalizing." His faith led him to
strongly oppose abortion and gay marriage, but he said his faith also
led him to question the idolatry of the free market and the quick
resort to militarism that seemed to characterize much of President
Bush's foreign policy.
The reason the doctor was considering voting for my opponent was not
my position on abortion as such. Rather, he had read an entry that my
campaign had posted on my website, suggesting that I would fight
"right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to
choose." He went on to write:
"Whatever your convictions, if you truly believe that those who oppose
abortion are all ideologues driven by perverse desires to inflict
suffering on women, then you, in my judgment, are not fair-minded. ...
I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you
speak about this issue in fair-minded words."
I checked my website and found the offending words. They were not my
own; my staff had posted them to summarize my pro-choice position
during the Democratic primary, at a time when some of my opponents
were questioning my commitment to protect Roe v. Wade. Within the
bubble of Democratic Party politics, this was standard boilerplate,
designed to fire up the base. The notion of engaging the other side on
the issue was pointless, the argument went; any ambiguity on the issue
implied weakness.
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