Confessions of a values voter
(I'm not who you think I am)
By Tom Krattenmaker

I am a values voter.

Given my progressive political and religious beliefs, some might find
this a dubious claim - especially members of the Christian right, who
with their rhetoric about "values voters" suggest that only those who
share their positions on abortion and same-sex couples possess
something deserving of the term "values."

Social conservatives' skewed deployment of the "v-word" floods the
public square these days. (Though it didn't help Republicans this time
as it did in 2004.) President Bush, on the campaign trail, called on
voters to support candidates who dbelow efend "traditional values."

Consider two events organized this past year by leading religious right
figures - the "Values Voters Summit," held earlier this fall with a
lineup of speakers that included the flame-throwing Ann Coulter, and
the high-profile "War on Christians and the Values Voter" conference in
March. Consider the ValuesVoters.com website operated by the
conservative American Family Association, and the declaration by
leading social conservative Gary Bauer that 2004 was the "year of the
values voter."

Apparently, those of us who hold different positions on the hot-button
issues as framed by social conservatives - those of us who turn our
attention and hearts to other imperatives such as peace-making, poverty
relief, environmental preservation and tolerance - have no values.
According to the rhetoric of social conservatives, progressives are the
"anything goes" lot. Secularists, liberal Christians and followers of
other faiths - we're the ones tearing America down with our moral
weakness and hostility to the conservative Christian worldview.

No one has a corner on values

Let's move past this hubris and damn-the-opponents rhetoric. We all
have values. Let the majority of us who are not members of the "values
voters" club continue to take back the v-word and proclaim the values
that we've always acted - and voted - upon.

Does opposition to the war in Iraq represent an absence of values?
Anything but. What is it if not deeply rooted principles and ideals -
values, in other words - that moves so many Americans to oppose the
war? We insist on truth-telling by our political leaders. We respect
human life, which is why it saddens and outrages us to contemplate the
deaths of American soldiers and of many tens of thousands of Iraqis. We
hope and pray for a peaceful world in which war, if it must come, is a
last resort, not a favored option.

Dwight Moody, a Baptist minister and writer on religion and culture,
had this to say about values in a recent e-mail exchange with me:
"Progressives, moderates and liberals are also undergirded by deeply
held moral convictions, much of it driven by a religious and Christian
view of the world: the value of creation, the dignity of the human
person, the need for equity and justice, the cause of the poor and the
dispossessed. These are values rarely articulated by the religious
right, but they run deep and wide in the Bible."

Granted, liberals have been too shy about framing their political
positions in moral terms, and too reluctant to use words such as "evil"
to describe the acts of terrorists. The sexual adventures of
high-profile Democrats such as Bill Clinton and the revolving-door
domestic arrangements of Hollywood stars have lent fodder to
conservatives who would blast their opponents as godless hedonists.
Liberals have paid at the ballot box.

Thankfully, change is coming. Everywhere I look, I see progressives
beginning to invoke values in ways that might startle religious
conservatives, and in ways that probably helped Democrats win last
week.

In Oregon, a recently formed ecumenical group proclaims the v-word in
its name: the Oregon Center for Christian Values. These are "Christian
values" rooted in human rights, economic justice for the disadvantaged
and care for the environment. "Our commitment to Christ," the
organization declares in its literature, "compels us to reach beyond
the traditional 'moral values' issues often discussed in American
politics today. Our goal is to call Christians to reclaim the radical,
transformational vision for culture and society that reverberates in
the teachings of Jesus."

A group called Red Letter Christians - a reference to the use of red
letters in some Bibles to mark the words of Jesus - urged
Bible-believers in the run-up to the elections to "vote their values"
by treating the environment, poverty and the Iraq war as religious
issues. William Sinkford, president of the Unitarian Universalist
Association, invokes values in describing the approach to sexuality
education adopted by the theologically liberal Unitarians - an
approach that directly acknowledges that people will have sex outside
of the opposite-sex, husband-and-wife contexts. "Sexuality education is
about much more than just biology and rules," Sinkford wrote recently.
"It is about values, including self-worth, sexual health,
responsibility, justice and inclusivity and communication."

In the analyses and proclamations following last Tuesday's vote,
"values" have been popping up in upside-down new ways. The prime
example may be the Democrat who won the seat of disgraced Republican
congressman Mark Foley and promptly pledged to take immediate action to
make sure "our values and morals are represented" in Washington.

A less strident view

As progressives wield language that once belonged solely to
conservatives, may we do so fairly, in a way that acknowledges that the
other side of the debate also has values. In so doing, we'll model
other core values of ours: inclusiveness and respect for differing
viewpoints.

The truth about values is that we all have them, but that in our
diverse, religiously pluralistic society, we don't share the same ones.
What some of us consider a core value can offend others. Tolerance, for
example, is a central value to progressives; to some conservatives,
it's the root of our problems. Tony Perkins, president of the Family
Research Council, has unfairly blamed homosexuality, and our liberal
society's tolerance thereof, for Foley's improprieties with pages and
for the slow speed with which Capitol Hill Republicans responded to
reports of Foley's misdeeds.

Perkins was hitting hard on the "values voters" theme in the weeks
leading up to the elections. Responding to reports of evangelical
disenchantment with Bush and the Republicans and forecasts of lower
turnout by the bloc credited with winning the president's re-election
in 2004, Perkins urged social conservatives to rediscover their zest
for voting. "Values voters across the nation," Perkins wrote in
September in his daily e-mail report, "are beginning to see ... what
will happen if they sit idly by and allow the rudderless liberals to
set a course for our nation." Closer to the elections, Perkins admitted
that religious conservative enthusiasm was not what it was in 2004. "If
you are tempted to sit this election out, I encourage you not to," he
wrote. "Vote your values."

Vote your values. That's certainly what I did. That's what we all did.

Tom Krattenmaker, who lives in Portland, Ore., specializes in religion
in public life and is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors. He
is working on a book about the Christianization of professional sports.