On Catholics and Democrats
Laarman, Peter
I AM A PERSON of faith and a lifelong left Democrat who disagrees profoundly with Margaret O'Brien Steinfels on the specific issue that tempts her to regard today's Democratic Party as "the...
...I am willing to wager that if Steinfels were able to talk to Democrats in leadership positions within the party, she would discover a substan tial number who share her qualms...
...I AM A PERSON of faith and a lifelong left Democrat who disagrees profoundly with Margaret O'Brien Steinfels on the specific issue that tempts her to regard today's Democratic Party as "the party of death...
...I believe her interlocutors would say they do not feel mechanically beholden to NOW or to NARAL but they do feel conscience-bound to support the principle that the individual woman's moral judgment can and should be respected...
...I am frankly delighted by the Republicans' current difficulty in trying to unite its Wall Street constituency, its religious-right activists, and its traditional small-town Rotarians...
...Aren't there already plenty of people out there doing that...
...At the end of the day, I expect that she would find a good bit more than a dime's worth of difference between the parties on most matters of compelling moral consequence to her...
...A party that could once contain Eleanor Roosevelt liberals and Dixiecrat reactionaries for the sake of winning elections and reining in Wall Street ought to be capable of containing both Peggy Steinfels and me...
...I am not amused when the same thing happens among the Democrats—for example, when good people like Steinfels say "I'm outta here" because they feel the party has failed some litmus test...
...If they have come to see me it's because they know by reputation that my counsel won't begin with a condemnation of their irresponsibility or their promiscuity...
...I think I have a right to be enraged about this situation, just as Peggy Steinfels has a right to be enraged about what she feels is the Democrats' cavalier dismissal of her qualms about abortion and physician-assisted suicide...
...I am not as confident as Steinfels that women's legal right to choose is legally "here to stay...
...My own experience as a pastor tells me that pregnant women facing the momentous choice to seek abortion already feel a good deal of moral censure— from spouses, parents, and boyfriends, from a disapproving culture as a whole, and often from their religious communities...
...But even if she found just a thin dime's worth, I hope that she would hang in there and try to convert that dime into a quarter and then maybe into a whole dollar...
...The question is, what will we do with our rage...
...My own rage about the direction of the Democratic Party has to do with its uncritical embrace of the global corporate agenda despite the obvious and grievous harm that getting into bed with the masters of the universe wreaks on working people and on the earth itself...
...In brief, I look at women, and especially poor women, as the key vulnerable constituency Democrats should continue to defend with respect to abortion...
...REVEREND PETER LAARMAN is senior minister of Judson Memorial Church in New York City...
...These are indeed the main labels that 80 n DISSENT / Winter 2000 a patriarchal culture still tries to pin on women who end up "inappropriately" pregnant...
...I am incensed beyond measure when I hear leading Democrats, including candidates Gore and ARGUMENTS Bradley, describe the corporate agenda—destruction of the public sector, deregulation of financial markets, and free trade—as the path to prosperity for everyone when they know that it's actually the path to greater riches for an elite that already has more wealth than it knows what it do with...
...I am also well aware that the "wealth primary"—the fact that two hundred thousand big donors actually get to choose party candidates these days—lies at the root of the Democrats' economic apostasy...
...and I certainly do not think that it's the job of Democratic officeholders to preach against abortion...
...DISSENT / Winter 2000 n 81...
...Having said all this, I don't want to see people like Peggy Steinfels abandoning her "baptismal" party, and I worry about what becomes of a party that can't hold together despite sharp disagreements on issues like abortion...
Vol. 47 • January 2000 • No. 1
