Memo to Robert F. Kennedy

For those who have lately followed politics, you realize that liberals are in a great dilemma. They need to convince the nation that they are a religious people. Wow, what a task! But in order to do so they will have to re-write the Bible. Oh, let me give you a proof of this. Sandlin deals masterfully with exposing one of the greatest liberals in America after John Kerry.

By Andrew Sandlin
Thursday night, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was on Bill O’Reilly’s FOX News “Factor.” In light of the Democrats’ very public and very painful anxiety that they are losing the “values” debate with the American public, we should not be surprised that they’ve ramped up their Bible reading and Jesus-quoting to stay apace with the more Christianized Republicans.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whose flaming political liberalism would make Howard Dean blush, is Exhibit A.

O’Reilly was pointing out that Kennedy’s uncle (President John) and father (Attorney General) adopted policies quite consistent with the present policies of George W. Bush that Kennedy, Jr. (nephew and son) so loudly excoriates: a preemptive strike (Cuba), big tax cuts, frequently invoking God’s name in speeches, and employing the Justice Department to aggressively uproot domestic crime.

Kennedy, Jr. responded not by defending his uncle and father but by quoting the Bible and church history. Namely:

Jesus defended those persecuted for their sexual practices (the woman taken in adultery); ergo, Christians should defend homosexuals today persecuted in being forbidden marriage.

Jesus said, “Judge not that you be not judged”; ergo, Christians shouldn’t judge the homosexual lifestyle.

The Pilgrims escaped religious persecution to come to the United States; ergo, Americans should be sympathetic with the homosexuals persecuted by eleven states that have refused to allow them to marry.

When flaming secularists start invoking Jesus and quoting the Bible, you know that orthodox Christianity is making cultural headway. But more to the point:

Jesus was quite willing for the woman taken in adultery to suffer the consequences that God’s law imposed (Jn. 8:7). However, there were insufficient witnesses who were without sin, i. e., the sin of which they were accusing her. Jesus forgave the adulteress and warned her not to sin again. This has nothing whatever to do with identifying as persecution the definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

Jesus warned us that if we judge, we would be judged by the same criteria (Mt. 7:1-2). He did not suggest that we are forbidden to judge, but rather that we are to judge righteously (Jn. 7:24). Jesus spent plenty of time “judging” people (Mt. 23!). And in affirming every jot and tittle of the Mosaic law (Mt. 5:17-18), he implicitly judged homosexuality to be a grievous sin (Lev. 18:22).

Now to the Pilgrims. They indeed came these shores to escape religious persecution. They were English separatists who broke with the Puritans, who, the Pilgrims believed, did not follow consistently the principles of Biblical Reformation. They were persecuted because they refused to be a part of the established church. To equate the persecution they endured at the hands of the ecclesial establishment with homosexuals’ inability to legally redefine (i. e., eviscerate) the meaning of marriage is not so much monstrous as laughable.

But we cannot expect Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to know any of this. He is a self-respecting secularist.

Ergo, he should quit quoting the Bible and church history.