Democrats are Leaving Religion Behind


When I was a student, I recall a female student from the deep South wondering if Democrats knew that by supporting integration of schools and universities they were going to lose all the Southern states? She was right about losing those states. Since then, both Democrats and Republicans have done OK at times. Right now, Democrats seem to have the edge. They stayed competitive by being champions of change instead of refusing to change. As a Democrat, I hope the party is still on a winning path by refusing to pander to religions. 

Neither of the parties has much control over how its members think. Information and cultural ideas keep churning and changing the political landscape. I can't say I understand how it happened, but somehow Democrats ended up with more voters with a long view of our society and Republicans ended up with more of the short view people. When the Southern young woman predicted Democrats would lose the South, both the Democrats leaders, Kennedy followed by Johnson, who were either ahead or behind voters at the time, saw segregation as an unsustainable future. The justification for segregation was the justification for slavery. A basic question was unanswerable: How can a free country be one that enslaves its own people?

Democrats were at the front of gay marriage facing another question: On what basis can government withhold approval of two gays who want to marry? Without an answer to that question voters and politicians in the Democratic Party, along with a few Republicans, approved gay marriage.

So now, why are politicians in the Democratic Party leaving out or stating in a noncommittal way Christian dogma in its platform? It seems society has presented a similar question to the Democratic party. The question is, how can the Party endorse the existence of an invisible god, especially this God who murdered two million innocent people in the Bible and is used to withhold opportunity for women and withhold the right to marry? By leaving Christianity behind, politicians in the Democratic Party are also leaving some votes behind. But by taking the longer view, which is present among Democrat voters more often than among Republican, the pass through a wall of fire that has a future on the other side. 

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