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John Kerry told The New York Times in an interview on Monday, "The President and I have the same position, fundamentally, on gay marriage. We do. Same position."

Neglecting to mention that he opposes the Federal Marriage Amendment while Bush supports it, Kerry then characterized the difference between him and the President as a matter of energizing religious voters. Bush and other Republicans are "out there misleading people and exploiting it," The Times quoted Kerry as saying.

"Careful not to question the sincerity of Mr. Bush's faith or to criticize the mobilization of conservative religious forces on his behalf, Mr. Kerry nonetheless suggested his opponent's campaign had gone over the line with the way it frames some issues." The Times wrote. "Despite frequent invocations of the term 'values,' he has not connected his agenda to a deeper moral conviction, though in the interview Monday he declared, 'Faith is central to my life.'"

Still, a Time magazine poll found only 7 percent of voters thought Kerry was a "man of strong religious faith."

So where's the disconnect? The Times says, "Aides attribute Mr. Kerry's visible discomfort in discussing religion to his Catholic upbringing in reserved New England, a contrast to Mr. Bush's spiritual rebirth into the more confessional tradition of evangelical Christianity."

But on the kinds of social issues many religious conservatives vote on, Kerry's actions speak louder than explanations. When President Bush weighed in on embryonic stem-research, he viewed it as an ethical problem. He invited clergy, ethicists, and scientists to counsel him. While Kerry has "surrounded himself with university researchers and doctors in white laboratory coats and disease sufferers," says The Times. Kerry also brought out celebrities like Michael J. Fox and Christopher Reeve, not known for their religious values.

In addition, Kerry opposes his own church on life issues, which does not show a "strong religious faith."

Kerry's "scientific" stance may not even be helping him with disabled Americans, those who he says stand to benefit most from the kind of stem-cell research he incorrectly says Bush banned. A recent survey by Harris Interactive found Bush has a narrow lead over Kerry among disabled Americans. "This finding marks a dramatic shift in support among this voting bloc, which has historically supported the Democratic candidate in every election since Harris Interactive first measured it in 1988," according to The National Organization on Disability press release.

"The single disability-rights issue on the liberal agenda is our right to die," writes Lucy Gwin, editor of Mouth magazine, a disability-rights oriented magazine. "That's nowhere near the top of the disability-rights-needed-here list."

"More at ease in the realm of secular facts, he seems to have scored some points recently by portraying Mr. Bush as a man of oblivious conviction and hard ideology, though he does not explicitly mention the religious roots of some of the stances," says The Times.

Both The Times and Kerry don't seem to recognize that religious people don't find "the realm of secular facts" opposed to religious conviction. Many people, such as Joni Eareckson Tada, would argue that it's not religion versus science, but it's religiously and ethically informed science that truly cares for the sick. Bush's restrictions on embryonic stem-cell research are not "right-wing ideology" or a result of "oblivious conviction." Such a description may rally the non-religious, but it offends those who take faith seriously.

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October (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48