Sarah Palin expressed support for a Constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman, the opposite of the stance her running mate takes.
Palin told David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network that she would like an amendment similar to one she voted for in Alaska. “I wish on a federal level that that’s where we would go because I don’t support gay marriage,” she said. Back in 2004, John McCain called the amendment unnecessary and un-Republican.
Brody posted a series of interviews with Palin, and gay marriage is the main policy stance she discusses. The most interesting answers are about her faith, but she doesn’t go very specifically into how it affects her policies.
Brody asks Palin about the shots taken at her because of her faith and she responded by saying:
Yeah, and I think the saddest part of that is that faith, not just my faith, faith and God in general has been mocked through this campaign, and that breaks my heart, and that is unfair for others who share a faith in God and choose to worship our Lord in whatever private manner that they deem fit, and my faith has always been pretty personal.
She continues about how her how her faith is very personal.
I haven’t really worn it on my sleeve. I haven’t been out there preaching it. I’ve always been of the mind that you can walk the walk. You just don’t have to be talking the talk about your beliefs, so just wanting maybe my life to be able to reflect my faith. So it’s always been pretty personal, and that was kind of a surprise in the last couple of months that people would misconstrue and spin anything that has to do with my faith or anybody else’s and turn it into something to be mocked.
Dan Gilgoff at Beliefnet points out that 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said the line about wearing faith on his sleeve during his ’04 convention speech. Hillary Clinton also used a similar line at the 2007 Sojourner’s Forum: “And, you know, I take my faith very seriously and very personally. And I come from a tradition that is perhaps a little too suspicious of people who wear their faith on their sleeves.”
Back to Palin, here’s more on her faith and how she relies on God for strength.
I’m going to keep plugging away at this and I’m going to keep seeking God’s guidance and His wisdom and His favor and His grace, for me, for my family, for this campaign, for our nation. Again, no matter what anybody else says about it, it’s between me and God, and I am so thankful that that he has strengthened me with this understanding and this belief that I can count on Him. I can reach out to Him asking for that strength, asking for the blessings that He so freely gives and I don’t know how anybody would want to do this if they didn’t have real strong faith in God that He’s got it all under control.
Brody also asks Palin about her baptism. “Well, it was a neat thing to be able to do,” she says. Her description is fairly generic, with no mention of Jesus. She focuses on her role in bettering the world.
And I knew that I wouldn’t be able to handle all that was laid out in front of me in life if I did not have strong faith in my Creator, a mission towards trying to fulfill my own destiny and trying to make the world a bit better for others, so that the manifestation of that belief that I had, I was very aware of what I could do about it at the time, and at the time it was to take that that public step to be baptized and the principle behind that too is as you’re raised up out of the water it’s like, ‘hey world, this is my confession of faith that I’m going to try to lead and live my life according to my belief that God as my Creator has good plans for all of us, and we are to seek those plans and seek the destiny that he has for all of us.’
