With the Religious Right's influence its lowest levels in several years, Tony Perkins has penned a rallying cry for the movement called "Never give in - Values Voters at the Summit" that, not surprisingly, proclaims his organization's upcoming Values Voter Summit the key to turning it all around:
We believe that in a representative democracy, citizens have not just the ability, but the duty to participate in the political process. For too long decisions about the fate of millions have been made "at the summit" by a handful of leaders and those decisions have too often disregarded deeply held beliefs about the sanctity of human life, the importance of marriage, and the bedrock principles of religious liberty – beliefs held dearly by the very people those leaders are supposed to represent.
That's why we instituted the Values Voters Summits several years ago. These are Washington gatherings at which we invite important national figures to address us, to encourage us, and to share essential information about decisions made in Washington that have a direct bearing on all our lives.
Perkins decries the "'inside-the-Beltway' mindset" whereby those in positions of political authority oppose certain grassroots efforts out of fear that they will undermine their agenda, but declares that such "leaders" have it exactly backwards, as it is the grassroots efforts that will lead to the movement's resurrection. And then, somewhat oddly, Perkins points to their recent string of failures as proof that it is working:
For example, when pro-life citizens in South Dakota and Colorado sought to put measures on their state ballots to protect unborn children, the smart money here said: "Don't do it. You might fail. And that would be bad for the cause."
Those grassroots pro-lifers could not be restrained. They did put those measures on the ballot. They did fail. But look what we see in the latest Gallup Poll: For the first time in the history of Gallup, more Americans regard themselves as pro-life than those favoring legalized abortion.
More than that, the Gallup organization confirms that all the grassroots agitation over the heinous partial-birth abortion bans moved public opinion in the pro-life direction. Not only did the people strongly reject this cruel and unjust procedure, they began to focus more on all unborn children menaced by every abortion.
How can that be, you might ask -- didn't President Bill Clinton twice veto those bans? And weren't his vetoes sustained in Congress? Yes, he did and they were. But all the talk about partial-birth abortion reached deeper into Americans' hearts than we knew.
Perkins then proceeds to dust off a point that we haven't seen him make in months, namely that the economic problems we face as a nation are really rooted in abortion and the "breakdown in the family":
We know that no nation, especially one with the rich spiritual heritage ours enjoys, can truly prosper if it destroys its own future through abortion-on-demand ... In other words, this recession is in reality a reflection of the government-aided breakdown in the family. When government encourages out-of-wedlock sexual activity through billions of dollars in subsidies to Planned Parenthood and their ilk, that government guarantees economic harm as well as distress to families.
He closes by declaring that it is incumbent upon Christians to come together to save this nation and to "never give in," no matter what:
In order to meet your responsibilities, we must unite for concerted action. We have the right, and in our representative form of government, we have the duty to combine for the sake of the family. No one else can do it for us. That's what we seek to do at the Values Voters Summits ... We have been defeated many times, but we have not given in. When pundits and pols count us down and out, we keep coming back. I pray that we will never forget that the battle is the Lord's; our task is but to remain wise and faithful. And never give in.
