Ohio Conservative Predicts 'Values Voters' Will Turn Out in Strength
by Chad Groening and Jim Brown
November 7, 2006
(AgapePress) - - Ohio pro-family activist Phil Burress, president of Cincinnati-based Citizens for Community Values (CCV), says he is confident that "values voters" will do their duty and vote in today's important elections across the state.
Burress believes Ohio was the key to President George W. Bush's re-election in 2004, and now, the grassroots activist says, this year's gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races in Ohio are attracting national attention. He feels this is because Ohio tends to reveal national trends.
"Over the years," Burress notes, "we have learned that the mix of Ohio is pretty much a sample of what the United States is when you take it as a whole." That is why he believes turnout will be the key in these statewide midterm elections today.
"Please understand that in Ohio there's a big difference between Republicans and values voters," the CCV spokesman observes, adding that values voters are a bloc that can be counted on. "We expect them to show up, and they will vote. They feel like it's an obligation to vote," he says.
And Burress is also convinced there is little need for concern about all the polls that show pro-family candidates trailing, since pre-election polls have been proven inaccurate in the past. "Take 2004 for an example," he says. In that 2004 presidential election, "there were 39,000 Amish that voted for the first time," the CCV president points out. "Amish don't have telephones -- you can't poll them," he notes, "and President Bush only won the election by 117,000 votes. So, yes, there's a lot that the pollsters don't know."
But while Burress and other pro-family voices have been encouraging conservatives to vote their values, some left-wing leaders have been advising their constituencies to ignore certain moral issues in order to concentrate instead on issues of economic and social justice and furtherance of the so-called "common good." At a recent meeting in Indianapolis, liberal civil rights activist Rev. Al Sharpton accused conservative Christians of focusing too much attention on issues such as abortion and homosexual "marriage" at the expense of what he calls "the broader moral issues" of poverty, injustice, and health care.
King-Tookes: The Most Important Social Issues Are Pro-Family Issues
However, some black community voices are challenging this view. Dr. Alveda C. King-Tookes, niece of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., a former member of the Georgia House of Representatives, and a prominent pro-life speaker, is criticizing Sharpton for suggesting to black church members that they should not be addressing the sins of abortion and same-sex marriage. She says the outspoken liberal activist is wrong to deflect attention away from pro-life and marriage and family issues, especially when many of the social justice issues he champions are often remedied by or "taken care of in a healthy family" anyway.
"I would love to have an opportunity to remind Rev. Sharpton that, of course, those issues -- the crime rates, and poverty, and even the war and issues like that -- are certainly and definitely important," King-Tookes says. "But in a same-sex marriage, there won't be any babies," she points out, "and if the babies are aborted, there won't be any life."
The "life issue" and "the marriage and family issue" are paramount, the former Georgia state legislator says, because "people who aren't living don't need houses or jobs. So, it's almost like putting the cart before the horse to say let's don't talk about whether or not people will be born in the first place."
While Sharpton is telling black Christians to forego addressing what he calls "bedroom sexual morality issues" in favor of focusing on what he describes as the "broader moral issues," King-Tookes feels much of his sort of rhetoric is exactly the opposite of what people who care about their community and their culture as a whole need to hear.
"We need to stop race-baiting," the pro-life spokeswoman asserts. "We need to stop politically polarizing issues and get back to the truth that abortion hurts everybody and that marriage should be between a man and a woman," she says. "Those are the things that make us healthy, stable communities."
If Al Sharpton is telling black values voters to ignore defense of marriage and the sanctity of life, King-Tookes suggests that his priorities are misplaced. "The most pressing civil rights issue of this election season," she contends, "is the protection of the lives of the pre-born."
Chad Groening and Jim Brown, regular contributors to AgapePress, are reporters for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
