"Planned Parenthood never reported this predator"

While pondering upon what I would do with the ballot before me in the voting booth this coming Tuesday, I made a mistake of tuning into KKLA which is one of the most listened to Evangelical radio stations here in Southern California.

A commercial in ominous words began to play. You can watch its Youtube version here.

"A 13 year old girl was raped by a 39 year old man over a 100 times."

"When she got pregnant, he took her to Planned Parenthood. Twice."

"Her mother didn't know."

"He took her from school for surgical abortion. Her mother didn't know."

"Planned Parenthood never reported this predator. He continued sexually abusing the girl for 6 more months."

A 39 year old guy impregnates a 13 year old girl and takes her to an abortion clinic to terminate her pregnancy and cover his tracks. Words fail me. Even the most hardened criminals incarcerated in prison would agree with me on that.

But then the story takes a bizarre twist. Planned Parenthood "never reported this predator," the ad claims.

Let's think through this here.

Are we to believe that the 39 year child rapist walked into a Planned Parenthood clinic, and introduced himself to the receptionist as the father of the 13 year old girl's baby, and the clinic staff just greeted him with a smile and served him coffee while he waited in the lobby?

I fall on the pro-life side of the debate with some major caveats. However horrific and immoral we believe abortion to be does not negate our responsibility to be fair to those whom we vehemently disagree with.

What value do such flagrant and inflammatory accusations of complicity in child rape add to the debate?

I suppose you can make a case that "the other side" plays dirty too by digging up ads put out by the pro-choice side to demonstrate its penchant to distort and lie.

Let's assume that to be true. Even so, are we not admonished not to be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21)? Such thoughtless accusations of aiding child rape (or rape of any kind for that matter) are truly despicable.

Evangelical political activism has landed the church deep in the mud of the political arena. We lie. We distort. We play dirty just like everybody else whose primary objective is winning and little else.

An axiom warns against mud-wrestling with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig enjoys it. After 30 years of political activism with very little to show for, it has become clear to me that we have become the pig who sees nothing wrong with getting dirty.

Perhaps that is a tell tale sign that we should seriously consider getting out of politics and finding new hobbies?

PS: Read my blogging friend Amber's Don't be a monster in order to defeat a monster.