Former Pennsylvania Governor and Homeland Security Secretary (remember the red light-yellow light terror warnings?), Tom Ridge, is in the news again. His accomplishment?
He condemned those within the Republican Party, including elected officials, who stand up for the sanctity of human life and for marriage as between one man and one woman. That’s right. Those who are pro-life and pro-marriage, you know, like you and me! And apparently, that fit right into the narrative of many in the news media and the activist Blogs of those pushing to silence the voices within both major political parties who would dare to stand for life and marriage.
He did this in a headline speech to the group, Log Cabin Republicans, a self-described national “gay rights” advocacy group within the Republican Party. In no uncertain terms, he went back as far at the Pilgrims in his examples of “moralistic” and “judgmental” positions that the he says spell disaster for the Republican Party. To bring the party “into the 21st century,” he prescribes dropping the those principled positions on social issues from the party platform and embracing his own longtime support for abortion-on-demand and his newly discovered support for same-sex marriage.
His abortion record is clear from his historical record of votes in Congress and his decades of public statements. But it’s strikingly – and tragically clear – from what was revealed in the Philadelphia Grand Jury report on the Gosnell House of Horrors in February, 2011: As the grand jury report noted, the oversight problem arose after the strongly pro-life Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey gave up his seat to abortion advocate TomRidge in 1995. “With the change of administration from Governor Casey to Governor Ridge, officials concluded that inspections would be ‘putting a barrier up to women’ seeking abortions. Better to leave clinics to do as they pleased, even though, as Gosnell proved, that meant both women and babies would pay,” said the grand jury.
His position flip-flopped on on redefining marriage this past February, when he joined 130 self-identified Republicans leaders who signed a friend of the court brief with the Supremet Court to support same-sex marriage by overturning the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). As governor, Ridge had signed Pennsylvania’s own DOMA into law stating that marriage is between one man and one woman, but apparently his positions “evolved.”
Here’s a column about the speech, followed by a transcript of the actual speech.
Join us and let’s pray for Tom Ridge, but also commit to work harder for the values we hold dear, both in our homes and communities, and in the public square.
