NEW VOTERS, OLD MEDIA

THE SIGNS ARE ALL THERE FOR A NOVEMBER 2 EARTHQUAKE

The mainstream media is missing a huge story, mostly because it doesn't like the topic. But in a month they're going to find out just why there are so many new voters this year.

I can tell you that the ground forces of the right are activated and ready. The word has gone out and is going out all over this nation, and voter registrars are reporting more than the usual number of new voters. The media thinks this is all a result of the closeness of the 2000 election--that's because the media is mostly liberal, so the Democrat explanations for everything resonate with them.

But they're wrong.

There's a campaign out there--actually, probably thousands of them--among pro-family voters to register new voters and get them to the polls. And the issue isn't Bush. It isn't Iraq. It isn't to prevent the closeness of the 2000 election, though that reminder provides strong motivation to take this one more seriously.

The issue is gay marriage.

Hundreds of independent Christian groups across the country, some usually political, others not, are emailing and snail-mailing alerts to their members. Pastors everywhere are preaching on the subject. Megachurches are mobilizing to hand out voter guides, informing their people as to where the candidates stand on the issue

Even in traditionally Democratic churches, pro-family voters are putting aside their concerns about the war and the economy. They are not forgiving on these issues, but those things are transitory and temporal. The question of marriage, we believe, touches on eternal truths that we simply will not compromise.

The nation may be at war in Iraq, but we moral traditionalists believe it is time to face down the enemy in a cultural and spiritual war that must be won.

As in perhaps no other election in our history, this choice of presidents has deep spiritual meaning. Whoever is president will likely get to appoint an indeterminate number of Supreme Court justices, considered a necessity before the Court decides to declare homosexual marriage a constitutional right. The President appoints federal judges, and it's time to hold the Senate's feet to the fire for their intransigence at confirming judges that will interpret the law, not make it.

The President barely mentions this issue, though the GOP platform is crystal clear, and we know without doubt where he stands. Senator Kerry has given pro-family voters no hope, particularly when the Democratic platform's section on "family" values is all about health care and the economy.

That's not what we want to hear. Already, the evangelical community is beginning to feel stirrings of guilt for having put worldly things ahead of godly things. Watching the culture dissolve around us has only intensified that guilt. The Bible says, "If MY people, who are called by MY name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and forgive their sin, and heal their land." (2 Chron. 7:14, emphasis mine.) The burden is on the church to change the culture, not the culture to change itself.

In the 1980 election, a force arose in the electorate that the media didn't know was coming. It was the force of moral anguish, and it was triggered primarily by abortion and the nascent gay rights movement. In that year, Ronald Reagan ascended from obscurity, and the evangelicals began their move into the center of the political world. This year, as in that, we, people of faith who have grown complacent with a fat and happy culture, are acting on our convictions and our guilt.

We didn't fight when Hollywood slid further and further toward the abyss, celebrating illicit sex, drugs, homosexuality, lesbianism, witchcraft, prostitution, gambling, and all manner of immorality. We slightly stirred when advertisers targeted our children with barely dressed models in incomprehensible ads for clothing. We slept on while public schools normalized gay sex and adoption.

But we are awake now.

We are looking around us and seeing degeneracy. We see Janet Jackson and the many sins of CBS. We see Michael Moore and the anti-war movement that, whatever one thinks of the war itself, reaches new lows in the unpatriotic and the crass. We see the media's rejection of The Passion of the Christ and clearly see the contempt the cultural gatekeepers have for people of faith.

We see, most of all, Gavin Newsom marrying men to men and women to women in illegal San Francisco ceremonies. We see the Massachusetts Court declaring it unconstitutional to restrict marriage to one man and one woman. We see the Supreme Court authorizing homosexual sodomy as a constitutional right. We see the society around us falling to pieces, and the culture aiming its poisonous relativism at OUR families, our communities, OUR nation.

And we are getting ready for the battle. Prayer groups have been mobilized across the country to specifically intercede on this issue, for this election. Visions and prophecies are zipping around cyberspace with dizzying speed. Email boxes are filling up with information as to which companies are pushing the homosexual agenda, the addresses of their CEOs, and their websites. Petitions come out every day on issues of concern to morality-based voters.

When November 3 dawns, the powers that be would do well to comb through the augurs of the exit polls, seeking to know what happened.

Because if the culture doesn't change, it's going to happen again.