It\u2019s tough to be honest when writing on the ethics of voting. You want to justify your voting patterns.<\/p>\n
It might be even tougher to be perceived<\/em> as honest. Readers naturally wonder, \u201cAre you drawing those ethical boundaries in a way that favors your preferred candidate?\u201d Call it a suspicion of ethical gerrymandering.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s a healthy suspicion. For you to wonder about me. For me to wonder about myself or anyone else on this topic.<\/p>\n CARELESS ARGUMENTS<\/strong><\/p>\n A few years ago, at a dinner party of Christian academics, I sat next to a university professor who labelled herself politically liberal and pro-life. She said, \u201cThe Republicans are pro-life on abortion; the Democrats are pro-life on capital punishment. So I realized those two things cancel each other out, leaving me free to vote on other matters.\u201d<\/p>\n Leaving aside any feelings I might have about Democrats or Republicans, may I suggest that this<\/em> sounded like gerrymandering ethics? She wanted to vote Democrat, so she mapped out a contorted argument to justify it. The thought bubble in my head read, \u201cWait, how many people have been put to death by capital punishment since the Supreme Court re-legalized it in 1976 versus <\/em>how<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I refer to the ethics of voting, I mean I\u2019m interested in what makes a vote sinful or permissible. I\u2019m not asking what makes a vote good or wise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":388,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[793],"tags":[327,1376,3035],"class_list":["post-24796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9marks","tag-life-together","tag-politics","tag-vote","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24796"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24798,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24796\/revisions\/24798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}