This commentary was originally published as an op/ed column in the July 15, 2004 issue of the Biloxi (Miss.) Sun-Herald newspaper.
As a native Mississippian, I am heartened to see a home-state political party officially on the record as committed to the sanctity of all human life and the defense of marriage as the union of one man and one woman for life. I am thrilled to see the Party choose a leader with a decades-long record of pro-life, pro-family activism. I’m only confused about one thing: why is that Party supporting John Kerry for President?
The Mississippi Democratic Party, it seems, is attempting to reach out to social conservatives again-the voters who abandoned them, usually with good reason, some time ago. So outgoing Democratic chairman Rickey Cole tells the Magnolia Report website that the Mississippi Democratic Party believes in “the sanctity of life,” in “the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman,” and in the Second Amendment “as an individual right.” At the same time, Cole, inexplicably, laments the fact that some Mississippi Democrats want to distance themselves from the national Party.
Cole’s successor as head of the Party is Wayne Dowdy, the former congressman and 1988 U.S. Senate nominee. Dowdy is no social liberal-having amassed an admirable pro-life, pro-family record during his years in the U.S. House of Representatives. Dowdy also ran a stalwart, though unsuccessful, campaign in the 1991 Democratic primary against the radically pro-abortion rights Ray Mabus. Moreover, Dowdy is known across the state as a man of integrity and a man of compassion, a culturally conservative populist
who is more George Jones than George McGovern.
So, if the Mississippi Democratic Party really wants to recapture mainstream Mississippians-including evangelical Protestants upstate and traditionalist Roman Catholics on the Coast-where to from here? I suggest that the Party look to its history-and to the example of a Mississippi Democrat named Fannie Lou Hamer.
In the mid-1960s, the Mississippi Democratic Party was in the grip of leaders committed to white supremacy and racial segregation. Disenfranchised by the majority, Hamer and a coalition of white and black Mississippians went to the 1964 Democratic National Convention as an alternative slate of delegates-with an eye to forcing the Party to speak to the issue of Jim Crow. Of course, the Party regulars resented this protest, and the national “progressive” leaders of the Democratic Party found it a nuisance, dividing the Party and detracting attention away from nominee Lyndon Johnson. But the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party made its point. Party unity wasn’t worth denying some citizens equal rights under the law.
Now Mississippi Democrats are faced with a national Democratic Party committed to denying some citizens-namely, unborn boys and girls-the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now Mississippi Democrats are faced with a national Democratic Party captive to interest groups that wish to redefine marriage in ways that will reconfigure the most basic building block of human society, the nuclear family. Now pro-life, pro-family Democrats have a national Party that wouldn’t even allow the late Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey to address the 1992 convention-all because he believed in equal rights for unborn Americans.
So why are pro-life, pro-family Democrats willing to smile for the cameras with John Kerry, a candidate as committed to the abortion rights and gay liberation lobbies as any Democratic nominee in history? Some Democrats tell us it is all about economics-that support for the “little guy” in issues of tax policy or foreign trade trumps issues of marriage and the defense of unborn life. Yes, and the white supremacist Mississippi Democrats told Fannie Lou Hamer that economic populism could unite Democrats, if they could just overlook “divisive” issues like voting rights and due process for African American Mississippians.
Fannie Lou Hamer knew better. And so do pro-life, pro-family Democrats this year. They should demonstrate on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in Boston for protection for the unborn and for the protection of marriage-knowing that legal abortion and family breakdown hurt the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, the ones Democrats have always sought to protect. And they ought to tell John Kerry that, when asked to choose between Party loyalty and justice, they’ll choose justice this time.
It’s time for a Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Again.
