Alan Keyes'  Pro-Life and Barack Obama's Anti-Life Remarks in the Second Illinois US Senate Debate

 

October 21, 2004

 

The debate was moderated by Ron Magers, an ABC 7 NEWS ANCHOR, and questions to the candidates came from WBEZ radio's political reporter, Carlos Hernandez-Gomez; ABC-7's political reporter, Andy Shaw; and Laura Washington, the Ida B. Wells Barnett Professor, DePaul University, and contributing columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.

 

Opening Remarks


RON MAGERS, ABC 7 NEWS ANCHOR: Good evening, and welcome to the first televised debate between the candidates for the U. S. Senate, from the state of Illinois. Tonight, the candidates will debate the issues so that you, the voters, may make a more informed decision when you vote on election day.

Tonight's debate is produced with the cooperation of the League of Women Voters of Illinois, the Asian American Institute, the Chicago Urban League, and the Mikva Challenge Grant Foundation.

To question our candidates tonight are WBEZ radio's political reporter, Carlos Hernandez-Gomez; ABC-7's political reporter, Andy Shaw; and Laura Washington, the Ida B. Wells Barnett Professor, DePaul University, and contributing columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.

The candidates for U. S. Senate are Democratic candidate Barack Obama, and Alan Keyes, the Republican candidate.

We sincerely welcome you both, and we thank you very much for this opportunity. I apologize for the raspiness of my voice tonight, but it is, after all, their voices that will count during this hour. Let us begin with those voices.

Opening statements. By a drawing held earlier, Mr. Obama is first and, Mr. Obama, a minute, thirty seconds.

BARACK OBAMA, ILLINOIS U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE: I want to thank Channel 7, and those who sponsored this wonderful debate tonight. I want to thank those of you who are watching this evening.

You know, I came to Chicago twenty years ago, to help communities that had been devastated by steel plants that had closed. I worked with churches and community residents to bring job training programs to the unemployed, and to bring economic development to hard-hit neighborhoods.

After law school, I worked as a civil rights attorney, helping to build affordable housing and community health centers, and for the last eight years, I've worked as a state senator, focused on the issues that are working, affecting working families all across the state of Illinois. I've provided tax relief to families that needed it, health care to those who didn't have it, and helped to reform a death penalty system badly in need of repair.

I accomplished these things by setting partisanship aside and seeking common ground. That's what you, the people of Illinois, have told me that you want--somebody who can reach out and find practical solutions to the problems that we face.

Now, my opponent in this race doesn't have a track record of service in Illinois. Instead, he talks about a moral crusade, and labels those who disagree with him as sinners. I don't think that kind of talk is helpful, in terms of providing the sort of solutions that all of us are looking for. I think government works best when we focus on common solutions to the problems that we face as Americans.

I'm running for the United States Senate to save our jobs, our health care, our pensions, and our dreams for college. And, working together, I'm absolutely certain we can accomplish all of these tasks.

MAGERS: Thank you, Mr. Obama. Mr. Keyes, your opening statement. A minute and a half.

ALAN KEYES ILLINOIS U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE: I think one of the things that shocked me most when I first got involved in this race, was a line I read in a letter that Senator Obama had sent to Jack Ryan about the issue of debates, in which he said that there was, at stake in the race, no great issue of principle, such as that which had divided Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas in their famous debates here in Illinois.

That showed a decided and total lack of understanding of what is at stake for the people of this state and, indeed, of our nation in issues like abortion, in issues like the defense of traditional marriage. In point of fact, the most important principle of our nation's life--that we are all created equal and endowed by our Creator, not by human choice, with our unalienable rights--is at stake in this election, as it was in the great election that was the dividing line between Lincoln and Douglas in 1858.

I stand for the defense of innocent life. I stand for the defense of traditional marriage. I stand on the platform of those great principles that Martin Luther King fought for, and that Frederick Douglass espoused, as they fought against great injustices.

And I stand there not just for reasons of principle but because, for instance, in the black community in this country, the Number One taker of black life is abortion. More than AIDS, more than violence, more than heart disease, more than any of those causes, including accidents and so forth combined, abortion has claimed the lives of black people--more than twice as many, amounting to twenty-five percent reduction in the black population. This is the practical truth of the moral crisis that we're in.


Abortion, The Death Penalty and Slavery

HERNANDEZ-GOMEZ: Ambassador Keyes, you're a Roman Catholic who often touts your pro-life position as an opponent of abortion. You've also said there are certain circumstances in which the death penalty is essential. But the Pope has said, "The dignity of human life must never be taken." The Pope also says that the death penalty is both cruel and unnecessary.

Doesn't that mean you're not completely pro-life? How does your support of capital punishment, and opposition to abortion, conflict with your Roman Catholic faith?

KEYES: It doesn't conflict at all. As a matter of fact, everything that has come from the Pope and the Holy See has made it clear that abortion and capital punishment are at different levels of moral concern.

Abortion is intrinsically, objectively, wrong and sinful, whereas capital punishment is a matter of prudential judgment which is not, in and of itself, a violation of moral right. And that has been made clear in every pronouncement, including Cardinal Ratzinger's latest communication, including the interpretation of American bishops and cardinals. That distinction is fundamental. And it's one that folks in the media, and others, seem not to understand.

There are certain issues that objectively violate the most fundamental canons of moral decency, and abortion, for instance, is one of them--the taking of innocent life.

The question of whether or not you should apply capital punishment, in an instance where someone has been found to be guilty, is something that depends on circumstances, that depends on judgments about efficacy and balancing the results against what is, in fact, to be effected in capital punishment. And that is an area where Catholics, as others, have the right to debate, to disagree, and to exercise their judgment and common sense, which of course is what I do.

But if you take a position that effaces the distinction between innocent life and guilty life, then you not only violate a moral canon--you destroy the fundamental basis of the law, and that is the ultimate disrespect for human life.

 

OBAMA: Well, I believe that the death penalty is appropriate in certain circumstances. There are extraordinarily heinous crimes--terrorism, the harm of children--in which it may be appropriate. Obviously, we've had some problems in this state in the application of the death penalty, and that's why a moratorium was put in place, and that's why I was so proud to be one of the leaders in making sure that we overhauled a death penalty system that was broken. For example, passing the first in the nation, videotaping of interrogations and confessions in capital cases.

We have to have this ultimate sanction for certain circumstances in which the entire community says, "This is beyond the pale." And I think it's important that we preserve that. But I also think that it's gotta be fair and uniformly applied, and that's something that has not always happened in this state, and I'm glad that we've made some improvements on this score.

Now, I agree with, actually, Mr. Keyes that the issue of abortion and the death penalty are separate questions. It's unfortunate that, I think, whereas, with respect to the death penalty, Mr. Keyes respects the possibility that other people may have a differing point of view, that in this area, he has labeled them everything from "terrorists," to people promoting a "slaveholder position," to suggesting that they are consistent with Nazism.

I think that kind of rhetoric, obviously, is not particularly helpful in us resolving what are very difficult and emotional subjects.

 

KEYES: Well, it's obvious that Senator Obama has read the newspapers too much.

In point of fact, I don't call people names. I make arguments.

And in point of fact, it is the slaveholders' position. The slaveholders took the view that black people were not developed enough to be treated as human beings, and therefore, could be bought and sold like animals.

People looking at the babe in the womb take the view that that child is not developed enough to be treated as a human being, and therefore can be killed at will.

I think that's the same position, in principle, and it violates the fundamental principle of our way of life--that we are not developed nor born, but created equal, and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.

 

OBAMA: Well, Mr. Keyes, I've been reading the papers and watching the television, and I've been seeing you call folks names, so just one point that I want to make with respect to this issue of the slaveholder's position.

Essentially, what Mr. Keyes does is equates a woman who's exercising her right to choose, in extraordinarily painful circumstances, with a slaveholder, and I think it's that kind of overblown rhetoric that has left Illinoisans not particularly pleased with his campaign.



 

Homosexuality

WASHINGTON: Ambassador Keyes, you've criticized gays and lesbians throughout much of your political career. You called homosexuality an abomination. In response to a reporter's question, you said that Vice President Dick Cheney's daughter was a selfish hedonist, and you said that the children raised by gay couples could be the victims of incest.

You mentioned earlier the importance of talking to your children. As a role model for parents, for every parent out there, and as a loving father, what would you say to your child if one of your children was to come to you and to say that he or she was a homosexual?

KEYES: Well, in the first instance, you have gone through a list of things that, like most of the people in the media, makes statements that I didn't make.

I do not say that homosexual relations is an abomination, the Bible says so. And many people in this state believe the Bible when it says so.

And for others to imply that that belief shall now be subject to penalties of law means that we are bringing freedom of religion in this society to an end, and beginning the persecution of our Christian citizens under the law, for believing in what the Scripture tells them is true. That's Step Number One.

Second, I have not called people names. I simply describe a situation. Marriage--traditional marriage--is based upon heterosexual relations, because they are connected to procreation. In every society and civilization, marriage is connected to the business of regulating the consequences of procreation, understanding what shall be the authority of the parents, their responsibility to their children, children's responsibility to their parents, inheritance laws.

Where procreation is, in principle, impossible, marriage is irrelevant. And that is the fundamental argument, in a civic sense, against something like homosexual marriage. It is irrelevant. It is not needed, and the idea . . .

WASHINGTON: (attempts interruption)

KEYES: The idea that one should have legislation that is regulating private friendships for no reason at all strikes me as a fundamental degrading of those private friendships.

MAGERS: Thank you. Mr. Obama.

OBAMA: Well, to answer your question, Laura, I would love that child, and seek to understand them and support them in any way that I could.

This is obviously an issue that Mr. Keyes has based, in premise, a lot of his campaign on. I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, but I also detest the sort of bashing and vilifying of gays and lesbians, because I think it's unduly divisive. It's unnecessary.

Most gays and lesbians are simply seeking basic recognition of their rights, so that they're not discriminated against in employment, that they're not discriminated against with respect to renting a house, that they are able to visit their partner in a hospital, that they can transfer property. Those, I think, are--in the words of Vice President Cheney--rights for everybody, not just for some people. And it strikes me that the overheated rhetoric that Mr. Keyes engaged in the other, just this week, suggesting that, somehow, there was a connection between gays and lesbians adopting, and incest, because the child would not know their biological parent--logic that would obviously apply to heterosexual adoptive parents as well--is, I think, the kind of unfortunate language that . . .

MAGERS: (talking over) Time is up, thank you. Mr. Keyes, thirty seconds.

KEYES: That's, again, inaccuracy, because I was speaking not of adoption, but of the production of a child by one of those who are involved in a homosexual relationship--done now in such a way as to mask the identity of the non-, of the person of the other sex, so that you couldn't know who it was, so that no one has the information necessary to avoid incest, and that we would institutionalize that if we accept gay marriage as a basis for marriage. And to institutionalize that, it seems to me, sets us on a road--

MAGERS: Time is up.

KEYES: --toward our social self-destruction.

MAGERS: Thank you. Mr. Obama, thirty seconds.

OBAMA: Well, in this regard, I think Mr. Keyes is consistent. He opposes, for example, in-vitro fertilization, which allows infertile couples to have a child that they love. He is opposed to stem cell research, that has the potential to provide enormous benefits for debilitating diseases that are experienced by families all across this country. I think this is a situation where ideology gets in the way of science and good judgment.


Faith

HERNANDEZ-GOMEZ: Senator Obama, you say you're a Christian, but Ambassador Keyes said that your record runs counter to Jesus' teachings. What's your reaction to your opponent's assertion that your own Lord and Savior wouldn't even vote for you?

OBAMA: (laughs) Well, you know, my first reaction was, I actually wanted to find out who Mr. Keyes' pollster was, because if I had the opportunity to talk to Jesus Christ, I'd be asking something much more important than this senate race. I'd want to know whether I was going up, or down--

(laughter)

OBAMA: --there are all sorts of questions, I think, that I'd be interested in.

Look, I'm very proud of my Christianity, and it sustains me and it's part of what motivates me to get involved in public service. As I said before, I started in this town, in Chicago, organizing with churches, and the enormous faith and resilience and courage that was shown by persons of faith made all the difference in the world, in terms of setting up after-school programs for youth, or making sure that we have affordable housing in many communities that are having tough times all across this state.

But, what I don't think is appropriate, as a public servant, is for me to assume my faith is absolute and to, therefore, presume that people who are of different faiths, and have different perspectives, are somehow evil, or wrong, or that I can't have a dialogue with them and arrive at common ground.

MAGERS: Thank you very much. Mr. Keyes?

KEYES: But of course, the question involved here wasn't people of different faiths, but people who profess the same faith, and that faith is faith in Jesus Christ. And the question, I think, that I would pose to the Lord is not whether I'm "going up" or "going down." I want to know where He stands, so that I may follow Him.

I want to know where He stands with respect to the will of the Father, to Whom He looks. And on these questions, like abortion, He says the taking of innocent life is an abomination.

On these questions, like traditional marriage, He says He created us male and female, and that the wrong use of the body in this way is, again, as the Scripture says, an abomination. He defined marriage not as the union of man and man, or woman and woman, but as man and woman, and "the two become one flesh"--something that is possible only in the course of procreation.

So, when I look at where Christ stands, and I look at where Senator Obama stands, based upon that record of Christ's understanding which we acknowledge as Christians to be the true record, I say, "Well, Christ is over here. Senator Obama's over there. The two don't look the same."

And that means that I'm not thinking about Alan Keyes. I am thinking about the Lord.

And to say I don't have the right to do that means that you're trying to suggest that my faith-shaped conscience has no place in our politics. And yet, if I go into the voting booth or into public life without my faith-shaped conscience, then I have no conscience.

For, the Lord said I must love Him with my whole heart, soul, mind, and strength. There's nothing left over. Without faith, there's just a faith-shaped void where the conscience ought to be.

And I challenge all the voters of this state who profess to believe in Christ: "How can you vote from such a faith-shaped void?" Without the Lord, your vote will not be based upon that faith which ought to shape your life. And for anyone to suggest that you leave it behind--

MAGERS: (talking over) Thank you, sir.

KEYES: --at the door of the voting booth or public service, suggests something utterly incompatible with what the Lord ourself told us, Himself, rather, told us--

MAGERS: (talking over) Thank you, sir.

KEYES: --about the meaning of life.

MAGERS: Senator Obama, you have thirty seconds.

OBAMA: I don't need Mr. Keyes lecturing me about Christianity. That's why I have a pastor. That's why I have my Bible. That's why I have my own prayer. And I don't think that any of you are particularly interested in having Mr. Keyes lecture you about your faith.

What you're interested in is solving problems like jobs, and health care, and education. I'm not running to be the minister of Illinois. I'm running to be its United States Senator.

MAGERS: Mr. Keyes, thirty seconds.

KEYES: I think that answer is typical.

When it really comes down to it, though Senator Obama professes faith when it's convenient to get votes, at the hard points where that faith must be followed and explained to folks, and stood up for and witnessed to as folks who were martyrs in the early church said, he then pleads separation of church and state, something found nowhere in the Constitution, and certainly found nowhere in the Scripture as such.

So, I've gotta tell you, I think that this is a typical example that ought to be examined carefully by discerning people of Christian conscience.


Race

WASHINGTON: Senator Obama, two African Americans are vying to become the next Senator from Illinois, and Illinois will send its second African American Senator to Washington.

Some observers think that this is a great thing, that because of that, race has been taken off the table in this campaign. Do you agree or disagree with that, and does race still matter?

OBAMA: Well, look, I think everybody who lives in the United States knows that race still matters. It matters powerfully. I think that we still suffer from the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow, and this has been the single biggest blight on the history of this nation. And all of us have to work together, in order to repair it.

But I do think that the fact that Mr. Keyes and I can have a vigorous debate, not just about racial issues but about all the issues that face Americans, and that we appeal not only to African American voters but to voters of every color and every ethnic group is a sign of progress, and it's a sign of hopefulness.

One of the things I've been struck by, as I travel across the state of Illinois, is the core decency of the American people. I think that they want a better America, and they want to see how we can improve the prospects for our children.

And that's part of the reason why, when I talk about the issues that are of importance, what I'm constantly focusing on is our children.

How can we provide early childhood education? How can we make certain that we have trained teachers in the classroom, that can provide maximum opportunity for all kids, because that's, I think, the real promise of America as we move forward.

MAGERS: Mr. Keyes, a minute and a half.

KEYES: I think one of the great problems is that, of course, race is involved in this in one way, because the heritage people that have has a bearing on who they are, on what they consider to be important.

It's one of the reasons, for instance, I will admit, why I think abortion is so important. It has a disproportionate and horrifying impact on the black community.

Did you know that something like thirteen million black babies have been killed since Roe v. Wade, as a result of this holocaust of abortion? Did you know that the black population today is something like twenty-five percent less than it would otherwise be, because of abortion? Did you know that black women are disproportionately likely to have abortions, that more black babies are being aborted today than are being born, and that, as you project these kinds of tendencies into the future, the black population becomes a negligible factor in American politics and other things, over the course of the twenty-first century?

I look back on black Americans with a heritage of oppression and slavery that, unfortunately, is involved in this question as well, because seventy-eight percent of the abortion clinics that are provided by the most numerous provider of abortions in America, Planned Parenthood, are located in or near the black community. Blacks are thirteen percent of the population. They account for over a third of the abortions.

So I think that, on these important issues, we have to look for the--

MAGERS: (talking over) Time's up.

KEYES: --patterns that still target people on the basis of race--

MAGERS: (talking over) Thank you, sir.

KEYES: --and they're targeting people in the womb.

MAGERS: Mr. Obama, thirty seconds.

OBAMA: Well, you know, I guess Mr. Keyes started off making a point that, somehow, he is more authentically African American than I am. You know, I obviously find that offensive, but moving forward, I thought this was a question about race. Ended up talking about abortion.

I do think that there's probably disproportionate abortions in the African American community, because there are disproportionately poor women who don't have basic health services, including contraception that prevents unwanted pregnancies. That's something that we should work on.

MAGERS: Time is up. Thank you. Mr. Keyes, thirty seconds.

KEYES: Oh, I think it's one of the horrifying things about the advocates of abortion, that they take the objective condition of poverty, and use it to justify a situation in which you then herd and push people toward the killing of their children.

If you take those objective circumstances--often contributed to by oppression and discrimination, caused by others--and you take that as the excuse for a genocidal attack on a community, I think you are serving one of the worst of evils.


Closing Remarks

MAGERS: Gentlemen, our time has gone quickly. The time is up for questions, and now we go to closing statements, and according to a drawing we did earlier, we begin with Mr. Obama. You have two minutes, sir.

OBAMA: Well, I want to thank the sponsors, as well as Channel 7, for hosting this debate. I want to thank Ron and the panelists for their excellent questions.

You know, much of the discussion tonight has centered around hot-button issues. These are the issues that my opponent, Mr. Keyes, has based his campaign on, and that's his right. You know, one of the things I value about being an American is that we can debate the most gut-wrenching, emotional subjects imaginable, and still live together with civility and respect.

But I have to tell you, as I travel around the state, these aren't the questions that people are talking to me about.

What they're talking to me about is their fear of losing a job, or holding on to a job that pays a living wage. They're worried about skyrocketing healthcare costs, and whether they're gonna be bankrupt if they get sick.

They're concerned about saving for their child's college education, and whether they're gonna be able to retire with dignity and respect after a lifetime of labor.

Now, Mr. Keyes doesn't like talking about these questions, because he doesn't really think government has a role in solving them. So instead, he talks about morality.

Well, I think there's something immoral about somebody who's lost their job after twenty years, has no health care, are seeing their pension threatened. I think there's something immoral about young people who've got the grades and the drive to go to college, but just don't have the money.

There are millions of people all across this state that are having a tough time, and Washington's not listening to them, and neither is Mr. Keyes.

You know, the fact of the matter is, is that, this week, Congress passed a hundred and forty billion dollar giveaway to special interests, something John McCain called "a lobbyist's dream." In that same week, we found out that twenty-seven percent of Americans are low income.

That's immoral. That's un-American.

People don't believe that government can solve all their problems, but they know, with a slight change in priorities, that government can help.

MAGERS: (talking over) Time is up.

OBAMA: On November 2nd, please send me to Washington, so that I can--

MAGERS: Thank you, sir.

OBAMA: --provide that assistance.

MAGERS: Mr. Keyes, two minutes.

KEYES: I think that if we care about our freedom, we have to care about the moral foundations of our liberty--moral foundations that are relevant, by the way, to every practical problem we face.

In education, in health care, in our economic life, every study shows that if you allow, for instance, the breakdown of the family structure--the greatest contributing factor to poverty, to the gap in affordable housing, to the rising tide of crime and violence, to the inability, in fact, to deal with a lot of the problems that drive our young people into gangs, all are related to the breakdown of the family structure.

You know this. I know it. And yet, we don't want to talk about it. We just want to follow Barack Obama, throw some more money at the problem.

These problems become a catalyst for government spending. You know what a catalyst is--you keep doing the spending, but it doesn't affect the problem, because the root of our problem lies in the decay of our moral culture. And government has assaulted this culture with stands on abortion, with, now, an assault on the traditional family, with regulations in the social welfare programs that drove fathers out of the home and broke down the family structure.

He says, "This is not a concern of government." And yet government has, in fact, been deeply contributing to the damage that is being done to the moral culture of this country.

I think we're gonna go bankrupt if we keep paying for the consequences of moral decay, and refuse to address its causes.

That might be convenient for politicians, basing their power base on promise after promise to spend money on this one and that one. But I think, if we really care about the future, we don't want to keep burdening people with higher deficits from spending that is increasing, because the problems increase when you don't address their fundamental cause.

I believe deeply in self-government and liberty, but I don't think it's going to survive in America if we allow the continued, government-sponsored destruction of the moral identity of our people, and that is why we must give priority to addressing the underlying moral crisis that is the real cause of so many--

MAGERS: (talking over) Time's up.

KEYES: --of our difficulties.