11-August-2004 -- Catholic World News Brief
Arlington Heights, Illinois, Aug. 11 (LifesiteNews.com/CWN)
- Alan Keyes, former Republican candidate for president in 1996 and 2000 and
former US ambassador to the UN, accepted the Republican Party's invitation to
run for US Senate for the state of Illinois Sunday. Keyes faces Democrat Barack
Obama in the bid to replace retiring Republican Sen. Peter Fitzgerald in
November's election.
Keyes, an ardently pro-life Catholic, began his acceptance speech with
"Praise God!" Keyes described the many policy differences between
himself and opponent Obama, including such things as taxation, gun control, and
school choice. "What finally caught my eye, however," he said,
"... was when I learned that [Obama] had actually, in April, 2002,
apparently cast a vote that would continue to allow live-birth abortions in the
state of Illinois."
"I hope everyone here will understand what I'm talking about,"
Keyes explained. "We are talking about a situation in which, in the course
of an abortion procedure, a child has been born alive-- is out of the womb,
breathing and living on its own-- and he cast a vote against the idea that we
should not stand by and let that child die!"
Obama also voted against the partial-birth abortion ban. "Barack Obama
is somebody, for instance, who on abortion takes a stand that turns its back on
the principles on the basis of which slavery was abolished, the principles on
the basis of which Martin Luther King argued against segregation," Keyes
said.
Keyes said he was running to uphold the principles of the Declaration of
Independence. "And I am doing it on behalf of Illinoisans who deeply
believe that we should not abandon those principles, on abortion, on our respect
for traditional marriage, on our respect for true self-government as the basis
of our approach to education and to our economy."
Later, in an interview with CNN, Keyes defended his opposition to same-sex
"marriage." "We as human beings cannot assert that our sexual
desires cannot be controlled," he said, in response to the interviewer's
assertion that sexual orientation is genetically determined. That view would
"consign us to the realm of instinctual animal nature and we are not
there," he said.