Please.

Today, I’ll be taking time from our regular scheduled wedding-/move-/going-blind-related posting for a message to undecided voters.

In many ways, I admire you for being willing and able to take an objective look at the candidates and weigh them against whatever criteria you base your vote. I admit that I am incapable of doing so. But one of the reasons why I cannot - simply CANNOT - vote for a Republican, and for George W. Bush in particular, is because Bush and the Republican Party have made it crystal clear that they are working counter to the values and ideals that I - and I hope a majority of Americans - hold dear.

For example, the Republican Party seeks to eliminate reproductive freedom. I think few, if any Americans are “pro abortion.” As John Kerry and others explain, abortion must be safe, legal, and rare. But a vote for Bush or for any other Republican is a vote for back-alley butchers, for a world in which women have little control over their bodies, their families, and their physical and economic well-being. It is also a vote for a party that, even as it tries to eliminate access to safe, legal abortions and to interject the government into private medical decisionmaking by women and their doctors, has sought to strip poor women of access to affordable prenatal care, and to strip their children of adequate and affordable healthcare, and to strip them of welfare benefits so that they can feed and care for their children. The Republican Party also has worked to eliminate funding for and access to birth control for teenagers. And to prevent schools from teaching young people about birth control and family planning. And so your vote for President Bush, or for a Republican, is a vote for this hypocritical, dangerous, and misogynistic agenda.

The Republican Party’s response to rising crime rates is to build more prisons and enact longer sentences, while stripping funds from after-school programs, drug education and rehabilitation programs, violence prevention programs, juvenile diversion programs, mentoring programs, and community corrections programs. The result: a generation of hardened criminals serving lengthy sentences, and a generation of children growing up without parents. Our tax dollars are being spent to house thousands upon thousands of nonviolent offenders who might well have been rehabilitated, mentored, trained, or otherwise guided into productive law-abiding lives.

The Republican Party vigorously opposes equal civil rights for gays and lesbians. Not only does this stem from a party platform that seeks to codify conservative religious values, it also represents an institutional willingness to promote hatred, bigotry, and discrimination. A vote for President Bush, or for any Republican, is a vote for inequality, bias, fear, and intolerance.

Much of the above boils down to this: the Republican Party is working aggressively to break down the wall between church and state that was so fundamental to our nation’s founding. The Republican Party in Bush's home state of Texas, for example, has reaffirmed a plank in its platform that disputes “the myth of separation of church and state,” and has declared that “The United States is a Christian nation.” Time and again, President Bush has demonstrated his disregard for church/state separation and his willingness to establish conservative religious principles as the law of the land, instead of allowing all Americans to make educated decisions about deeply personal matters affecting their lives and their families. A vote for President Bush, or for any Republican, is a vote that will strengthen the religious right and further erode the barrier between government and religion.

I do not dispute that there are Republican candidates who are pro-choice, who believe strongly in church-state separation, and who believe that marriage and other family rights should be available to all people, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation. But by calling themselves Republicans, and by aligning themselves with the Republican party, those candidates at least implicitly are saying, it is OK to strip women of freedom to make their own reproductive decisions, it is OK to marginalize and discriminate against gays and lesbians, it is OK to turn our backs on at-risk children and families, and it is OK for the government to impose religious values through legislation.

Nothing in President Bush's record provides support for the oft-heard argument that he is making America "safer" than will John Kerry. But his record, and that of his party, leaves no doubt that if reelected, he will continue to make America less the nation of freedom and equality it purports to be and more and more a conservative theocracy.

Please don't allow this. Please vote for John Kerry.* I already did.

_________
*A note to Nader-leaning voters: You do understand that a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush, don't you?