The Manhattan Declaration: A “Christian” Manifesto Comparing Liberals To Nazis

The Manhattan Declaration, self-described as “a call to Christian conscience,” released last year and looking to reach 1 million signatures, accuses liberals of being eugenicists, ie: Nazis. It is gathering signatures of religious right leaders and urging them to disregard the law.

The document, signed by such religious-right heavy-hitters as Focus on the Family eminence James Dobson and Prison Fellowship Ministries leader Chuck Colson (pictured), compares pro-choice advocates to eugenicists (and implicitly to Nazis) and equates same-sex marriage with polygamy and a gateway to legalized incest. Its authors promise to defy any law that does not comport with their religious beliefs. Joining the religious right’s Protestant leaders as signatories to the declaration are four Roman Catholic bishops, including those presiding over the powerful archdioceses of New York and Washington, DC.

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The American Family Association made the Manhattan Declaration the centerpiece of a January fundraising letter, urging members to sign the document, warning of the grave threat from “the anti-family/anti-religious radicals who control the White House and Congress.” Focus on the Family posted a note on its “Action Center” on January 14. And several U.S. Catholic bishops — Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia, Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C., Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, and Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville — are urging their fellow bishops to preach about the declaration, get signatures from the faithful and use the document as an organizing vehicle.

From the Declaration:

Eugenic notions such as the doctrine of lebensunwertes Leben (“life unworthy of life”) were first advanced in the 1920s by intellectuals in the elite salons of America and Europe. Long buried in ignominy after the horrors of the mid-20th century, they have returned from the grave. The only difference is that now the doctrines of the eugenicists are dressed up in the language of “liberty,” “autonomy,” and “choice.”

So, they say, liberals and progressives are just like Nazis using different language.  Furthermore, you’re not a completed person unless you reproduce.

According to the declaration, marriage is, in the final analysis, about creating a “reproductive unit.” Yes, marriage may be about an emotional and spiritual commitment, but only one that is “completed and actualized” by sexual intercourse that fulfills “the behavioral conditions of procreation.”

Among the original 168 signers, in addition to Dobson and Colson, are Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer, William Donohue, Jonathan Falwell, Richard Land, Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown from the National Organization for Marriage; and anti-gay clergy like Rev. Ken Hutcherson.  The Los Angeles Times calls their comparisons to Martin Luther King’s stance on civil rights “dangerous” and “specious” as they invoke King’s Letters From a Birmingham Jail to justify their own call to lawbreaking as they try to shape the nation’s laws to reflect their own religious beliefs.

“Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality. . . . We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.”

These so-called “holy” men are encouraging the breaking of laws in their own cause, lacking total respect for any theology or political policy that doesn’t agree with their own.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.