In the Focus on the Strategy DVD, using audio and video clips of Christian leaders, Bob Enyart presents seven lines of evidence that our national ministries have endorsed legal positivism, elevating man's rules and the Constitution above God, and giving them precedence above eternal laws such as thou shall not murder. Bob demonstrates that this legal positivism is eroding even the personal morality of Christian believers. On Nov. 2, 2005 Family Research Council gave us an example of raw legal positivism when Gary Bauer defended Judge Samuel Alito for voting to uphold Partial Birth Abortion for process reasons, because it was his job as a judge. However, God cares about the souls of judges as much as others; and a judge who upholds the murder of the innocent is no less guilty before God than a criminal who kills his victim. Whereas Peter said to the leaders of his day, "We must obey God rather than men," our Christian leaders have lost their way, and now openly embrace legal positivism. This humanist theory requires obedience to the Constitution, even when that obedience results in violating God's eternal, moral commands including Thou Shall Not Murder. Flip Benham, national director of OSA, produced this one-hour DVD, Focus on the Strategy, which ends with four specific recommendations for Christians to implement as we seek to influence our culture and government.

• Samuel Alito Report Card
• Focus Admits To Their Legal Positivism
• Dobson Criticizes His “Own” Judges

EX

Extremist pro-abortion ruling

PC

Mainstream pro-choice ruling

EX: In 1995 Alito voted to keep it easy to get a tax-funded abortion by claiming rape, even when no crime had been reported to police (Blackwell v Knoll).

EX: In 1997 Alito voted to prevent parents from suing for the wrongful death of a fetus, ruling that he could find no legal protection for an unborn child from the malpractice of a doctor, and by extension from a criminal act (Alexander v Whitman).

EX: In 2000 Alito voted to keep legal Partial Birth Abortion in NJ, for process reasons (Planned Parenthood v NJ).

EX: In 2001 Alito ordered NJ taxpayers to give $522,992.84 to Planned Parenthood attorneys for their fight against NJ’s PBA ban (which he upheld on appeal in 2002, PP v NJ Atty Gen).

EX: In 2004 Alito forced a Chinese father to return to China to face the government that forcibly killed his eight-month old unborn child (Chen v. Aschcroft).

PC: Also, in 1991 Alito refined the new concept of “undue burden” which restricts anti-abortion laws (Planned Parenthood v Casey), and in 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court adopted Alito’s refined standard.

Source: KGOV and AndrewLongman.com.

Focus on the Family has now explicitly admitted their commitment to legal positivism in their February 2006 Citizen Magazine. Dr. Dobson actually approves of a ruling to keep partial birth abortion legal on process grounds. His justification is that the legal process takes precedence over Do Not Murder. The Focus article, Alito’s Abortion Rulings, was written by Bruce Hausknecht, Dobson’s Judicial Analyst who had attended Bob Enyart’s live presentation there of Focus on the Strategy.

“New Jersey enacted a statute prohibiting partial-birth abortion,in which a baby is partially delivered feet-first and its brain matter removed… Alito joined his other panel colleagues in following the Supreme Court precedent, overturning the New Jersey statute [keeping PBA legal]. Once again, Alito made clear in a concurring opinion [2000] that the Stenberg decision controlled the result in the New Jersey situation. … Does the fact that Alito voted for a pro-abortion position in three out of the four cases indicate that he endorses a legal right to abortion on demand? Hardly. …an appellate judge… is to follow the statutes and the Constitution and apply Supreme Court precedent… Thus Alito faithfully and dutifully performed in each of these cases, reflecting his judicial restraint and faithfulness to the true role of judges.”

An Open Letter, with Love and Respect, to Dr. James Dobson:

In desperation, some members of Denver Bible Church held a peaceful protest at Senator Salazar’s Dairy Queen. The goal was to oppose his support for the killing of unborn children, but mostly to expose the result of your quarter-century strategy of getting judges who respect life by electing pro-life Republican presidents.

On Justice Sunday, you were outraged by your own judges! Dr. Dobson, you listed the 11th Circuit decision against Terri Schiavo as an example that the judiciary is “out of control.” But all six of the justices nominated by our pro-life Republican presidents (Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II), voted against your position! All six (including William Pryor whom President Bush recess-appointed last year to avoid a Democratic filibuster) voted not to save Terri’s life and against our side. All six!

It is time to admit that your strategy has failed. Republicans nominated 58 percent of the federal judiciary [Ft. Collins’ Coloradoan.com April 28], which you rightly expose as firmly against family values. The Moral Majority/Christian Coalition/Focus on the Family 25-year strategy of getting anti-abortion judges through Republican victories has utterly failed; and now George W. Bush is keeping his word by living up to his very first campaign promise to ignore abortion when nominating judges. It was a Republican Supreme Court which legalized abortion, and a Republican-nominated judge even wrote Roe v. Wade. The current Supreme Court keeps abortion legal with seven of the nine current Justices nominated by Republican presidents.

The judge who wrote the 9th Circuit ruling against the words “under God” in the Pledge was nominated by a Republican president. In 2002 a New York federal judge ruled that a convicted child sex offender could not be stopped from attracting children with balloons in a public park. That judge was nominated by George Bush Sr., and this compares to the current Republican U.S. Supreme Court which decided in favor of the child-porn industry against families and law enforcement, making it harder to prosecute those who sodomize children for profit. Will you please publicly expose that the vast majority of the justices nominated by our pro-life Republican presidents are pro-choice and refuse to uphold traditional biblical morality?

Our biggest successes are mostly hollow. We have spent most of a decade fighting to ban partial-birth abortion, which is tantamount to Germans banning Zyklon-A only to have Zyklon-B used in the extermination camps instead, while today’s abortionists simply use a different method on late-term babies and have not canceled a single abortion as a result. And the “pro-life” justices on the Supreme Court have never declared an unborn child’s fundamental right to life, but rather criticize Roe only because abortion should not be a judicial but a legislative issue; this very position undermines the safety of children as though any subdivision of government could have the right to decriminalize murder. The judges that we pretend are conservative actually are only committed to process, not to Christian values, so that when Clarence Thomas dissented from overturning the Texas sodomy law that mercifully opposed harmful behavior, we touted him as supporting Christian values, yet he wrote that if he were a state legislator he would vote to overturn the “silly” law [see SupremeCourtUS.gov].

Dr. Dobson, respectfully, you are outraged by your own judges. Those in the womb when Reagan campaigned for president have now graduated from college, and the de facto Focus political strategy has packed the Federal judiciary with pro-choice Republican judges. You have a heavy weight as America’s evangelical leader in the war against injustice, but you must come to terms with this failed strategy. We recommend the strategy you declared a decade ago but have since abandoned. Back then you repeatedly pledged, as stated on your program in March of 1995, “I am committed never again to cast a vote for a politician who would kill one innocent baby.”

While most of our leaders are unable to think through to victory, your previous politically astute strategy can indeed eventually overturn legal abortion and protect family values. Sadly, George W. Bush is proud of the pro-choice judges he packed the Texas Supreme Court with, and has put on the federal judiciary. Without Christian leadership upholding your old pledge, Republican presidents use us conservative Christians, and the compromise tremendously weakens our side. You noticed that during the battle for Terri Schindler most religious conservatives in the media stated, “this all could have been avoided if Terri had left a written directive.” With those words, the pro-life community crossed the line to support assisted suicide, starving to death people who are not dying, as long as there is a Living Will. Our pro-life leaders have become weak after a quarter-century of compromise, not compromising on Republican-party politics, but on Thou Shalt Not Murder, all in vain hope of thereby making progress toward victory.

Federally, Republican-nominated judges issue most of the anti-Christian rulings in America. We have to stop focusing on code words that are a recipe for surrender, such as demanding strict constructionists, original intent, and constitutionalists (by which Justices upheld Article I in the Dred Scott ruling that black people were property). Such terminology is another part of the failed strategy which obscures our true demand, for judges who fear God and oppose the killing of the innocent. Thus, the issue is not the Democratic filibuster, but the failed Christian political strategy that has packed the federal judiciary with pro-choice Republican judges.

Please, Dr. Dobson, take up your pledge again, and provide the leadership we desperately need.

In Christ, -Pastor Bob Enyart