Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott was welcomed to Nacogdoches Monday evening by about 200 supporters at the 2010 Vision America "Guardian of the Family" Gala.
Abbott, a Republican, was the recipient of the "Texas Guardian of the Family Award" and the keynote speaker at the event, held in the Baker Pattillo Student Center on the campus of Stephen F. Austin State University.
Abbott received a standing ovation when he mentioned his decision to join 12 other top state attorneys, 11 of whom are Republicans, in challenging the constitutionality of the health care reform bill by filing a lawsuit against the federal government less than an hour after President Barack Obama signed the historic legislation into law last week.
Citing state sovereignty, Abbott is seeking to strike down the part of the health care bill, officially known as The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, that by 2014 will require nearly every American to have health insurance through either their employer, a government program or a private plan.
"I think every single person in this room can agree that health care is incredibly important, and we as a people can do a better job of improving access to health care to all Americans," he said. "But I think we also agree that however noble the cause, it is wrong to trample the Constitution as a method of trying to achieve that noble cause.
"Challenging the individual mandate is our response to what we consider to be a trampling of the Constitution by the United States Congress, because what Congress has done with this law is truly, factually, unprecedented in American history."
Abbott said the health care law will for the first time ever require citizens to purchase any product and violates long standing commerce laws. But as the Associated Press first reported, until congressional Democrats began health care overhaul efforts, the insurance mandate was promoted by many Republicans since the 1970's as a viable alternative to a single-payer system, also known as the "public option."
Stoking patriotic sentiments among the crowd, made up of various Christian congregations and local elected officials, Abbott read off a list of politically pointed quips that parodied comedian Jeff Foxworthy's "You might be a redneck" one-liners that were popular in the 1990s.
"You might be a true American if it never occurred to you to be offended by the phrase 'one nation under God.' You might be a true American if you've never protested against a public display of the Ten Commandments," he said. "You might be a true American if at Christmas time you still say 'Merry Christmas' as opposed to 'Happy Winter Festival.'"
But on a more serious note, the state attorney general also addressed his appeal to a Texas judge's decision to grant two Dallas men who were married in Massachusetts a divorce this past October. Abbott claimed that because Texas already has a ban on same-sex marriages, allowing the divorce of the two men would retroactively recognize same-sex marriages.
"Marriage is not man-made law. It's man's decision to adopt God's law. Man cannot redefine God's law, and yet they still try," Abbott said. "This is the first time that any judge has ruled that traditional marriage laws violate the U.S. Constitution."
The ruling judge in that case argued that the courts do indeed have jurisdiction to dissolve legal marriages from other states, and just last month, another such same-sex divorce was approved by another judge in Austin. Abbott has also sought an appeal to that case involving two women, also married in Massachusetts.
Touching on what he referred to as attacks by "atheists and their sympathizers" on America's foundational principles, Abbott said with the filing of a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court he has sought to defend the phrase "one nation under God" in the pledge of allegiance to the American flag as well as the "one state under God" phrase included in the pledge of allegiance to the Texas flag.
Abbott then praised his own defense of a 2003 law that requires public school students to begin their school day by observing a mandatory one-minute of silence in order to pray, reflect or remain quiet. The courts upheld the constitutionality of the moment-of-silence law because it did not require that students use it exclusively for prayer.
Originally slated to appear at the end of the program, Abbott addressed the crowd for around 15 minutes at the start of the night's program so that he could fly back to Austin to appear on Fox News' "The Sean Hannity Show." But before heading back to what he jokingly referred to as "The People's Republic of Austin," Abbott stressed the need for the Christian faithful to mobilize politically.
"Think what the country would look like if 100 percent of the people who worship God voted their values in each election. Together they would ensure a country that is more reflective of a God that gave us our inalienable rights," he said.
Vision America is a church-led political organization that was founded in 1996 by local pastor Dr. Rick Scarborough and describes its mission as to "inform, encourage and mobilize pastors and their congregations to be proactive in restoring Judeo-Christian values to the moral and civic framework in their communities, states and our nation."
Pastor of the First Baptist Church of Nacogdoches, Dr. Allen Reed, was also the recipient of the "East Texas Guardian of the Family Award" Monday evening.
Trent Jacobs' e-mail address is tjacobs@dailysentinel.com.
