For Christians, Are Trump and Harris Morally Equivalent?
American evangelicals are understandably upset with our choices this presidential election. Some evangelicals, in exasperation, claim that because “neither candidate is perfect” that they are morally equivalent. We hope to demonstrate this is not so.
TRUMP
On one hand, we have a presidential candidate who has been accused of sexual assault and held civilly liable for it in a court district overwhelmingly opposed to his candidacy, despite the alleged victim not knowing what year the supposed assault took place and that no evidence exists that the event took place at all. But even without that dubious conviction in civil court, Donald Trump has indeed suffered from libertine sexual ethics for the majority of his adult life. President Trump has five children from three different wives. At least a dozen, and some say up to 18 women claim to have had affairs with the former president (none have been substantiated and at least one – p0rn star, Stormie Daniels – has denied the affair in writing). Nonetheless, Trump’s infamous ‘locker-room talk’ towards women have made claims of a lascivious sexual life seem credible.
President Trump appears to have been a dutiful father to his five children, despite their variety of mothers. All of his children, Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka, Tiffany, and Barron seem to adore their father, have stayed on the right side of the law, are ambitious and intelligent, and seem likely genuinely good human beings who have produced for the former president ten grandchildren. Trump is an unlikely family man, but a family man he truly is.
Trump, as many of his critics have pointed out, is a crass man. He has often used vulgarity, invectives, and filthy innuendo to castigate or disregard his political opponents. Often, he does so by making fun of their appearance, and sometimes, their handicaps. He has been known to exaggerate at times, and regularly displays a prideful braggadocio that many find off-putting.
Finding Trump’s sincere values and immutable principles is a hard, if not impossible feat. In his adult life he has ranged from liberal to conservative, from Democrat to Republican, and appears to take whatever position the majority of his party’s voters espouse. He is politically incorrect, often breaching standard norms for presidential demeanor, offending certain stereotypes of how Americans expect a president to behave.
In his term as president, Trump led relatively well for someone with opposition from both inside and outside his party, and resistance from those both inside and outside the executive branch. Press secretaries, chiefs of staff, and military subordinates all went on to denounce Trump after they left office, and clarified that they underminded him as much as possible when they still served underneath him.
Despite this opposition, President Trump managed to keep the world at relative peace, was perceived as enough of a credible threat to hostile powers that they grew too intimidated to attack American soldiers overseas, and our allies like Israel and Ukraine enjoyed peace while their enemies dared not provoke Trump’s military response. The economy grew up until Covid, inflation was lowered, real unemployment was low due to people having jobs and not (as today) people leaving the job force. To the chagrin of fiscal conservatives, Trump ruled without regard to the growing size of the federal government, ever as much as the presidents before him. However, President Trump placed excellent nominees on the Supreme Court, who would go on to overturn Roe v Wade. In addition, Trump stifled illegal immigration and his border policy greatly shrunk the invasion of our country through our porous border.
In terms of his personal faith, claims of Christianity are dubious. He claimed in June of 2015 that he prays but has never asked forgiveness. His longtime pastor was Norman Vincent Peale, the development of The Power of Positive Thinking. Word-Faith impastor Paula White claims to be Trump’s current pastor, although nothing can be found showing that Trump acknowledges this. Although Trump acts favorably towards Christians and seems to sympathize with evangelical causes, and shows Christians – and Christ – ceremonial honor, it is unclear if Trump has made a credible profession of faith. He also patronizes other faiths by participation in their ceremonies, including Jews and Catholics.
HARRIS
On the other hand, we have Vice President and current presidential candidate, Kamala Demi Harris. Kamala (who says her name is pronounced “comma-la” in her memoir) is on video pronouncing her name differently during different phases of her career. Although she identifies as an African American, she isn’t by standard definition. Her father was was not African, but Jamaican. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, is Indian (although she listed her ethnicity as white on Kamala’s birth certificate). Kamala’s parents both met as students at University of California Berkeley, and she was born in Oakland. At twelve years old, Kamala moved to Montreal, Quebec.
She later attended Howard University, and utilized various affirmative action programs, like the Legal Education Opportunity Program, to advance in her field of law and political science. She then attended the University of California School of Law in San Francisco. Taking a low-level position ordinarily reserved for students perceived not to have a bright future in law, Kamala became the assistant deputy district attorney in Alameda County, far from the more prestigious roll the position would have been in San Francisco. During this time, Kamala began to date San Francisco mayor, Willie Brown, a married man known for his open marriage and one of the most politically well-connected politicians in California. Brown had immense power in making political appointments, and he chose to invest heavily in his paramour, Kamala. Before long, Brown had used his political power and immense donor pockets to promote Harris to San Francisco City attorney and provide her two appointments earning her six-figure salaries for holding those titles honorarily. While serving in this role, Kamala performed the first gay wedding ceremony in the state.
Pledging never to seek the death penalty, Harris wasn’t exactly light on crime – at least, some crime. She brutally enforced cannabis laws, imprisoning roughly two-thousand mostly black men for minor marijuana possession. In 2019, Harris admits to have smoked pot herself during this time period. On several occasions, she ran afoul of leftist groups, like the ACLU, for withholding exculpatory information for those wrongly convicted, such as when it was determined a drug tester at the state crime lab was sampling the narcotics and tampering with evidence.
Again using her affiliations with her lover, Willy Brown, Kamala narrowly won the race for California Attorney General. Most notably, when undercover journalists published information demonstrating that Planned Parenthood was engaging in the illegal interstate sale of aborted baby parts, she prosecuted the journalists (they are only the journalists ever prosecuted in state history for doing journalism).
Politically, Harris is unashamedly pro-choice up until birth, and does not believe babies who survive botched abortions should be given life-saving care. She advocates for the sexual mutilation of children, public funding for all mutilation services – including for those incarcerated – and advocates against parental notification of the gender status of children in the public school.
Harris met Doug Emhoff, a Jewish investment banker, after his split from his first wife after committing an affair in 2013 and the two married in 2014. Harris has two step-children through Emhoff, with his son working in film production and his daughter, a trans-child advocate, works in fashion.
Pegging down Harris’ religion has been difficult. She has, at times, referred to her Hindu upbringing. She also refers to herself as a Christian, when speaking to white audiences. When speaking to Jewish groups, she speaks of the impact and influence of Judaism, being married to an observant Jew.
MORAL EQUIVALENCY NO MORE
Evangelicals arguing that the two candidates – or the two political parties they represent – are morally equivalent. But there seems to be little equivocation between the two. While Trump has been a womanizer, Harris’ entire political career is due to her willingness to be womanized. One would be perplexed to argue which is more profane, the man who takes advantage of loose women, or the loose women who are eager to be taken advantage of for their selfish ambitions.
Neither candidate has practiced marital fidelity, with Trump committing brief affairs while married, and Harris committing lengthy affairs with married men.
Neither candidate has any legitimate Christian testimony of having been born-again, placing faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins.
So then, the only real way to determine the so-called “Christian way” to vote is by the policy position of each candidate.
God hates innocent bloodshed (Proverbs 6:17), and says that those who hurt children would be better of k1lling themselves (Matthew 18:6). Trump says he would veto a national abortion ban, leaving such a ban to the individual states as a power enumerated to them in the 9th and 10th amendments, meaning that certain “blue states” would keep abortion legal, while “red states” would ban the practice. Kamala, on the other hands, wants the Supreme Court to reinstate Roe and / or codify the right to kill your unborn children by a constitutional amendment. Trump does not want public tax dollars to support abortion, but Kamala wants the government to pay for the butchering.
God hates theft (Isaiah 61:8). Trump opposes theft disguised as the “redistribution of wealth,” or using taxation to take from one demographic to give to another. Harris, on the other hand, believes the wealth of the wealthy should be confiscated to help the poor. But the Bible warns that it is unjust to show favortism to either the rich or the poor (Leviticus 19:15). Harris’ political party, in the state of California for example, has essentially legalized theft under one-thousand dollars, choosing to not prosecute shoplifting. Other Democrat prosecutors, in Chicago for example, have effectively done the same and made the city suffer from organized smash-and-grab mobs ransacking business districts.
God hates violence (Psalm 11:5). Trump wants laws and prosecutors that protect innocent people from wanton acts of violence. Harris’ party has promoted a type of criminal justice reform that lets violent offenders out of jail without bail, where they are then free to commit more violent crime.
God hates bodily mutilation and gender-defiance (Genesis 1:27, Deuteronomy 22:5). Trump is laissez faire on adult gender deformity, but opposes gender deforming surgery and drugs for minors. Harris, on the other hand, supports no limits on gender mutilating services being provided to children. Trump shows signs of not playing along with gender-related psychosis, walking on eggshells regarding preferred pronouns and the like. Harris seems to place people pretending to be transgender on a pedestal, and will no doubt continue Biden’s practice of placing mentally ill people at the highest level of power.
God uses migrant invasions to punish nations (Isaiah 5:26-29). While there are calls to be kind to alien or sojourner who, by permission, travel through the land on a destination elsewhere and are respectful of the nation’s laws and traditions, repeatedly in the Old Testament God punishes his people by sending mass invasions of foreigners to live in their homes and take the resources of Israel. Trump wants to stop the invasion of America by third world settler colonialists and limit immigration to lawful immigrants. Harris, on the other hand, wants to keep America’s borders open and grant refugee status to any foreigner or any nation, without proper vetting of their backgrounds or criminal status. In addition, Harris’s policy rejects the deportation of criminal migrants when they break American laws, using more American resources to house them in American prisons, or if released without bail by Democrat prosecutors, let them remain in America’s streets.
These are just some of the issues that separate the two candidates running for the presidency of the United States, but there are others that also separate them, too numerous to mention here. These include the Democrat Party’s facilitation of child sex trafficking through their immigration policies, the Democrat Party’s lust for endless war in Ukraine, or their attempts to stifle the freedom of speech, assembly, and religion in recent years.
We hope that, by now, you can see the two candidates are not at all morally equivalent. In the follow up to this post, we will examine the desire by some Christians to withhold their vote from either, and will explain why it actually is indeed a sin not to vote (and will show you with Scripture).
About Author
