CHARLOTTE – With primaries settled, the state legislative session wrapped up, and summer settling in, general election campaigning is picking up. By picking up, we mean the mudslinging has begun.
Republican candidate for congress in North Carolina’s 9th district Mark Harris, a former pastor, is under fire from his opponent and willing participants in the media. The focus of the faux outrage is portions of a 2013 sermon that are being deliberately taken out of context to paint Harris as a sexist.
Under a headline that subtly nudges readers to the conclusion that Harris is a bible-thumping hillbilly that thinks women should be relegated to the kitchen, sans shoes, the Charlotte metro paper dedicates the first 60 percent of their article to suppressing context and elevating Democrat opponent Dan McCready’s insinuations that Harris thinks women are unequal.
“The 2013 sermon was discovered by a Democratic-linked Super PAC, American Bridge, and first reported Thursday by ABC News.
In the sermon, Harris, then pastor of Charlotte’s First Baptist Church, spoke about “God’s plan for biblical womanhood” and barriers to it.
“The first one . . . is that we’ve had in our own culture a new supreme pursuit,” he said. “There is a new supreme pursuit from the traditional pursuit of being a wife or a mother . . .
“In our culture today, girls are taught from grade school . . . that what is most honorable in life is a career, and their ultimate goal in life is simply to be able to grow up and be independent of anyone or anything,” he said.
“But nobody has seemed to ask the question that I think is critically important to ask: Is that a healthy pursuit for society? Is that the healthiest pursuit for our homes? . . . Is that the healthiest pursuit for the sexes in our generation?””
First of all, this is opposition research, plain and simple. The fact that this Leftist Super PAC discovered this means they have been systematically combing Harris’ past sermons and this is the worst they found, apparently.
The Super PAC’s ‘discovery’ was perfectly teed up for McCready to take a swing.
“As a Christian, I believe that we are all created in God’s image,” he said. “That means men and women are equally valuable and equally capable and should be treated as such in their homes, careers, and in society. Mr. Harris’ comments suggest otherwise. This is just another example of how out of step Mr. Harris is — not just with this district but with this century.”
At the bottom of the article, once the reader is all but convinced Mr. Harris is a dirt bag woman-hater, is this convenient bit of information from the Harris campaign.
“[Harris adviser Andy] Yates said critics took Harris’ comments out of context. Harris predicted that would happen in the 2013 sermon.
“There’s no doubt I’m going to be misquoted, no doubt that I’m going to be taken out of context . . . no doubt that people are going to twist what I’ve said,” he said in the sermon. “But I want to make this clear . . . I’m not talking about that this means you’re to be barefoot and pregnant. This doesn’t mean that you can’t be a woman going to the office, can’t be a woman carrying a briefcase, doesn’t mean you can’t be a woman sitting at an executive board table.
“But what it does mean (is) that . . . you must understand your core calling.””
Harris knew the Left would pounce on his preaching of family values and lauding the virtues of motherhood to make it something it’s not. He clarified; he predicted it would be taken out of context; and, the Leftist media still ran to it like a fly to…
This sermon was given on Mother’s Day 2013. Harris was talking about there being no higher calling than that of being a mother and wife, or a father and husband for that matter.
Although the Left loves to twist Christian family values as backward, that might not end up playing so well across the 9th district. Think what you will of Harris as a candidate, but dishonest mudslinging like this not do the Left any favors, especially when the hit job so obviously removes context in order to push a narrative.
Read more here.
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