Here Are 2 Examples of What Happens When Evangelicals Refuse to Vote

In the latest issue of its Decision magazine, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association is not only encouraging evangelicals to vote, but showing two examples of what happens when they don’t.

In an article titled “The Perils of Low Voter Turnout,” two Southern cities—Houston and Charlotte—are offered as dark examples of what can happen when Christian voters fail to do their duty on Election Day. In both cases, the devastating results led to their communities making national headlines—for all the wrong reasons.

Houston

In 2009, and again in 2011, and yet again in 2013, the voters of Houston elected Annise Parker—who is openly homosexual—as their mayor. Turnout for the general population in those elections was a paltry 16.57, 13.2, and 18.32 percent, respectively—and likely even lower for evangelical Christians.

As a result:

[Parker] championed the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance, also known as “the bathroom ordinance,” which would have required all businesses open to the general public to allow anyone to use bathrooms, locker rooms or other gender-specific facilities based on their self-professed gender identity, regardless of their biological sex.

The city council, encouraged and aided by the influential Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s most influential gay lobbying group, passed the ordinance in 2014, but after a petition campaign by pastors and a lengthy legal battle—during which the city attorney tried to subpoena sermons of opposing pastors—the matter was added to the ballot last November. Houston voters soundly defeated it.

Charlotte

Last November, the voters of Charlotte elected Jennifer Roberts mayor by fewer than 3,600 votes. Only 14.76 percent of voters participated, meaning more than 548,000 voters stayed home.

And, like Houston, the end result was:

Charlotte followed Houston in enacting a similar ordinance—drafted, just as in Houston, with encouragement and help from the Human Rights Campaign—that would have opened the way for sexual predators to enter facilities of the opposite sex under the guise of transgenderism. The state responded with the law known as HB2, which nullified the city’s ordinance and has resulted in the loss of several high-profile events by organizations more concerned with political correctness than with the safety of women and children.

Turnout matters. And when the rest of the electorate isn’t energized to participate, it’s even more important for Christians to stand up and do their biblical duty.