Kerry sucked the air out of the room with his statement on faith

[underpants]

I,personally, am not a very religious man but Kerry explaining his faith and what it means to him last night was awe inspiring. I don't know if that was totally rehearsed but when he was finished you could hear a collective GASP in the audience and much shifting around in seats (I replayed it twice to make sure of what I had heard). Aside from some loud mouth whooping it up when W said something that was the only audience reaction (other than laughs) last night.

W did really freeze after Kerry made his statement (see below) but you could FEEL that that was a huge moment. Travis Smiley on ABC was the only person I heard remark on that moment and he seemed to have the same impression as I and my wife did. All the other pundits seemed to ignore it and give W credit for his statement on faith.

Kerry brought it up first and went back to it later in the debate. He won't turn a lot of the fundamentalists and evangelistics towards him with that but he walked confidently onto W's supposed turf and planted his flag and returned to make sure it was still there.

VERY well done.





KERRY: I respect their views. I completely respect their views. I am a Catholic. And I grew up learning how to respect those views. But I disagree with them, as do many.

I believe that I can't legislate or transfer to another American citizen my article of faith. What is an article of faith for me is not something that I can legislate on somebody who doesn't share that article of faith.

I believe that choice is a woman's choice. It's between a woman, God and her doctor. And that's why I support that.

Now, I will not allow somebody to come in and change Roe v. Wade.

The president has never said whether or not he would do that. But we know from the people he's tried to appoint to the court he wants to.

I will not. I will defend the right of Roe v. Wade.

Now, with respect to religion, you know, as I said, I grew up a Catholic. I was an altar boy. I know that throughout my life this has made a difference to me.

And as President Kennedy said when he ran for president, he said, I'm not running to be a Catholic president. I'm running to be a president who happens to be Catholic.

My faith affects everything that I do, in truth. There's a great passage of the Bible that says, What does it mean, my brother, to say you have faith if there are no deeds? Faith without works is dead.

And I think that everything you do in public life has to be guided by your faith, affected by your faith, but without transferring it in any official way to other people.

That's why I fight against poverty. That's why I fight to clean up the environment and protect this earth.

That's why I fight for equality and justice. All of those things come out of that fundamental teaching and belief of faith.

But I know this, that President Kennedy in his inaugural address told all of us that here on Earth, God's work must truly be our own. And that's what we have to – I think that's the test of public service.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/politics/federal/20041013-1958-prezdebatetranscript.html