As this publication’s token Christian conservative, I guess I should respond to Sam Cosby’s post decrying Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry’s candidacy and an advertisement he put out.

Sam is incorrect when he calls Perry’s campaign commercial a “blunder.” Perry must win the Republican primary, and the vast majority of Republicans are against making gay marriage legal. That is reality. This is not a blunder any more than it would be a blunder for Barack Obama to come out for legalizing gay marriage ”” which, by the way, he is not entirely for either. Perry won’t be elected president because he has not shown enough intellectual fortitude in the GOP debates, not because he is against a law signed by President Bill Clinton, a (gasp!) Democrat.

I highly doubt that Sam (or any of the more than 200,000 who disliked the ad on YouTube) was going to vote for Perry anyways.

Sam is standing on firmer ground when he criticizes Perry’s view that Obama has fought a war on religion. Obama is obviously not as friendly with the evangelical community as his predecessor, George W. Bush, was, but he has hardly begun a war on religion.

But, again, this is a campaign ad. Perry is trying to rile up the Republican base, a substantial portion of which are evangelical Christians. If the debate is framed in such terms, whom will these voters turn to, Perry, or the guy who campaigns against those bitter people “clinging to their guns or religion”?

Though Obama has not begun a war on religion, it is undeniable that Christianity, at least in the public square, has taken a hit in the last 40 years. Supreme Court decisions like Roe v. Wade and Engel v. Vitale enraged many Christians to the point where they saw the government as doing battle against them. And when one considers stories like Rhode Island calling its state Christmas tree a “holiday tree,” its hard to blame them.

Anyways, I won’t be voting for Rick Perry ”” I’m firmly in the Ron Paul camp ”” but this ad will not hurt the man in any way in his quest for the presidency. If anything, it will help him siphon votes from Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich in the Iowa caucuses.