Still Missing the Point

Tuesday's election results have conservative Christians wondering what went wrong, with Romney losing and so many states embracing gay marriage:

“Millions of American evangelicals are absolutely shocked by not just the presidential election, but by the entire avalanche of results that came in,” R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Louisville, Ky., said in an interview. “It’s not that our message — we think abortion is wrong, we think same-sex marriage is wrong — didn’t get out. It did get out.

“It’s that the entire moral landscape has changed,” he said. “An increasingly secularized America understands our positions, and has rejected them.”

These guys are still missing the point. The problem is not that everyone who voted against them rejects their moral positions. We just believe it's wrong for religious groups to use the power of state and federal government to force their moral beliefs on the whole of society. That "we" includes atheists, agnostics, Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Democrats and even libertarian Republicans.

Personally, I think it's best for kids to have a father and a mother who are married. Alcohol and marijuana are a stupid waste of money, time and brain cells. Anal sex can spread venereal disease, hepatitis and E. coli infections. Oral sex is unsanitary and disgusting. Cheating on your spouse is wrong. I would never encourage my wife or sister to have an abortion. But these things, done properly, are not automatically detrimental to society or the people who do them


Though the folks bemoaning their losses on Tuesday refuse to acknowledge it, their campaign to legislate their beliefs on abortion, gay marriage, contraception and other sexual practices is no different than the Taliban enforcing strict Sharia law in Afghanistan.

Once we go back down the road of legislating religious morality, eventually that power will be used to undermine other religions, even those that currently consider themselves to be allies in the fight against gay marriage. After all, just 50 years ago many believed John Kennedy's Catholicism disqualified him to be president.

People came to this country to escape the endless bloodshed that swept Europe in the pogroms of Christians against Jews, Catholic inquisitions against heretics, and wars between Protestants and Catholics.

And it's why the First Amendment was added first.